Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general, on Monday urged the new UN human rights council to put the escalating violence in Darfur, Sudan, at the top of its agenda, which until now has been dominated by conflict in the Middle East.
He was speaking as African foreign ministers postponed Monday’s meeting in New York to discuss the future of the African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, whose mandate expires at the end of the month.
The Sudan government is resisting pressure to replace the 7,000 underfunded and badly equipped AU troops with 20,000 UN peacekeepers who would have a stronger mandate to enforce the poorly respected ceasefire.
“I feel I must draw your attention especially to those [abuses] to which the people of Darfur are being subjected, and which threaten to get even worse in the near future,” Mr Annan said in a statement to the opening of the council’s second session in Geneva.
In her address to the council, Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said large-scale human rights violations in Darfur were being perpetrated by government forces and their associated militias, as well as by rebel groups.
Khartoum “cannot escape accountability for atrocities perpetrated against the people of Darfur” who were its prime responsibility to protect, she said.
In view of the government’s “clear failure or unwillingness” to prosecute those responsible, it must be told to co-operate with the International Criminal Court, which already has the names of culpable government and militia officials identified by a UN inquiry commission.
The US and UK have indicated they intend to make a major push on resolving the Darfur crisis this week.
African Union leaders are expected to meet tomorrow morning, and the US has called for a ministerial meeting of the Security Council plus 10 others on Friday.
In a briefing yesterday to the Security Council, Jan Pronk, the UN special representative to Sudan, warned: “The Darfur peace agreement is only four months old, but it is nearly dead.”
He also warned of a political crackdown in the north of Sudan, and said the north-south peace agreement was in danger.
Meanwhile, US president George W. Bush, pressed by rights groups and Congress, has decided to appoint a special envoy to try to end the violence in Darfur, a US official said yesterday.
The official, who asked not to be identified, declined to say whom Mr Bush had chosen but Sudan expert John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group said the frontrunner was Andrew Natsios, a former Bush administration aid official.
