Substantial Evidence of Intentional Destruction of Livelihoods in Darfur

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Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), reporting today from a three-week assessment in Darfur, called on the UN Security Council to step up security and establish an International Compensation Commission to provide reparations to Darfurians whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the recent conflict.

Focusing on the village of Furawiya in the northern part of West Darfur, PHR documented the full range of loss of livelihoods, including loss of community, economic structures, livestock, food production, wells and irrigation, farming capacity, and household structures. When this detail is applied to the estimated 700-2,000 villages destroyed in Darfur, the scale and cost of livelihood destruction is enormous. From the air and land, the PHR team also photographically documented the utter devastation of dozens of villages in the southern border with Chad.

The findings bolster PHR's genocide assessment from its June 2004 investigation along the Chad/Sudan border that highlighted evidence of an organized attempt to affect group annihilation. In particular, PHR's livelihood study is applicable to Article 6c of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court which defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

"Perpetrators of the heinous war crimes committed in Darfur must be brought to justice and PHR urges the UN to send a referral to the International Criminal Court, but prosecuting perpetrators alone will not be enough to restore livelihoods lost," said John Heffernan who led the most recent investigation. "The non-Arab Darfurians have lost everything, making the prospect of returning without some sort of compensation, even in a secure environment, difficult."

PHR Team Finds Substantial Evidence of Intentional Destruction of Livelihoods in Darfur....