Africa attempts new openness on human rights abuse
By William Maclean
ADDIS ABABA, July 7 (Reuters) – Frank talk about Sudan’s Darfur crisis at an African Union (AU) summit shows the continent’s old taboo of silence about human rights abuses is under pressure as never before.
The crisis has given the two-year-old AU an opportunity to make good on its boast that it can and will ditch the cherished African principle of non-interference for a new era of “non-indifference”, analysts and campaigners say.
AU Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare bluntly told African leaders this week Darfur’s Janjaweed Arab militias, accused by rights groups of murdering and displacing thousands of black Africans, were responsible for “atrocious” acts.
Konare is trying to drum up support among the AU’s 53 member governments for his attempts to show a sceptical outside world that Africa is ready to ditch despotism, corruption and war in return for increased Western investment.
The attempt at openness is not restricted to words.
Sudan has reluctantly agreed to about 300 AU troops being deployed to protect truce monitors in Darfur, where fighting has driven more than a million people from their homes in what the United Nations says is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
It will be only the second AU joint military venture and by far the organisation’s most prominent.
MORAL AUTHORITY
The new openness is sharp change of course for African leaders and an attempt to build the sort of moral authority for the AU that was lacking in its predecessor, the Organisation of Africa Unity. That under-funded body was perennially timid about the violence perpetrated by some member governments against their own citizens.
“Four or five years ago it would have been taboo for people to talk like this,” said Mauritian Secretary for Foreign Affairs Vijay Makhan, a former OAU deputy secretary-general.
“Such talk is new. Now, with Darfur, the AU is really trying to live up people’s expectations,” Abulaie Janneh, Africa director for the U.N. Development Programme, told Reuters.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council, a peacemaking organ, has been pondering bluntly written public reports by Konare on crises in Burundi, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic and Somalia.
And a peer review system operated by the AU’s economic revival programme requires leaders who agree to participate to appraise the quality of each other’s governance.
Zimbabwe has not escaped the new bluntness, with the AU Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights privately circulating a report to foreign ministers critical of its rights record.
“Why should the rest of the world shed tears for us when we don’t shed tears for each other?” Anna Tibaijuka, a Tanzanian who heads the U.N. Human Settlements Programme, told Reuters.
“Africans have to get their act together and bring moral authority to bear,” said Tibaijuka, the most senior African woman working in the U.N. system.
No one expects any sudden collapse of a profound culture of impunity on a continent where the misdeeds of the mighty often go unpunished and wars and state-sanctioned violence are an everyday reality for millions.
And frank talk does not always mean frank criticism.
Asked by Reuters to comment on the Zimbabwe report, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin shot back: “What does Zimbabwe have to apologise for?”
Even Konare speaks publicly about “supporting” Sudan to get a grip on lawless Janjaweed.
At the summit the crises in some countries — most prominently Zimbabwe — have not even been referred by the foreign ministers to heads of state for consideration.
Senegalese human rights campaigner Ibrahima Kane says economic rewards for governments that do respect human rights will encourage improved performance from those that do not. But it needs time.
“Africa is changing. People are getting more liberal and finding their voice. But our governments are a very long way from that (mutual public criticism) and don’t let anyone tell you any different,” said Tanzanian member of parliament Hashim Saggaf.