07 October 2004
U.N. Names Panel to Investigate Charges of Genocide in Darfur
Five picked to look into violations of international law
By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent
United Nations -- Secretary General Kofi Annan October 7 announced the establishment of an international commission of inquiry to determine whether or not acts of genocide have occurred in Darfur, Sudan, and named five international jurists to serve on the panel.
"The five-member commission will be chaired by Judge Antonio Cassese of Italy, who was the first president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia," said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard. "The other four members are Mohammed Fayek of Egypt, Diego Garcia-Sayan of Peru, Hina Jilani of Pakistan; and Therese Striggner Scott of Ghana."
The executive director, head of the technical team supporting the commission, will be Dumisa Ntsebeza of South Africa, the U.N. spokesman said.
In its resolution on Darfur adopted September 18, the Security Council asked Annan to establish an international commission of inquiry "in order immediately to investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in Darfur by all parties, to determine also whether or not acts of genocide have occurred and to identify the perpetrators of such violations .... "
The resolution is the first time in the history of the Security Council that Article 8 of the Genocide Convention has been invoked.
A widely published jurist and international lawyer, Cassese was a judge on the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 1993 to 2000 and served as president of the tribunal from 1993 to 1997. He has been a professor of international law at the University of Pisa, University of Florence, and Oxford University. Cassese is currently the Distinguished Global Fellow at New York University School of Law. He has received many awards including the 2002 international prize granted by the Academie Universelle des Cultures presided over by the Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel for "exceptional contribution to the protection of human rights in Europe and the world."
Fayek is secretary general of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization that defends human rights in the Arab World. He is also a member of the National Council for human rights in Egypt and vice president of the Tunisia-based Arab Institute of Human Rights.
A law and human rights professor, Garcia-Sayan is a judge of the Organization of American States (OAS) Inter-American Court of Human Rights and a member of the executive council of the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Institute for Human Rights. In 1991- 92, he was a member of the U.N. negotiating team in the Guatemalan peace negotiations. Garcia-Sayan was director of the human rights division of the U.N. Mission in El Salvador in charge of verifying the implementation of the El Salvador Peace Accords from 1992 to 1994.
Hina Jilani, advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, has practiced law since 1979 and started the first law firm of women lawyers in Pakistan in 1980. A specialist in human rights and constitutional rights litigation, Jilani has specialized in the rights of women, minorities, children and prisoners, including political prisoners. At the invitation of the University Centre for Human Rights, she was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York in 1989, working on international human rights law. Jilani has received several human rights awards from organizations such as Human Rights Watch, the American Bar Association, and Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and Amnesty International.
Striggner Scott is the chairperson of the Ghana Law Reform Commission. In her extensive 40-year career in both law and diplomacy, Striggner Scott has been a district magistrate, circuit court judge, judge of Ghana's High Court, ambassador to France, a member of UNESCO's legal commission, and a member of the Goldstone Commission which was set up to find ways and means of curbing violence and intimidation before, during and after South Africa's first democratic elections.
In May 2002, she was the leader of an Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) team to monitor the Sierra Leone parliamentary and presidential elections. She has been honored by Pope John Paul II with the Grand-Croix d l'Ordre de Pie IX and was cited by UNESCO for fostering understanding of cultures and the promotion of justice.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
