Nobel peace laureate rejects attempts to kill Darfur report
March 16, 2007 (GENEVA) — Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams on Friday rejected attempts by Muslim, African and other countries to kill her team’s report on alleged abuses in Darfur, saying the U.N. Human Rights Council cannot ignore the atrocities committed in the region without further undermining its credibility.
“Responsibility to protect is meant to protect civilians _ not abusive governments,” Williams said.
She said the mission had strictly adhered to the rules and she rejected attacks by a number of countries on the credibility of its work.
“About credibility _ it’s not about ours, it’s about yours,” Williams told the council. “If the council chooses not to consider our report … it will have an impact on the credibility of the council but not on this mission.”
In the most explicit of a long series of reports submitted by rights experts to the world body over the past four years, the team called for U.N. Security Council intervention, sanctions and criminal prosecutions in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced by four years of fighting.
The U.N. rights council on Friday was deeply divided over the question how to react to the allegations contained in the report. Muslim members leading an assault on the report have been maneuvering to block its consideration on a number of technical grounds.
Their chief objection is that the document was drawn up outside the country after Sudan refused to grant the team visas. They also said the council failed to be impartial.
“We witness a conspiracy against Sudan for political objectives,” Sudanese Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi told the council.
The 57-country Organization of the Islamic Conference accused the expert panel of “selectivity and targeting.”
China and Russia _ both of which lobby other countries heavily to avoid having their own records scrutinized _ joined with a number of African countries in also dismissing the report.
Williams said although the mission was unable to visit Darfur, its work was fully legitimate.
“We consulted with the secretariat in New York at every point during our mission to make sure that our mandate was legal, to make sure the decision to proceed was legal … and we were assured that we were operating fully legally,” she told reporters.
The mission who instead went to neighboring Chad and Ethiopia, held numerous consultations with a wide range of aid agencies working in the region and was briefed by African Union officials in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the report said.
Whether the council acts further on the report in the remaining two weeks of the three-week session remains undecided.
European countries were pressing the council to accept the document to put the alleged atrocities in Darfur more firmly on the record. The council has no enforcement powers, but its decisions can help strengthen moves in the Security Council.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in a statement from Brussels urged the council members to endorse the report and to follow its recommendations.
“The report is timely as it reminds us all of the desperate plight of civilians in Darfur and the need for the international community … to address this issue,” he said.
Michael Steiner, German ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva who was speaking on behalf of the European Union, told the council that it was time to act against abuses committed both by the Sudanese government and rebel groups.
The United States and Britain also urged the council members to endorse the report.
British ambassador Nicholas Thorne said the council must join the U.N. effort to stop the “appalling human rights and humanitarian situation in Darfur” to avoid a repetition of the genocide that followed inadequate U.N. measures to avert violence in Rwanda.
Williams was scathing about the attacks on her report.
“Our job is to attempt to alleviate the suffering of the people of Darfur … while political wrangling goes on here in the hallowed halls of the United Nations,” she told reporters.
(AP)