May 25, 2006

Fascinating Look Inside the UN: Letter from 43 NGO’s to UN Gets Wide Attention

Yesterday this site posted regarding a letter from 43 NGO's (non-govenmental organizations), which called on the UN's Human Rights Council, to act to stop the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. In this follow-up post, we examine the immediate results of that letter, which has already generated a great deal of attention.

From Agence France-Presse (no link - forwarded to me by Mr. David Littman):

UN rights office takes Sudan to task over Darfur

GENEVA, May 23, 2006 (AFP) - The UN's human rights office on Tuesday took Sudan to task for doing too little to halt abuses in its troubled Darfur region.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour's spokesman Jose Diaz said that the top official remained "very concerned" by the situation in the western Sudanese region.

"Our monitors have documented a situation of escalating violence in Darfur in recent months, reaching a level not seen since the flare-up in the conflict in late 2003 and 2004," Diaz told AFP.

In a report released on Tuesday, Arbour's team on site in Sudan said that the country was "falling short" on human rights.

It cited a failure to protect civilians from attacks including rape, as well as to hold people accountable for conflict-related crimes.

It also said that it was "particularly alarming" that the government had reverted to the use of helicopter gunships in the region.

In addition, it pointed to new problems caused by fighting between different factions of the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA), Darfur's anti-government rebels.

The upsurge in the conflict has hit civilians hard and also worsened Darfur's humanitarian crisis because insecurity has seriously limited aid workers' operations.

Also on Tuesday, a coalition of 43 human rights groups wrote to Arbour saying that the situation in Darfur was "at a critical turning point".

They said that the role of the UN's new Human Rights Council, which will start work next month, will be "tested by the way the Darfur conflict is faced" by the new UN body.

Its predecessor, the discredited UN Human Rights Commission, was accused of doing too little to call the Sudanese government to account.

Violence and famine have killed some 300,000 people in Darfur and displaced 2.4 million since all-out fighting erupted in 2003 between ethnic minority rebels and government troops and their proxy Janjaweed militia.

Earlier this month the African Union brokered a peace accord between the government and the main part of the SLA, but two smaller rebel factions declined to sign the deal.

The AU already has 7,000 troops in Darfur, and plans are under way to deploy a UN peacekeeping mission there.

The UN response was to try to suppress all debate on the subject. From UN Watch:

Darfur Outburst Disrupts UN Human Rights Council Session

Geneva, May 23, 2006 - The first preparatory session of the UN's new Human Rights Council was disrupted today by a heated dispute over allegations of Sudanese human rights violations in its Darfur province. The meeting in Geneva of over 150 ambassadors and numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was convened by its new Chair, Mexico's Ambassador Luis De Alba, to decide details for the inaugural ceremonies of the Council's opening on June 19th. But discussions were interrupted when the representative of Sudan irately protested an organization's distribution in the assembly hall of a statement alleging "a constant pattern of human rights violations" in Darfur.

Accepting Sudan's objection, Chairman De Alba instructed the representative from the Association for World Education to cease distributing the document in the hall.

Isn't that amazing? The Chairman not only prevented debate, but ordered that the document not even be distributed!

The Chairman resorted to his gavel to further prevent the group from reading the text in a speech, ruling that neither Sudan, nor any other situation, could be raised during the procedural discussion.

And by the way, the UN doesn't let the situation be discussed elsewhere, either. See this post for details of a previous attempt in which Mr. Littman sought to discuss the issue, and to see the enormous efforts made to prevent him from doing so. But the efforts of the UN to suppress discussion on this subject, may have backfired:

[Executive Director of UN Watch, Hillel] Neuer speculated that Sudan's angry objections might have had the unintended effect of provoking greater interest among diplomats, who then rushed to obtain copies of the joint appeal. The statement describes a "violent situation in Darfur" that is at "a crucial turning point which should open the door to increased UN action." The statement called on the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights to appoint "a sufficiently large team of human rights monitors and advisors" to monitor the recent cease-fire in Sudan.

Darfur may be shaping up to be a test of the legitimacy of the UN's Human Rights Council:

"It's quite clear, as UN Watch and over 40 other NGOs are saying in today's joint appeal, that the UN's new Human Rights Council will be tested by the actions it takes to stop the crimes against humanity in Darfur," said Neuer. "Let us not forget that its predecessor, the now-defunct Human Rights Commission, officially treated Darfur last year under its agenda item for 'Technical Cooperation'. If the Council perpetuates the same attitude of moral indifference, and whitewashes atrocities, then the change to a new body will have proved meaningless."

This site would like to thank Mr. Littman, for keeping us informed on these fascinating events inside the UN.