Sudan’s humanitarian disaster finally up for debate at UN rights forum

GENEVA, April 23 (AFP) — A humanitarian disaster in western Sudan is finally due to take centre stage at the United Nations’s top human rights forum and observers warn failure to pledge tough action will have dire consequences.

On the final day of its annual six-week session, the UN’s Commission on Human Rights will review claims of atrocities by government-backed militias in Sudan’s Darfur region that have killed up to 10,000 people.

The debate on what is being called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today has been delayed by over a week due to ongoing consultations between delegations.

Since erupting in February last year, the Darfur war has displaced about one million people inside Sudan and forced more than 100,000 others to flee to neighbouring Chad, according to UN estimates.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, speaking to the Commission earlier this month, has urged the international community to consider decisive measures, including military action, if oil-rich Sudan fails to allow swift aid and human rights workers into the area.

But a softly-worded statement on Sudan was proposed on Thursday, which may supercede a stronger text originally sponsored by the European Union that condemns the violence in Darfur and demands an urgent response — a prospect that drew condemnation from the United States and advocacy groups.

Richard Williamson, head of the US delegation at the commission, indicated that the United States was against a softer review.

“We are not the only ones that have clearly stated our grave reservations,” he told a news conference on Thursday.

“Ten years from today the only thing that will be remembered about the 60th Commision on Human Rights is whether we stand up on the ethnic cleansing going on in Sudan,” he declared.

The non-Arab rebels, mainly drawn from the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa ethnic minorities in the largely desert region, complain of marginalisation by the Arab-dominated government in Sudan’s capital city Khartoum.

They also fear the exclusion of their region from a power and wealth-sharing accord in the final stages of negotiation between Khartoum and separatist rebels who have been at war in the mainly Christian south.

A UN team is on the ground to investigate what it found — through earlier interviews with refugees who escaped into Chad — to be consistent accounts of attacks by Sudanese troops and government-backed militias on civilians, which may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The softer statement expressed “deep concern” about the region, but welcomed a U-turn by the Sudanese government to allow a UN team to visit the country, which had previously been turned away.

In contrast, the EU draft referred to “reports of systematic attacks on civilians, targeting of villages and centres for internally displaced persons.”

It criticised a lack of government help during the unrest and referred to “the widespread recourse to rape and other forms of sexual violence, including against children, as a means of warfare.”

The text gave the government a long list of challenges to stop attacks against civilians which have led to “the forced depopulation” of entire areas.”

The new statement merely encouraged the government to promote human rights protection under international law.

The Khartoum government has denied arming the Arab militias accused of looting and burning African villages, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes and become displaced in Darfur.

Fifteen months of fighting in Darfur started with a rebellion against the government amid allegations it had backed the marauding militias and was neglecting the region in the far west of Sudan.

The new UN statement triggered a bitter response from advocacy groups.

“People are dying in Darfur now. The commission is failing these people,” said Peter Splinter from Amnesty International.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said Thursday it had documented dozens of cases in which Sudanese government troops assisted human rights violations by the militias.

“These militias work in unison with government troops, with total impunity for their massive crimes,” charged Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.