UN rights body keeps pressure on Sudan over Darfur

March 30, 2007 (GENEVA) — The United Nations’ top human rights body on Friday kept up the pressure on Sudan over Darfur, but stopped short of blaming Khartoum for widespread killings and rape in its vast western region.

A resolution, passed unanimously by the 47-state Human Rights Council, expressed deep concern at the “seriousness of ongoing violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Darfur”.

The text, agreed after days of hard wrangling between European and African states, instructed Council special investigators into abuse, including torture and violence against women, to scrutinise Khartoum’s compliance with past international recommendations and report back in June.

“The decision is a success for the European Union, it is a success for Africa, it is a success for the Human Rights Council and we hope very much that it will be a success for the people of Darfur,” said ambassador Michael Steiner of Germany, whose country holds the EU presidency.

More than 200,000 people are believed to have died and some 2.5 million have been driven from their homes into squalid camps since simmering ethnic conflict erupted into revolt in 2003.

Among the documents to be considered by the monitoring team will be a report by a mission of inquiry submitted to the Council earlier this month accusing Khartoum of “orchestrating and participating” in systematic violations of humanitarian law.

Khartoum, which rejects charges by the United States and others of genocide in Darfur, blames rebel groups which have refused to sign a 2006 peace deal for continuing abuses.

It is resisting Western calls for a U.N. peacekeeping force to be deployed in support of 7,000 under-financed monitors from the African Union who have been unable to stem the violence.

STRONGEST STATEMENT

“This is the strongest statement that the Council has yet made on Darfur and the strongest it has made on any situation outside the Middle East,” said one Western diplomat.

“It talks about violations and that means the Sudanese state, because in human rights law only states can commit violations,” the diplomat added.

U.N. reports on Darfur have blamed Arab militias, which they say are armed and backed by Khartoum, for some of the worst atrocities, including mass rape and murder.

The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) has summoned a junior government minister and a Darfur militia leader to answer war crimes charges in a first step towards bringing to trial those deemed responsible.

Human rights activists had seen Darfur as a test of the effectiveness of the Geneva-based Council, set up last year to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission.

Although they make an exception for Israel, which is routinely pilloried, a majority of the developing country-dominated Council usually opposes condemning individual states for violations.

Amnesty International welcomed the decision on Darfur, although it criticised the Council’s failure to denounce the role of the Sudanese government and its allies in the abuses.

“This resolution marks a major turning point,” it said. “African delegations are saying to Sudan ‘enough is enough’.”

(Reuters)