Category: Darfur

Yesterday, as I wrote about the haggling that was going on in the United Nations Security Council, the members managed to bring the proposal to establish a joint AU/UN force of peacekeepers in the region to a unanimous vote. The resolution doesn’t set an exact date for the deployment, but states that the peacekeepers will be in place by Dec 31 (2007).

Not only is there no set date for the deployment of this new force, but the wrangling that went into the resolution left it less aggressive than it should have been.

Tuesday’s resolution passed by the U.N. won Khartoum’s praise after it was watered down to drop the threat of sanctions against Sudan if it fails to accept the force and an authorization for the new force to seize or collect arms. The changes were made in negotiations between Security Council members to avoid a veto by China, Sudan’s top diplomatic ally.

With the elimination of any statement holding Sudan to its side of the agreement with the threat of sanctions, it’s still highly likely that Khartoum will interfere as it has in the past. We’ll probably see Sudan’s reluctance to issue visas to UN members and contractors, as well as the quarantining or outright confiscation of equipment.

As the violence continues in Darfur, United Nations representatives continue to fight over the language used in the Security Council’s resolution that would send 26,000 peacekeepers into Sudan.

Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, reacted harshly to a version of the draft that circulated at U.N. headquarters last week, calling it “ugly” and “awful.”

On Monday, however, Abdalhaleem declined to comment on the latest revised proposal, which was circulated to Security Council members over the weekend. “The consultations are at a sensitive stage,” he said.

The latest draft removes a specific mention of ongoing attacks by government forces and janjaweed militiamen against civilians and humanitarian workers in Darfur and drops a strongly worded condemnation of “continued violations” of the Darfur Peace Agreement.

It also scales back the peacekeeping force’s mandate slightly, removing a section permitting the troops to “take all necessary action” to monitor arms violations in the desert region under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter.

Chapter 7 deals with threats to peace and security and can be enforced through measures ranging from breaking diplomatic and trade relations to military intervention.

As was the case in Rwanda, I can only imagine that these negations will continue to take place until the overall force of the resolution becomes utterly toothless. The greater the pressure from Sudan to clarify sections of Chapter 7, the closer the peacekeeping force comes to being stripped of any authority in the region, making it not only useless for humanitarians and civilians, but even dangerous for themselves.

A month or so ago, Rich sent me a link for the US Holocaust Museum’s partnership with Google (entitled: USHMM + Google). I’ve been meaning to add it to the blogroll for weeks now but haven’t gotten around to it.

This morning, I found a link in my Google Alerts for Amnesty International’s newest feature — Eyes On Darfur — which is attempting to provide photographic evidence (largely satellite based) of what’s unfolding on the ground. Since they seem to be fairly complimentary websites, I thought I’d take a moment and plug both at the same time.

During the launch of their book — Not On Our Watch — Don Cheadle and John Prendergast gave a speech about the ongoing genocide in Darfur, and what we should be doing.