This Is No Time For The UN To Abandon Darfur

The following was published in the Independent on Sunday.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/this-is-no-time-for-the-un-to-abandon-darfur-10334281.html

As Sudan’s president Omar Al Bashir flew out of South Africa on Monday, contrails of the country’s shame left an indelible trace in his wake.

Despite Al Bashir being issued with two arrest warrants by the ICC for crimes against humanity and genocide, South Africa offered him immunity to attend an African Union (AU) conference in Johannesburg last week-end.

As a signatory to the Rome Treaty, South Africa had a duty to arrest Bashir and hand him over to the ICC to face trial. A local NGO secured a court order preventing Bashir from leaving the country but while the court sat to decide Bashir’s fate, the fugitive surreptitiously fled the country.

The world once stood with ordinary South Africans in their struggle against state oppression and brutality. Yet, when their fellow Africans in Sudan cry out in tortured anguish, broken by the serial rape of children, serial murder and starvation of civilians, they are serially, cruelly ignored. By allowing Al Bashir to escape prosecution, the African National Congress (ANC), whose founding principle was “to bring all ordinary Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms”, betrayed African victims of genocide.

The ICC depends on member nations to enforce arrest warrants. Having evaded arrest for 6 years, the court appealed to the UN Security Council, which does have enforcement powers. The ICC has said that the Security Council’s failure to authorize any penalties against the Sudanese regime for non compliance with the arrest warrant, is preventing it from fulfilling its mandate of ending impunity.

In November, the Independent reported on the mass rape of 200 girls and women in the village of Tabit and called on the UN to conduct an independent investigation. It did not. Instead, Human Rights Watch produced a report in February publishing findings which unequivocally impugned government sponsored forces for these rapes. Eight months on and the victims have still not received any support or counselling, the villagers live in fear and in conditions they describe as “an open prison”.

Ten months ago the UN waved through a resolution which potentially paves the way for the withdrawal, or significant reduction, of UNAMID troops in the region. The force has already been reduced, with a mere 15,000 troops responsible for a region the size of France. In February UNAMID and UN officials began meeting to discuss the Darfur exit strategy.

In May, Ban Ki-Moon recommended that the Security Council re-authorise UNAMID’s mandate as it is. A Sudanese official I spoke to said he was not reassured. He is fearful that UNAMID will either be reduced or pulled out when it comes to the Security Council vote on 30th June. A UN spokesperson told me that conditions on the ground did not merit a change in UNAMID’s mandate but confirmed that, “Discussions about an exit strategy are ongoing”. He indicated that the emphasis was more on “streamlining” numbers rather than “pulling out”. A report issued by Ban Ki-Moon on 26 May announced that 790 posts had been abolished.

At an informal meeting of the Security Council on Friday, two Darfur activists spoke of deteriorating security in the region and made a heartfelt plea for members to take tougher action to stop the bloodshed. Afterwards, US Ambassador Samantha Power said. "Now is not the time to abandon the people of Darfur." She also called for sanctions and arms embargoes to be enforced.

More than 3 million civilians in the region have been forced into refugee camps, almost 500,000 of whom were displaced in the last year. International Sudan expert, Eric Reeves, estimates that mortality rates in this region alone could be in the region of half a million. UNAMID is clearly failing in its duty to protect civilians but the answer is not to withdraw. Its’ presence has allowed at least some NGOs to operate in the region. If UNAMID goes or is further reduced, the last remaining lifeline will be severed. Bashir will be free to accelerate, unfettered, his genocidal campaign.

Never before in the history of declaring a genocide has the institution then officially left the perpetrator, indicted by The Hague for genocide, in charge of the victims’ safety. It’s like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. Surrendering Bashir to the ICC should be a condition of UNAMID’s withdrawal.

Fortunately, there is some hope on the horizon, in the form of the UK’s incoming UN Ambassador, Matthew Rycroft. He has publicly stated that, “Now is not the time to withdraw troops from Darfur”, urging instead to re-configure UNAMID to focus on its core mandate, that of protecting civilians. Could Rycroft be the person history credits with bringing the Darfur genocide to an end? God knows there’s a situation vacant.