Human Rights Watch: Darfur Needs Action on Human Rights

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Press release from Human Rights Watch
Dated Thursday June 3

Sudan: Darfur Needs Action on Human Rights
Donor Governments Must Do More Than Provide Aid

Donor governments meeting in Geneva today should address the human rights crisis in Sudan as well as the humanitarian crisis, Human Rights Watch said today.
Currently one million people are internally displaced within Darfur, an arid region in western Sudan, and another 110,000 refugees have fled to Chad. All of them desperately need humanitarian assistance. The United Nations has called Darfur "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today."
But the root cause of this humanitarian crisis is the Sudanese government’s campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against civilians of three ethnic groups. Only by addressing the human rights crisis can donor governments hope to solve the humanitarian disaster, Human Rights Watch said.
"The crisis in Darfur is a manmade emergency," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Humanitarian aid is urgently needed, but it is not enough. A political solution is necessary: the Sudanese government’s ethnic cleansing must not stand."

Read more.

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1. Human Rights Watch Report: Dafur Destroyed

From the wessite of Human Rights Watch
Dated May 2004

Sudan: Darfur Destroyed

The government of Sudan is responsible for “ethnic cleansing” and crimes against humanity in Darfur, one of the world’s poorest and most inaccessible regions, on Sudan’s western border with Chad. The Sudanese government and the Arab “Janjaweed” militias it arms and supports have committed numerous attacks on the civilian populations of the African Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups. Government forces oversaw and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians—including women and children—burnings of towns and villages, and the forcible depopulation of wide swathes of land long inhabited by the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. The Janjaweed militias, Muslim like the African groups they attack, have destroyed mosques, killed Muslim religious leaders, and desecrated Qorans belonging to their enemies.
The government and its Janjaweed allies have killed thousands of Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa—often in cold blood—raped women, and destroyed villages, food stocks and other supplies essential to the civilian population. They have driven more than one million civilians, mostly farmers, into camps and settlements in Darfur where they live on the very edge of survival, hostage to Janjaweed abuses. More than 110,000 others have fled to neighbouring Chad but the vast majority of war victims remain trapped in Darfur.
This conflict has historical roots but escalated in February 2003, when two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) drawn from members of the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups, demanded an end to chronic economic marginalization and sought power-sharing within the Arab-ruled Sudanese state. They also sought government action to end the abuses of their rivals, Arab pastoralists who were driven onto African farmlands by drought and desertification—and who had a nomadic tradition of armed militias.

The government has responded to this armed and political threat by targeting the civilian populations from which the rebels were drawn. It brazenly engaged in ethnic manipulation by organizing a military and political partnership with some Arab nomads comprising the Janjaweed; armed, trained, and organized them; and provided effective impunity for all crimes committed.

Read more.

Read the entire report

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2. Children Are Dying Pass this Message On

"Hundreds of children have started to starve to death in Sudan's war-torn western province of Darfur" reads the head line in a BBC story.

Please forward this email to 5 people in address book and ask them to forward it to five more people. You will have done something. Apathy is the greatest problem here and you won’t be part of the problem. The following are some of the details and a link to this story.

The mother of nine-month-old Adam says that she walked without food for 10 days to reach the camp.

"The militias burnt our village... They were burning the children," she said.

Our correspondent says village after village in Darfur has been burnt, while food is running out in all the camps, where people have sought refuge.

"If we get relief in, we could lose a third of a million. If we do not, it could be a million," Andrew Natsios, head of the US Agency for International Development told a UN donor conference last week.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3790559.stm

This warning started on [e-mail]. Please pass it on.

[gottaB]

3. Peace unsustainable without democratisation

NAIROBI, 11 Jun 2004 (IRIN) - Sudan will fail to enjoy the fruits of peace if it does not democratise both its peace process and its political system during the six-year transitional period following the signing of a comprehensive agreement, according to the South Africa-based think-tank, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

"A sustainable peace is unlikely unless a government is established that enjoys the confidence of the Sudanese masses and demonstrates an unqualified commitment to peace," said ISS in a report issued this week.

"This in turn assumes that the country will undergo a democratic transformation, something that at present is not even under consideration," according to the report, entitled "Insecurity in South Sudan: A threat to the IGAD Peace Process".

Peace unsustainable without democratisation....

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The report can be found at the ISS website:

http://www.iss.co.za/AF/profiles/Sudan/sudan1.html

There's some info there on the political aspects of the civil war and the Darfur crisis, including the protocols for peace and interviews with relevant players.