darfur news

[sik-m-boi]

not really politics but more than just news:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar...n_darfur___un/

Rape systematic weapon of war in Darfur - U.N.

By Claudia Parsons | June 21, 2005

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - One medical charity has treated 500 victims of sexual violence in Darfur in four months and this is just a fraction of such attacks in the Sudanese province, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday.

Under-Secretary General Jan Egeland told the Security Council women and children were being systematically raped and assaulted in the ravaged region and urged Sudanese authorities to do more to protect civilians and end a culture of impunity.

Addressing the U.N. Security Council on the need for more international effort to protect civilians in armed conflicts, Egeland said Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo were among the countries where sexual violence was worst.

The Darfur conflict broke out two years ago when rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government, complaining of discrimination. Khartoum is accused of retaliating by arming militias who burned villages and killed and raped civilians.

At least 180,000 people have died from violence, hunger and disease and two million have been driven from their homes.

Egeland said medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres had reported treating 500 survivors of sexual violence in Darfur in just four months.

"We believe this represents only a fraction of the total victims," he said, adding that the impact of the violence was compounded by Sudan's failure to acknowledge the scale of the problem and to act to stop it.

"Not only do the Sudanese authorities fail to provide effective physical protection, they inhibit access to treatment." He said in some cases unmarried women who became pregnant after being raped had been treated as criminals and subjected to further brutal treatment by police.

"This is an affront to all humanity," Egeland said.



The U.N. Security Council has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged war crimes in Darfur. Earlier this month Sudan formed a special court to try alleged criminals in the western Darfur region. RAPE AS WEAPON

"In Darfur ... rape is systematically used as a weapon of warfare," Egeland said.

France had organized the debate on civilian casualties around the world, an issue which has been before the council for several years and eventually resulted in a mandate for peacekeepers to protect civilians.

Egeland said that while he was concerned about the targeting of civilians in conflicts around the world, including Iraq where he said as many as 1,000 civilians may have been killed since April, his biggest concern was Africa.

"In North Kivu, in eastern Congo, one nongovernmental organization reported 2,000 cases of sexual abuse ... in one month," Egeland said. He said most of the cases were rape.

He said U.N. officials in the area estimated there were at least 25,000 cases a year of sexual violence against women and children in North Kivu, a situation partly attributable to the breakdown of discipline in the regular armed forces.

The United Nations has more than 16,000 peacekeepers in the Congo, where peace deals in 2003 officially ended a five-year war that killed nearly four million people, mostly from hunger and disease. Armed groups still operate in much of the east.

He picked out Ivory Coast, Liberia, northern Uganda and Nepal as areas where civilians were most endangered by conflicts.

"Today it is much more dangerous to be a civilian than to be a soldier in most of the armed conflicts," Egeland said.

[dhussdawg]

Yeh, i have been following this in the Economist. This is a very sad situation. We are trying to provide aid without getting too involved because the Muslims will play the holy war card. I dont know, it seems like somebody needs to step in and do something. Since we have been giving the role of the world's police, the blame will fall at our doorstep.

[dhussdawg]

Sudan can't wait


Jul 29th 2004
From The Economist print edition


The world must act now to stop the death toll in Darfur from exploding

JOBARD-SIPA



Get article background

HOW bad are things in Darfur? Ask the villagers who saw their neighbours trussed with chains and burned alive. Ask the 1.2m people who have been terrorised into fleeing the embers of their huts. Ask the aid workers who estimate that 1,000 people are dying each day in this remote region of western Sudan, mostly of hunger-related diseases, and that hundreds of thousands will die if not helped. Darfur is so horrifying that even the African Union (AU), an organisation that sees no evil during Zimbabwean elections, has protested.

Less forgiving organisations have protested more loudly. America's House of Representatives decided by 422 votes to nil last week to describe the Sudanese government's actions in Darfur as “genocide”, and to demand that something be done. This week, the UN Security Council is considering whether to impose sanctions. A British general has said that 5,000 British troops could be swiftly despatched to Darfur, if the order were given. In short, outsiders are starting to notice what the UN has for months been calling the world's worst humanitarian disaster (see article). But what can and should they do?




No easy assignment



Sudan's rulers are gambling that that they will do very little, and they may win their bet. The country's size and turbulence deters all but the most ardent interventionists. Sudan is home to two civil wars. The older of the two, pitting the Muslim Arab-dominated regime against black, non-Muslim rebels from the south, has claimed 2m lives in the past two decades, and spurred 4m people to abandon their homes. In the past year, however, the two sides have come close to a peace pact that would allow for power, and Sudan's oil wealth, to be shared among their respective leaders.

The prospect of such a carve-up helped to provoke a separate revolt in Darfur, which is almost uniformly Muslim but divided among a plethora of tribes. Some identify themselves as Arabs, while others consider themselves black Africans, though there has been enough intermarriage to make it sometimes hard to tell who is who. The Darfur rebels are mostly black Africans, who are angry after years of neglect, and who have decided that if the southerners can win a share of power by taking up arms, so can they.

The government frets that any concessions to the Darfur rebels will tempt other restless regions to rebel. So it is trying to crush them and punishing their ethnic kin. It has armed an Arab militia called the janjaweed, given it free rein to rape, rob and kill blacks, and helped it along by bombing black villages just before the camel-mounted raiders ride in. The government denies abetting attacks on civilians, but no one believes it. Besides the accumulated testimony of thousands of refugees, there is also a stack of documents, unearthed last week by Human Rights Watch, a lobbying group, that shows beyond reasonable doubt that the janjaweed's ethnic cleansing has Khartoum's blessing.

So what can be done? There are pragmatic arguments for holding aloof. Sudan poses no immediate threat to the West, though it has succoured terrorists in the past. America and its allies are overstretched by commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. In any case, could they really hope to pacify such a vast, violent and dysfunctional country? Surely, the most realistic approach would be to try to deliver food and medical supplies to the needy, but to stay out of Sudan's internal politics?

There is no time for such caution, however. Aid cannot reach Darfur in adequate quantities unless the Sudanese government stops obstructing its delivery. People cannot go back and rebuild their villages unless they are reassured that the janjaweed will not burn them again. The Sudanese government says it is doing its best to curb janjaweed who step out of line, but it plainly is not. The murderous raids on civilians continue, backed up by government bombers. This regime will only stop killing if forced to. It was largely outside pressure that pushed it to talk peace with the south—and that peace process is at risk if the mayhem in Darfur continues.

There are several levers that could be used, but the great powers are not all pulling in the same direction. An arms embargo would be a start, but Russia, which is selling fighter jets to Khartoum, is likely to oppose it. The threat of an oil embargo would be more potent. Unless the Sudanese government makes a serious and immediate effort to rein in its killers, its main source of hard currency should be shut off. The French and Chinese governments may not like this idea, however, as their oil firms have interests in Sudan. As a last resort, outsiders should be prepared to use force. If certain members of the UN Security Council, mindful of their own ugly records in terrorising turbulent provinces, veto such a proposal, a coalition of the willing should go ahead regardless. There is a precedent: without approval from the Security Council, NATO intervened in Kosovo to curb ethnic cleansing.




Sometimes, force is the only answer
The trickiest obstacles to military intervention are neither legal nor moral, but practical. Darfur is a long way away, and as the rains grow heavier, its few roads are growing steadily less passable. Western troops would be welcomed by some of the people there, but would arouse violent passions among Sudanese Islamists, who are already warning of a “crusader” plot against Muslims. (Islamist protests against the Sudanese regime itself, a leading killer of Muslims, have been muted.)

The least bad approach would be to send an African force, under the auspices of the AU. Western powers could provide most of the funding (the AU has practically no money), logistics, electronic intelligence and possibly air cover. Willing African nations, whose soldiers would cause less affront than white ones, could provide the boots on the ground. Their mandate would have to be robust—they should be allowed to shoot to kill. But their mission should be narrowly defined: to protect refugees trying to return home, and to police a ceasefire while government and rebels negotiate a political solution. It might work. But the world has already dithered too long to save tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of lives.

[dhussdawg]

That article was from almost a year ago. Wow, it is time to put the grind to the Sudanese government and these killers.

[sik-m-boi]

Nah, Americans will look read that (because there is very little coverage on the news) and say "aw what a shame" and continue eating their dinners. They have nothing to offer us so we're not going, at least not under this President. Didn't you guys say that Bush values life?? Could you be more specific because there are thousands of lives lost everyday in Sudan.

your stole that line from "hotel rwanda."

[CARTEK]

...and the UN's function is? Oh, I forgot...it is to line the pockets of Kofi and Kojo and argue with the US about Iraq. Piss on the poor souls in Sudan!

[sik-m-boi]

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to notice.

knew it as soon as i read it...good movie.