Bringing justice to Darfur

Editorial, The Chicago Tribune

Feb 27, 2005 — Diplomats at the UN are haggling over what set of judges will hear a war crimes case out of the tragedy in Darfur, which has taken some 70,000 lives. While the diplomats negotiate in New York, the presumed war criminals in Sudan go on with a program of rape and murder and the forced exodus of some 2 million people.

This is all too characteristic of the UN, where matters of protocol take priority over real-world decisions, even those involving life and death. When Chicago police get a call that someone is breaking into a house, they don’t sit to decide if the crook will go to the courts at 26th and Cal or the Daley Center. They try to stop the crime.

There are decisions to be made over an eventual tribunal to mete out justice against those who allegedly participated in war crimes. But first, the UN has to decide on intervention in Darfur, where Khartoum’s government and its surrogate Arab militia are engaged in a ferocious ethnic cleansing campaign.

The U.S. has proposed a Security Council resolution that would squeeze Sudan’s government and rebels with targeted economic sanctions, a freeze on overseas assets, a travel ban and extension of an arms embargo. By turning economic screws, the U.S. hopes to push the parties to agreements that stick. The Americans also are trying to get authorization for a UN peacekeeping force in Sudan. The force would help secure the recently completed peace deal between Sudan’s government and rebels in the south. But the resolution also calls for the UN to study how peacekeepers can reinforce the 1,900 lightly armed African Union monitors in Darfur.

The UN hasn’t moved, under the presumption that China and Russia would veto the resolution. China has a keen interest in Sudan’s oil industry, and Russia is a major arms supplier. The U.S. resolution should be brought to a vote. If China and Russia are going to put financial interests ahead of the murder of tens of thousands of people, then make them go on the record with a veto.

Once the UN has decided on a course of action to stop the killing, it can resolve how to bring the killers to justice.

The Bush administration has proposed the creation of a court in Tanzania at the headquarters of the UN-run Rwandan war crimes tribunal. The court would be a mixed tribunal of the African Union and the UN. Critics claim such a plan would needlessly delay prosecution and add to the spiraling war crimes costs already faced by the UN for tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. A special UN commission has recommended that the Sudan cases be brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Proponents say the ICC, headed by a capable prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is prepared to move quickly.

The U.S. is not a signatory to the ICC, a decision this page supported because of concerns that the court would not provide adequate protection from politically motivated prosecution for U.S. soldiers. But the ICC has been established, it is supported by dozens of nations, and Sudan seems appropriate as a first test of how effectively it can work.

But first, stop the killing.