Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘darfur’

The United Nations has ruled that people accused of war crimes in Darfur can be tried by the ICC.

That’s a real comfort to the nearly 200,000 dead and over 2 million homeless and starving people in Sudan, who were failed by the UN’s total and utter failure to prevent or even name genocide when they saw it. Again.

“Crimes against humanity with genocidal intentions”, of course.

This according to the United Nations, which displays its gutlessness even more glaringly as each day goes by. Cause calling the horrible situation in Darfur, Sudan by its rightful name would require the U.N. to actually do something, and they certainly want to avoid that:

A United Nations inquiry into the mass killing of black Sudanese in the country’s western Darfur region has refrained from calling the assassinations a “genocide” – an outcome Khartoum sought.

Instead, the UN investigators say the violence by Arab militia is evidence only of “genocidal intentions,” adding this constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The commission finds both the government and the Arab janjaweed militias “are responsible for … crimes against humanity,” including killing, rape and torture of black tribes in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

It said the attacks on villages aimed to “drive the victims from their homes,” but stops short of saying the government had a policy of genocide, saying rather that individuals had a “genocidal intent.”

[ . . . ]

Those designations fall short of the legally significant “genocide” label, which would have obliged the 15-member UN Security Council to take immediate measures under international law to stop the killing.

So what’s the U.N.’s brilliant solution to stop the violence which so far has killed more than 70,000 people?

The inquiry also says the council should use its power to have the UN’s war crimes tribunal, the International Criminal Court, prosecute people suspected in the killing.

That is likely to lead to a complicated three-way split among the Security Council’s five veto-bearing permanent members. While the United States, Britain and France support taking some sort of action, Washington opposes the ICC. Russia and China, meanwhile, have resisted taking any action. China has oil interests in Sudan, while Khartoum buys Russian arms.

This ought to destroy any delusions that anyone still had that the United Nations could protect the world. Lacking the will and the means to stop the genocide, the U.N. has taken the easy way out by refusing to call it a genocide. Like, if you don’t call it genocide, it never really happened. Or something.

Elie Wiesel addressed the U.N. in the first time that the world body has ever commemmorated the Holocaust:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Nobel Laureate author Elie Wiesel, a death camp survivor, both questioned whether the nations had the will to stop mass murder 60 years after the massacre in Europe.

“If the world had listened, we may have prevented Darfur, Cambodia, Bosnia and naturally Rwanda,” Wiesel said.

A better question might be, when genocides are occurring, what will the U.N. do about it? So far, the answer seems to be not much

Being the U.N., of course, it was inevitable to hear things like this:

“What sense can we make of this important commemoration, when we allow through our inaction, year after year, one people to dominate another, to deny the latter many of its most basic rights, and so, with the passage of time, also degrade it as a people,” said Jordan’s U.N. ambassador, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the only Arab speaker.

There go those Jews-as-Nazis comparisons again. But hey, at least Jordan was represented. I suppose the other Arab countries would find it difficult to deny the Holocaust if they had attended.

There are no words to express the horrors of the Tsunami earthquake disaster that so far has claimed over 80,000 lives and completely destroyed millions more. I won’t attempt to find them.

But even though I’m on vacation – from work, from the blog, from reading the papers – I, like many other bloggers, felt it would be horribly remiss of me not to at least make mention of what is pretty much the only news story these days that matters.

First of all, to help: pretty much every relief organization in the book is accepting donations. Money is being collected in the biggest disaster relief effort in history – from individuals, from governments, from the whole world. And all this much-needed help is being accepted… with one notable exception. If you do want to help through Jewish channels, the JDC is taking donations. For Canadians, the CJC is collecting on their behalf.

At times like this, though, the thing I always think about is, well, how big a disaster does something have to be to encourage people to help? Until last week, money was pouring in to help the millions in desperate need in Sudan, as the “conflict” that the UN doesn’t have the guts to call genocide in the Darfur region rages on. But now, the story that food aid to the region is being suspended because it’s too dangerous for aid workers, well, that’s lost in the shuffle. After all, only 40,000 people have died in the Sudan crisis. That’s nowhere near the staggering 80,000 who have died so far in just a couple of days in Tsunami.

80,000. 40,000. Do these numbers even have meaning anymore? Where do we draw the line? Do we donate only when there are four zeros? Record-high generosity for the Tsunami relief funds is much needed and appreciated, but the cold reality is that disasters mean an influx of cash for some at the expense of others who aren’t grabbing as many headlines because their work doesn’t have as many zeros.

Of course, we can’t help everyone everywhere. We all do what we can in small ways. But sometimes I wonder how much of what we do is all about a numbers game.

Peace by New Year’s… or else.

Or else what, though? That’s the question nobody seems to be able to answer. Because military action is pretty much a non-option, and half the Security Council members won’t support sanctions, either.

Why does this seem suspiciously like an attempt by the USA to demonstrate the utter uselessness and powerlessness of the United Nations?

A rally in Toronto today is aimed at persuading world powers to do more in Sudan’s Darfur region, where over 50,000 people have already been killed, and millions more are homeless and in urgent need of aid. And Jewish groups are lending their support:

Canadians for Action in Darfur, a coalition of more than 40 community groups, is planning a rally Nov. 7 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Queens Park.

The coalition, co-chaired by Canadian Jewish Congress, Ontario region, and KAIROS, the justice wing of the Canadian Council of Churches, was formed to address the horrors being committed in the Darfur region of Sudan, said Simon Rosenblum, director of public policy and Israel affairs for CJC, and co-chair of the rally’s steering committee as a representative of CJC and UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.

[ . . . ]

Other community groups in the coalition include Ve’ahavta: the Canadian Jewish and Humanitarian Relief Committee; the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism; Oxfam Canada; Save the Children; and CASTS (Canadians Against Slavery and Torture in Sudan).

What’s going on in Darfur is yet more evidence of the UN’s inability to do anything about this crisis, which has been going on for months. I hope that Canada steps up to do more, at least on a political frame because it’s clear there’s very little we can do militarily.

In PM Paul Martin’s first address to the United Nation, he blasted the world’s inaction on Sudan and called for more rapid international action there, and in other countries in crisis:

“The Security Council has been bogged down in debating the issue,” said Martin, who pledged $20 million Cdn to assist the African Union in its drive to quell fighting between government-backed militias and rebel groups.

“While the international community struggles with definitions, the people of Darfur struggle with disaster. They are hungry, they are homeless, they are sick and many have been driven out of their own country. Tens of thousands have been murdered, raped and assaulted,” told the gathering.

“Our common humanity should be a powerful enough argument and that is precisely what is missing. Put simply, there is still no explicit provision in international law for intervention on humanitarian grounds.”

Martin also admitted that intervention in Sudan is too little, too late:

“We should have intervened last June when Canada called for it,” said Martin, who acknowledged progress had been made with a UN Security Council resolution last weekend that threatens sanctions if violence continues in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.

“It’s been a long time in coming, far too long in coming,” he said.

We could argue that Canada’s aid is also too little, too late. But realistically, there’s very little our overextended military could do.

Martin has been relatively invisible on the international scene since taking office last December. This is his first effort to try to take a leadership role, in the spirit of Canada’s past reputation. And certainly, the crisis in Darfur needs more attention to be called to it – from a country other than the US, which has very little credibility right now thanks to the Iraq situation, the election, and general anti-Americanism.

Canada’s call to action is a step in the right direction, and I think Paul Martin deserves props for his speech today and his call to action. Unfortunately, the United Nations he is addressing is one that’s hell-bent on inaction.

Terrorists publicize a video of the beheading of another hostage in Iraq. The nuclear threat from Iran continues to grow, because the Iranian government believes – probably rightly – that the US is tied up elsewhere and nobody else in the world will do anything about it. And North Korea flaunts its nuclear status. Meanwhile, thousands more are killed in Darfur while the world points fingers and stands idly by.

Just another typical day.

Colin Powell called a spade a spade today, when he used the word “genocide” to describe the horrible mass killings that have been going on in Darfur, Sudan for months:

In the strongest U.S. statement to date on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell today said for the first time that “genocide” has been committed there and that the government of Sudan and Arab militias “bear responsibility.”

[ . . . ]

Powell’s use of the word “genocide” for the first time in describing the situation in Sudan followed a strong debate within the government. On one side of the argument, some human rights officials contended that a declaration of genocide would be a powerful statement that would draw world attention to Darfur and promote efforts to halt mass killings there.

However, some in the U.S. government argued that the explicit use of the word might alienate the Sudanese government and limit U. S. ability to pressure its leaders to halt marauding Arab militias, which have killed, raped and tortured black African refugees in the region.

Right. The Sudanese government. The people who armed the Janjaweed in the first place. Let’s tiptoe around because we certainly wouldn’t want to piss them off.

U.S. Congress already declared the situation a genocide, but the White House has been reluctant to say so until now. However, that’s better than the United Nations and the European Union, both of which are running scared from the term, because it would imply that action would be required by the international community.

Tens of thousands of people keep dying in Sudan. And the world refuses to do anything about it. Now that the Bush administration has used the G-word, will it really change anything?

Reuters reports that the U.N. is concerned about “lack of progress” in Darfur:

The United Nations says it is concerned by Sudan’s lack of progress in bringing security to Darfur, where more than a million people have fled their homes for fear of militia attack.

Sudan has less than two weeks to prove to the U.N. Security Council it has made progress towards disarming marauding Arab militias known as Janjaweed, or face possible sanctions.

Let’s review, shall we?

Was the U.N. “concerned” about the years of fighting? Was the U.N. “concerned” about the ethnic cleansing and genocide (a word that they still refuse to say) that has so far cost 40,000 people their lives and sent a million more fleeing for theirs? Where has the “concern” been all these months while the Sudanese government backed and armed the janjaweed, who have been brutally killing, raping, and torturing tens of thousands?

But hey, it’s happening in Africa and it’s so far away, so who really cares anyway right? And what do we know about Sudan, or about Chad, besides that there’s a lot of people there starving and dying? And besides, it wouldn’t be politically-correct to say that what’s actually happening is Muslims killing black Africans. Especially because there’s no way to blame George W. Bush, and there’s no way to blame Israel.

Go read this horror story. Now imagine a million or two more like it. Then try to tell me that we should be relying on the U.N. to ensure international security.

The U.N. fucked up royally in Darfur, just like they fucked up royally in Kosovo, in Rwanda, in the DRC… in virtually anywhere else there’s been a conflict. And, as usual, it is the innocent who pay the price.