PRESS RELEASE
Geneva, December 12, 2006 — UN Watch, Freedom House, the Transnational Radical Party and 22 other non-governmental organizations from around the world today are calling on the UN Human Rights Council to take strong action on the grave human rights and humanitarian situation in the Darfur region of Sudan.
In a statement to be delivered at today’s special Council session on Darfur, the NGOs will urge the Council to hold the Sudanese government to its obligation to protect the people of Darfur, in particular by pressing it to cooperate with the UN peacekeeping force that the Security Council authorized last August but that Sudan has repeatedly refused. [Read full text of statement below.]
However, according to UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer, “the only immediate result of today’s special session is likely to be the dispatch of a fact-finding mission to assess the current situation in Darfur, with any concrete Council action to try to improve that situation still a long way off.” The fact-finding mission has been deemed necessary because Sudan and its allies in the Council have been insisting that widespread reports of the dire crisis in Darfur—by UN officials, humanitarian and human rights organizations, and the media—are “exaggerated” and based on “misinformation.” [Read more on Sudan’s lies to the Council .]
UN Watch and the NGO coalition support the dispatch of a fact-finding mission to resolve this dispute if that mission is independent, impartial, and expert, headed by the Council’s independent investigator (“special rapporteur”) on Sudan. This is the approach proposed by the Council’s Western and Latin American members. Sudan’s allies in the Council’s African Group, however, want to weaken and politicize the mission by sending Human Rights Council members themselves—who are not only government officials, but the very same officials who would then have to consider and act upon their own report.
“Sending member-state representatives to carry out a fact-finding mission would be unprecedented for the Council, which in its short life already has mandated at least three such missions, none of which have included government officials,” said Neuer. “The African Group’s proposal is an attempt to assert political control over what should be an impartial process. It defies the promise in the Council’s founding resolution that the body’s work—unlike that of its discredited predecessor—would be objective and non-politicized. An independent, expert fact-finding mission could lay the groundwork for strong Council action in the future to help the millions of long-suffering victims in Darfur, but a politicized mission cannot.”
Thus far the Council’s African and Islamic Group members have successfully blocked any attempts to censure Sudan for Darfur. Two weeks ago the body adopted a weak, African Group sponsored resolution that did not even mention the Sudanese government’s role in violating human rights or its obligation to end such abuses, rejecting, in a close vote, a stronger, European Union and Canadian proposal. The only country that the Council has censured for human rights violations in its six months of existence is Israel. To date, the Council has passed eight condemnatory resolutions and held three special sessions against the Jewish state.
The NGO coalition also will express its hope that today’s special session “is just the beginning of the Council’s active engagement, not only on Darfur, but on all major human rights crises worldwide.” The Council’s obsessive focus on Israel, at the expense of the world’s worst human rights crises, has been widely criticized, not only by human rights groups, but also by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. At the Council’s last session, UN Watch urged the body to turn its attention to 19 of the world’s most egregious situations, including those of Burma, Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbabwe.
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Full Text of Today’s Statement:
HRC 4th Special Session
The Human Rights Situation in Darfur
December 12, 2006
Delivered by Leon Saltiel of UN Watch
Thank you, Mr. President.
This is a joint statement on behalf of UN Watch, Freedom House, the Transnational Radical Party, and 22 other NGOs from around the world.
We welcome this special session and its support by so many Council members. The human rights and humanitarian situation in Darfur is dire, and it merits this body’s serious and sustained attention.
We urge the Council to adopt a strong resolution. This Council cannot send peacekeepers, but it can, and should, encourage the Sudanese Government to cooperate with the force the Security Council has authorized. This Council also should remind the Government of Sudan that, although not the only party to the conflict, it has the primary responsibility to protect its population.
Since 2003, Darfur has been rife with death, destruction, and suffering. Hundreds of thousands of victims have been raped, tortured, murdered. Villages and livelihoods have been destroyed. Millions are displaced. Despite the signing of an agreement in May, these atrocities have not only continued, but escalated.
These facts have been amply documented by the Special Rapporteur on Sudan, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, and many others. Nevertheless, Sudan and several other delegations have told this Council that these reports are based on misinformation.
In light of these claims, the draft resolutions rightly emphasize the Council’s need for “clear, accurate, and substantiated information” on the situation in Darfur. We therefore support the immediate dispatch of an assessment mission by the Special Rapporteur, and we urge the Government of Sudan to cooperate fully with that mission.
We thank Secretary-General Annan for his leadership in urging the Council to convene this special session and to begin to address gross violations around the globe. We hope that this session is just the beginning of the Council’s active engagement, not only on Darfur, but on all major human rights crises worldwide.
Thank you.
Signatories:
UN Watch
Freedom House
The Transnational Radical Party
International Multiracial Shared Cultural Organization
France Libertés
Hope for Africa International
B’nai B’rith International
Coordinating Board of Jewish Organizations (C.B.J.O.)
International Federation of Social Workers
Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas
European Union of Jewish Students
Agir Ensemble pour les Droits de l’Homme
Women Environmental Program (WEP)
Coordination Française pour le Lobby Européen des Femmes (C.L.E.F.)
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
International Association for Religious Freedom
3 HO Foundation (Happy, Healthy, Holy Foundation)
Liberal International
Women’s Federation for World Peace International
Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antisemitisme (LICRA)
International Alliance of Women
World Jewish Congress
Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic
International Federation of University Women
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
