Responsibility To Protect

INTRODUCTION

“The international community cannot remain silent when so many lives are at stake and thus be an accomplice in all kinds of horror and suffering that are happening now − in Darfur!”

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Darfur’s population has been savagely brutalized and betrayed for the past four years. In this western region of Sudan, at least 200,000 people − the number could even reach 450,000 according to humanitarian workers − have been killed indiscriminately and many more, gravely wounded. Villages have been razed, women have been systematically terrorized, sexually assaulted and raped, livestock stolen or killed, and crops destroyed. The whole population was forcefully displaced – more than two million people fled their homes and are now living in refugee camps − breaking families and communities.

Making things worse, delivery of effective aid has been dramatically hampered as humanitarian and human rights actors are increasingly targeted and humanitarian space continues to shrink. In a region neglected and marginalized, vis-à-vis the country’s political, administrative and developmental center in Khartoum, the conflict resulted in further impoverishment. As violations and abuses continue unabated, a climate of impunity prevails.

The high-level mission of the UN’s Human Rights Council, led by Jody Williams, the Nobel Peace Laureate, said of the onslaught last March: “The situation is characterized by gross and systematic violations of human rights and grave breaches of international humanitarian law. War crimes and crimes against humanity continue across the region.” It has stopped short of calling it genocide, a crime humanitarian organizations affirm is taking place.

The crisis in the arid and impoverished region, but rich in oil, started in 2003 after a rebel group began attacking government targets, saying the region was being neglected by Khartoum. The Government, whose soldiers were fighting the southern guerrilla, answered with the recruitment of proxy militias, composed of members of Arab tribes, continuing to exploit the existing and ongoing tensions between tribal groups.

The Government-backed counterinsurgency operations known as Janjaweed, a term used for an armed man on a horse or camel, sometimes in concert with the Government’s land and air forces, have been and continue to be primarily directed against the civilian population of Darfur, and focused especially on the tribal groups from which most of the rebels have been drawn.

About 7,000 African Union troops have been deployed in Darfur on a very limited mandate. Experts say the soldiers are too few to cover an area the size of France, and Sudan has resisted strong western diplomatic pressure for the UN to take control of the peacekeeping mission.

According to the principle of responsibility to protect, embraced formally by the international community in a landmark decision at the World Summit in September 2005, every state under the UN Charter has the responsibility to protect its population and where a state is unable or unwilling to do so, it is the responsibility of the international community to take action to ensure effective protection. This is what should be done effectively in Darfur following the UN recommendation and in other parts of the world where human rights are being violated. But more consistent international pressure on Khartoum to stop the killing and finally negotiate a meaningful peace for Darfur is needed.

The international community cannot remain silent when so many lives are at stake because silence is a passive way of complicity in all kinds of horror and suffering that are happening now − in Darfur!

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