UN resolution brings hope over Sudan’s Darfur conflict

KHARTOUM, April 1 (AFP) — A UN agreement to prosecute Darfur war criminals at the International Criminal Court boosted hopes of a end to political stalemate in the Sudanese region where thousands have died in two years of conflict marked also by mass rapes and torture.

A girl rests against a flimsy shack at Abushouk camp near El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, October 31, 2004. (Reuters).

“It is definitely a breakthrough. It’s too early to talk about an end to the war, but it is the first time that we have a formal measure of international accountability for what has gone on in Darfur,” said analyst David Mozersky from the International Crisis Group think-tank.

The Darfur rebels, whose two-year-old uprising against marginalisation by Khartoum has been fiercely repressed by government forces and the Janjaweed proxy militias, welcomed the move as a “victory for humanity”.

But the Sudanese government criticised the resolution passed 11-0 by the UN Security Council as unfair and said its own judiciary was competent to try suspected human rights violators.

But it also hinted that it would not attempt to obstruct the process.

Officials and commentators said the move, the second UN resolution on Darfur in three days, finally offered an accountability mechanism that could prompt the warring parties to look harder for a solution.

“Hopefully, this will lead to a serious improvement on the ground, as it forces both sides, especially the government, to fulfill their commitments,” said Mozersky.

The Sudan Liberation Movement, one of the two main rebel organisations who initiated the uprising in February 2003, hailed the council’s move to refer war crimes to the Hague-based court and called for quick action.

“The SLM calls on the Security Council to immediately set up the international court and issue an international arrest warrant against criminals in order to bring them to justice,” it said in a statement.

The Sudanese government, which was already slapped Tuesday with another UN resolution imposing sanctions on suspected war criminals, criticised the escalating international pressure.

Thursday’s vote came after intense haggling, with Washington eventually ensuring that none of its nationals could be referred to the court and prompting accusations of double standards by Khartoum’s representative.

“Justice here is a great good used in the service of evil,” Sudan’s UN ambassador Elfatih Mohammed Erwa told the council in a scathing speech after the vote.

“We regard the resolution as an unfair, ill-advised and narrow-minded one…,” State Foreign Minister Naguib al-Khair Abdel Wahab told AFP in Khartoum.

“Nevertheless, the government of Sudan, through its competent ministries and authorities, shall thoroughly study the resolution and decide on an action to be taken in relation to it,” he added.

A Sudanese government legal expert suggested that Khartoum would abide by the decision if its own accountability process was deemed insufficient by the international community.

“We will try to prove that the Sudanese judiciary is competent and capable of trying anyone who is accused of violating human rights, international humanitarian law or any other crime committed in Darfur or anywhere else so that we can avoid interference by the ICC,” said the chairman of the parliamentary legal affairs committee, Ismail al-Hajj Mussa.

“If they have not been convinced, we will have to implement the resolution because it has been adopted under chapter seven and because, unlike the United States and some other nations, we respect the international will,” he told AFP.

A UN official in Khartoum also said that the UN resolutions would limit the Sudanese government’s options and said he was optimistic the situation would improve.

“There is a preparedness on security issues linked to these two resolutions” against Khartoum, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator on Darfur, Gemmo Lodesani, told AFP.

“But the feedback on the first resolution was positive. An unwise reaction from the government would lead nowhere. The government is not a monolith and there are positive reactions,” he said.

Up to 300,000 people have died, according to a British report, and close to two million have been displaced as result of the conflict and one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.