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Washington — The international community must act immediately to resolve the political and humanitarian crises facing Sudan, said a panel of leading Sudan experts at a briefing here Tuesday, and ensure that any peace process formally include women's input.
"We were heartened by the Qatar process, and the efforts of Arab leaders to advance progress on peace talks between the government of Sudan and the main rebel group," said Jody Williams, chair of the Nobel Women's Initiative. "However, these peace talks are now disintegrating, and (President) Bashir is not being held accountable for the further suffering of the Sudanese people."
"What Sudan needs now are real brokers for peace, instead of support for leadership that is wreaking yet more havoc in the region," she said.
Last month, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the war-torn Darfur region. The U.N. estimates the Darfur conflict has cost 300,000 lives, while over 2.7 million people have been displaced over the last six years.
Bashir rejected the decision, calling it a Western ploy to gain access to Sudan's resources. In retaliation for the ICC's arrest warrant, he forced 13 major humanitarian organisations out of Darfur, citing the need to protect the sovereignty and security of the country.
According to the United Nations, 1.1 million people will go without food, 1.5 will go without healthcare and over 1 million will go without water as a result of the expulsions.
In late March, Bashir was welcomed at the Doha talks by members of the Arab League, who called the indictment a double standard in dealing with Arabs, pointing to the lack of similar action against Israeli crimes in Gaza.
"It is not acceptable that Bashir is not only travelling in defiance of his arrest warrant, but more gravely, has expelled humanitarian agencies from the area around Darfur," said Dr. Wangari Muta Maathai, a former Sudanese parliamentarian and Nobel Peace laureate. "Sudan must allow these groups back in, or we are looking at more lives lost due to starvation and lack of basic services."
The African Union has called for a postponement of the ICC warrant, saying it puts a damper on already shaky peace talks and attempts to implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
"The move by the ICC distracts [from] the peace process. We are glad that the African Union Commission reflected the united stand of Africa against the court," Molieldin Salim, Sudanese ambassador to Ethiopia, told IPS in Addis Ababa in January.
Maathai pointed to the African Union's "embracing" of Bashir as a reflection of their fear that any head of state who is "unable or unwilling to protect his citizens (may be charged) with crimes against humanity." She called on the leadership in Africa to stop violating the rights of its own citizens.
"Other nations will not respect us if we cannot protect the rights of our own people," she said.
The panel, hosted by Williams and Maathai, included Karen Hirschfeld, Sudan coordinator for the non-profit group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which released new data on the rape of Darfuri refugees.
After interviewing nearly 90 women at the Farchana Refugee Camp in eastern Chad, PHR found that 19 percent of respondents had been raped in Darfur, 17 percent had been raped in Chad, and that most rapes occurred outside of the refugee camp when they left to collect firewood. Experts on the panel noted that the current humanitarian aid crisis will likely lead to an increase in sexual crimes against women.
PHR's Hirschfeld pointed to several issues which need to be considered when finding ways to help the current refugees in camps, as well as the "influx of refugees (expected) as the situation goes from bad to intolerable," including the physical and mental states of women, especially those who have been raped; the tension over scarce resources, like firewood, in the areas of the camps in Chad; the lack of a judicial system and investigations into reported rape in eastern Chad; and the "pervasive fear that haunts women each day."
The panel participants underlined the importance of including women in current and future peace talks.
"It is vital that any and all peace talks include the women of Sudan, who are already building a path to peace through their efforts to create dialogue and a consultation process," said Maathai. "When women are not part of the peace process, their access to justice, reparations and the full range of their rights is jeopardised."
Carla Koppell, director of the Institute for Inclusive Security, and the Washington office of Hunt Alternatives Fund called on peace proceedings to "convene other players, not the same armed actors, to shift incentives in negotiations to offer more seats for women, and ask for women's groups' input in a formal way."
The panel called on the international community to put pressure on the African Union to stop being manipulated by Bashir and see the situation in Sudan as an international issue.
"It is critically important that U.S. Senator (John) Kerry, who is in Khartoum this week, take the opportunity to push hard for the restoration of humanitarian services in the area around Darfur," noted Williams. "It is not acceptable that the government of Sudan be allowed to use his people's suffering to make a political point."
Following a visit this month by the U.S.'s special envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, Bashir, speaking at the opening of the eighth session of parliament on Monday, said, "We, our brothers and sisters, are seekers of peace and stability and we do not want our country to live under the shadows of swords and tension."
"Our hands remain held out to those who call for peace and justice in accordance with the standards of fairness and dignity," he added, echoing a phrase used by U.S. President Barack Obama in his inauguration address.
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"What Sudan needs now are real brokers for peace, instead of support for leadership that is wreaking yet more havoc in the region," she said
International Organizations nor the United Nations is the right step. They will only make thing worse and not achieve a dam thing worth while. Sudan is as good a place as any for the Africans people and its leaders to began to realize that Africans must solve African problems and not International Organizations nor the United Nations. The only thing they will do is just shit on Africa and make thing worse. Yes, I thing President Omar al-Bashir was right by expelling those =so called- humanitarian organizations out of Darfur. And I support the African Union in the position they are taking in this matter.
If the International Organization and the United Nation were really and truly interest in trying to improve the conditions in Africa they would support and do everything in their power to support and DEMAND that the 53 African Countries unite as an United States of Africa. A united Africa is the only real solution to Africa problem; instead of a bunch of LEACHES sucking the blood out of Africa. It is time for Africa to wake up and do away with all that shit.
Thank you amd may ... Bless Africa
Please, below are response to your arguments. I am for the United States of Africa, but not with these current leaders, Justin
http://www.exacteditions.com/exact/browse/432/531/3479/3/6
http://www.africanexecutive.com/modules/magazine/articles.php?article=4247& magazine=223
http://www.africatoday.com/cgi-bin/public.cgi?sub=news&action=one&cat=72&id =857 ---------
implications for the indictment and the warrant of arrest for Sudanese Field Marshall Omar Al-Bashir, the military ruler who is criminal to his core, are immense. Since his violent usurpation of power in a military coup under the umbrella of the National Islamic Front (NIF) on June 30, 1989 that overthrew an elected government of the then prime minister, Sadiq Al-Mahdi; Al-Bashir and the NIF governed the country through an Islamist dictatorship that promoted global terrorism, human rights abuses and fostered an Islamic religious fundamentalism.
This military junta intentionally launched, orchestrated, and knowingly enabled a consistent pattern of gross human rights abuses against the Sudanese civilian population in the South, the Nuba Mountains, and Darfur.
President Omar is not only responsible for gross human rights abuses and the genocide in Darfur that has killed more than two hundred thousands of African tribes and continues to displace millions of others, but he is also responsible for arming, training and paying Janjweed Arabs to kill and displace non-Arab tribes in Darfur. Furthermore, in South Sudan, Omar Al Bashir is responsible for human rights abuses in South Sudan, especially the Hidden Holocaust which is now known as the Juba Killing of 1992, in Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan.
President Bashir re-instated slave-trade in South Sudan not only as a policy of terror aimed directly at non-combatants, but also as a tool designed to make them flee their territory as main targets of slavery abductions are women and children. This is in keeping with his assimilation project in South Sudan, Nuba Mountains, and Darfur.
Captured South Sudanese were reared as Muslims and given Arabic names. Women who were raped by their Arab captors gave birth to Arab children ensuring the propagation of Arab lineages (for documentation of rape as a weapon of war in the Nuba Mountains, see: African Rights, Facing Genocide: the Nuba of Sudan, London, 1995, pp.221-42).
The mandate of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is to indict and issue arrest warrants against individuals such as Al Bashir, but not the state. This is designed to bypass the question of sovereignty, which is an obstacle in the United Nations Human Rights Commission and the United Nations Security Council.
So far the ICC's refusal to relent or postpone the decision sends a strong message to the rest of the African dictators that they can run but cannot hide from the ICC. The ICC issued an arrest warrant so that president Al-Bashir will follow Charles Taylor, the architect of most of Liberias problems, to face justice.
For the international community to have faith and confidence in the ICC, and for its credibility to be respected and be taken seriously by human rights violators such as President Robert Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe; President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt; Joseph Kony of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), operating with near impunity in Uganda; the former President of Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Mariam, who has taken refuge in Zambia; and so many others, it should arrest Al Bashir and bring him to justice.
However, the issue of Al Bashirs arrest warrant may cause much costly damage to western interests in Africa and other parts of the world. Sudan has provided Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, and Osama Bin Laden refuge, in the mid 1990s. Western countries, the United Nations Security Council, and the Intergovernmental Agency for Development (IGAD) States must design strategies to ensure that President Omar Bashir and the NIF will not throw the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) into a trash basket, as previous Northern regimes had done with South-North treaties.
The possibility of Omar Al Bashir remaining the ruler of Sudan is severely limited, and the NIF may elect a hard-liner to replace Al Bashir. Conversely, the NIF will appoint Salva Kiir, presently the first Vice President, as President, but technically a buffer to advance NIFs agenda, and to make unity attractive to the South Sudanese. Since Kiir will be the first Southern Sudanese person to govern Sudan, NIF may try to persuade southerners that there is no longer need for a Referendum in 2011. The question is: will the hard-liners accept Salva Kiir as a replacement for President Omar Al Bashir?
Most likely, Al-Bashir will resign to give an opportunity to the NIF hard-liners to bypass the implementation of the CPA, the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), and the Doha Agreement. The outcome will, then be war, with crimes against humanity, genocide, and violations of the laws and customs of war, will President Omar Al-Bashir be arrested? Will the Sudanese people see the dawn of a new beginning without the hitherto consistent pattern of gross human rights abuses against the Sudanese civilian population in the South, the Nuba Mountains, and Darfur?
By Justin Laku University of Ottawa, Canada --------- http://www.exacteditions.com/exact/browse/432/531/3479/3/6
The problem with African leaders 12/29/06, Justin Laku
The AU is a comfort club for African dictators where they meet to pat each other on the back, and compare notes on suppressing their citizenry. In order to be relevant today, the AU must change its dubious dealings from a "Dictators' Only Club" to a people-based organization. The heart of the AU's impotence are its principles of non-interference, and non-intervention which simply mean that member states turn a blind eye to their neighbours, thus explaining why the Darfur's genocide will continue as long as the AU remains in charge.
What is happening in Darfur today is exactly what happened in Rwanda, which left many choking and drowning in their own blood from April to July of 1994. Darfur is Rwanda in slow motion; the only difference is the number of the dead. So far 300,000 people have died in Darfur while 800,000 died in Rwanda. This is another holocaust unfolding before our very eyes.
The lack of good leadership, governance, clear vision, and high level corruption in Africa are the problems that have contributed to the poverty, and underdevelopment of the continent. Good governance is the key to development of Africa, and leadership is the most powerful lever to good governance as well as clear vision. Clear vision gives people direction, where they want to be years down the road. Through good leadership, good governance, and absence of corruption, Africa has the potential to be able to move forward, and extricate itself from the cesspool of underdevelopment, and poverty which have plagued the continent since independence.
African dictators are well known for high level corruption. They have sticky fingers that have been implicated in the mismanagement of public funds and development money which more often than not end up in their private accounts in banks overseas. To combat, corruption in Africa it is very important that western governments pass laws that will prohibit transfer of money from Africa to western banks without proper accountability. Failure of western governments to act would mean that the West is encouraging, and abetting the endemic corruption in Africa.
The Rwandan genocide could have been prevented if there was good leadership, governance, and clear vision for Africa. If each member state of the AU had provided the Canadian hero, General Romeo Dallaire, with 50 troops, he would have stopped the killers from their genocidal operations. This would have lent credence to the AU's clarion call for uniquely African solutions to African problems. Unfortunately this did not happen. So why should the West believe and trust that the corrupt dictators of Africa will end Darfur's genocide?
For example how could Olusegun Obasanjo, the Nigerian president, point fingers at Omar Bashir, the Sudanese president, about the situation in Darfur and label it genocide that requires UN intervention while giving Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, safe haven in Nigeria?
The international community is fully aware that the AU lacks experience, training, logistics, and the AU has no history of dealing with crisis. For example, to this date, the status of Western Sahara remains unresolved. Furthermore, the crises in Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Burundi, Rwanda, Chad, Uganda, and Zimbabwe are ongoing. Since its inception in May 26 1963, the OAU (the forerunner of present-day AU) has not solved one single crisis in Africa. The failure of the international community is in allowing Darfur's genocide to continue by leaving the Right to Protect in the weak hands of the AU, which lacks a clear and strong mandate to fight back, arrest, and detain the Janjaweed militia, backed by the Khartoum's regime, which terrorizes unarmed men, children, and rapes innocent women and girls. Which begs the question; Can the weak protect the weak?
The West is equally guilty for accepting the myth of African solution to African problems. While Africans should strive to fund the mission in Darfur, the AU, in partnership with the West, must come up with clear and workable solutions to the crisis. There must also be legal instruments to persecute the law breakers.
Justin Laku Ottawa, Canada
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The Kenya elections: when will the AU show leadership? African Business , Feb, 2008 by Justin Laku EMAIL PRINT Since its inception in May 1963, the OAU and its successor, the present-day AU, has not demonstrated any meaningful leadership nor solved a single crisis in Africa. African leaders are known more as dictators than as true leaders seeking to better Africa. Part of the problem of the absence of leadership within the AU is not understanding the concept of 'servant leadership'. Robert Greenleaf explains "the great leader is first experienced as a servant to others", and that this simple fact is central to the leader's greatness.
According to Greenleaf, "a servant leader is one who is a servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve others first, and to make sure that other people's highest priority needs are being served.
Related Results Short Term Energy Monitoring: A Road To Long Term Energy Savings? NCS-Omnicare: The New Landscape For M&A Cloud Computing Also Hit by IT-Spending Cutbacks Ohio's Health House Provides Asthma-Free Indoor Living Agistix's On-Demand Solution Gives Maxim Centralized Logistics Control "The servant-leader isn't only a good speaker; he is also a good listener as he needs to hear the people's views and feel their pulse to determine the direction of the nation or organisation towards realisation of its goals."
Another primary reason why many African leaders fail to improve the state of their nations and their peoples is a lack of empathy, because "they live outside the people's world". It is very sad that these failures are evident within the AU. It is little wonder that Africa is suffering.
The AU leaders lack commitment to serving the greater consensual interest, to sharing power in decision-making, and encouraging ownership through the participation of African civil society.
They fail to recognise civil society has an important role to play in the achievement of democracy in Africa through, for instance, educating the public in the importance of democracy, fair elections, and good governance whose key components include accountability, legitimacy, democracy, equality, inclusiveness, transparency and rule of law.
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African leaders accepted or inherited democracy from colonial masters without understanding the concept behind it. In essence, democracy, as applied in Africa, is tantamount to a 'copy and paste' of western democracy, lacking sensitivity to intrinsic domestic sociological beliefs, values and processes. As a result, these artificial applications of democracy remain vulnerable to the instinctive impulse of tribalism.
Ultimately, the absence of a thorough and systemic blending of fundamental African cultural elements into exercises in democracy in African countries will bear substantial collateral cost to Africa, especially through the highly-emotional election processes. Democracy in Africa is not an overnight event; but a process which requires time.
The lack of leadership within the AU has cost the many electors in Kenya their lives during the past days. Meanwhile, the AU has been slow to take the lead through established mechanisms to resolve the Kenyan elections dispute.
Only after the daunting reality of several hundred deaths in only a few days were envoys, including the current AU chair and president of Ghana, John Kufuor, dispatched to the region.
Kenya's election is a litmus test of peer-accountability and other vaunted mechanisms. Actions and results here bear substantial implications for upcoming elections in Zimbabwe, Angola, South Sudan and other African States.
What should be done regarding Kenya's election? The first step is that the AU should resolve disputes over the election result through the Disputes and Complaints Committee. The results must be reviewed, with all options put on the table including a recount to satisfy stakeholders' confidence in the AU.
Finally, the AU must seriously assess the legitimacy of Mwai Kibaki's claim to the presidency vis-a-vis mounting evidence indicating otherwise. The fact Kibaki had himself sworn in almost immediately after the results were announced is dubious at best.
Against a highly-charged background of electoral impropriety, the Kenya Election Commission (KEC) also falls into question for not allowing the statutory two weeks for complaints and disputes to be filed to insure fairness.
Justin Laku
Ottawa, Canada.