U.N. Human Rights Council Holds First Special Session on Darfur
12 December 2006
U.N. meeting and parallel forum highlight growing use of rape in region
Geneva -- The United Nations Human Rights Council opened its first special session on Darfur against a backdrop of escalating violence in the region that has forced many humanitarian agencies to evacuate staff and left the population even more vulnerable. The December 12-13 meeting in Geneva is considering measures the council might take to address the crisis, including possibly dispatching an urgent assessment mission to the area.
Over the past six weeks alone, some 80,000 people have been forced to flee and several hundred civilians, including women and children, have been killed, according to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The U.N. Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) has received reports that armed men on horseback killed 31 people near the border with Chad on December 9. Tensions persist in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, where recent deadly clashes have threatened the relief operations for 1.3 million people, according to the United Nations.
“The United States is appalled by the violence in Darfur,” said Ambassador Warren W. Tichenor, permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations in Geneva. He said he hoped the special session would focus the world’s attention on the ongoing crisis, adding, “It is important to make clear that the international community respects human life.”
“We call on the government of Sudan and all armed groups, including those rebel groups that have not signed the Darfur Peace Agreement, to refrain from violence and to pursue a peaceful solution to the crisis,” Tichenor said. He emphasized the government’s responsibility to protect individuals against human rights violations, especially the use of rape as a weapon and the recruitment of child soldiers. He demanded that Sudan “cease employment of the janjaweed [militia groups] against the innocent civilians of Darfur” and said the immediate deployment of “an effective and robust peacekeeping operation” was essential.
In a video address, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the council to “take action to prevent further violations,” to “bring to account those responsible” and to “lose no time in sending a team of independent and universally respected experts to investigate the latest escalation of abuses.”
“Mass rape and other egregious human rights abuses have not subsided,” said High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour. Perpetrators are emboldened because they are not held accountable, she said, and “the spillover of the conflict has now engulfed parts of Chad and of the Central African Republic.”
The special session on Darfur is the fourth extraordinary meeting to be convened by the Human Rights Council. Three special sessions on the Middle East have been called over the past year, but this is the first time the new human rights body has met specifically on Darfur.
NONGOVERNMENTAL GROUPS SOUND WARNINGS, EXPRESS FRUSTRATION
On the sidelines of the meeting, aid workers, human rights defenders and others held a public session to express their frustration at the continuing violence and the inability of the international community to protect civilians, displaced persons and refugees.
The event, entitled “Voices from Darfur,” organized jointly by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Federation for Human Rights, drew a packed audience into a room adjacent to the council session at the U.N. European headquarters. In a gesture of solidarity, U.N. interpreters provided free translation of the proceedings.
Osman Hummaida, director of the Sudanese Organization Against Torture, said systemic attacks against civilians in recent weeks have resumed at levels not seen since 2004. “Rape as a weapon of warfare” is widespread, he said, occurring mostly when women venture out for firewood.
Hummaida described a legal framework designed to provide “absolute immunity” for police and security forces, with virtually no hope of justice for victims. There is a “huge burden of proof on the victims” of rape, he explained, and if the defendant is acquitted, the victim may face a defamation procedure against her or even charges of adultery, which is punishable by stoning to death.
Mohamed Adballa El Doma from the Darfur Lawyers Association said his group had many cases of rape in its files, but had not yet succeeded in bringing a single person to trial.
Bineta Diop, executive director of the nongovernmental organization Femmes Africa Solidarite, said 82 percent of the victims of attack in Darfur are women, and that rape and sexual violence are being used deliberately to displace ethnic populations. She called on the international community to do more to address the health and mental health consequences for victimized women and communities at large. The fact that most women in Darfur have undergone a particularly radical form of female circumcision means that sexual violence results in even greater physical damage, often leaving them unable to bear children.
She and other speakers urged the council to put gender issues “at the forefront” of any mission that is sent to Darfur.
For more information on U.S. policy, see Darfur Humanitarian Emergency.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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