UN chief sets up panel to determine if genocide has taken place in Darfur
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 7 (AFP) — UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has set up a commission to determine whether genocide has taken place in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan, Annan’s spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
The five-member panel will be led by Italy’s Antonio Cassesse, who was the first president of the international criminal court for the former Yugoslavia.
The other members are Mohamed Fayek (Egypt), Diego Garcia-Sayan (Peru), Hina Gilani (Pakistan) and Therese Striggner-Scott (Ghana), Eckhard added.
“The commission is also to investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in Darfur,” the spokesman said.
Annan was asked to set up such a commission by the Security Council in resolution 1564 on September 18. The United States has said officially it believes genocide has been committed in the strife-torn region of Sudan.
At least 50,000 people have been killed in Darfur and 1.4 million people have fled their homes since two rebel movements rose up against the Khartoum government in February, 2003.
Khartoum’s response was to arm and support the Janjaweed, an Arab militia which has been accused of committing massive human rights abuses against Darfur’s black African people.
About 200,000 people have crossed the border into neighbouring Chad and in its capital, Ndjamena, a member of a joint ceasefire commission has said both sides in Darfur have committed “repeated violations” of a seven-month-old truce.
Massive aid deliveries have had an impact on the humanitarian situation in Sudan’s strife-torn western region of Darfur but concerns about insecurity remain, the UN’s top humanitarian official said.
“We are making progress on the humanitarian front,” Jan Egeland, the UN assistant secretary general for humanitarian affairs, told journalists.
The UN’s World Food Programme announced earlier this week that it had managed to distribute food to 1.4 million people in Darfur during September, most of them displaced people living in camps.
“We have reached 200,000 more people than our goal for September,” Egeland said.
The United Nations is hoping to extend food aid to reach a total of two million people in the region in October, he added.
Egeland said death rates among the displaced were also decreasing.
Aid agencies were recording an average of about 10,000 deaths every month between June and August due to a variety of illnesses caused mainly by bad sanitary conditions and malnourishment.
But deaths were falling to about 5,000 to 6,000 a month, a decline helped by the presence of about 750 international aid workers in the field against 200 in June.
The senior UN envoy dealing with the crisis in Darfur, Jan Pronk, said Wednesday that the Sudanese government had made no progress in stopping militia attacks against civilians in Darfur or disarming the militia.
Egeland said he was frustrated about the long term prospects for the region due to the political and security situation.
“The political conflict is not over, insecurity is growing and humanitarian workers are being attacked. People have no livelihood and nobody is producing food,” he warned.