In 2009 Arbab, a tall, slim, thirty-five-year-old man, was driving a pickup truck in North Darfur province, part of a rebel convoy that had crossed into Sudan from Chad. Aside from a small circle in the windshield through which to see the road, his vehicle was covered in mud, making for a stark contrast with his perfectly clean uniform. The guerillas were trying to hide from the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), whose fighter jets nonetheless launched optimistic volleys at their convoy.
The conflict in Darfur, a region the size of France in the west of Sudan, had begun in 2003. It pitted two rebel forces, largely drawn from local non-Arab communities, against the central government of President Omar al-Bashir.… Seguir leyendo »
There’s a genocide in the making in Darfur, Sudan — for the second time in 20 years. This time, the violence is happening on President Biden’s watch, and he and his administration have not done enough to stop it. But there are two things Mr. Biden can do today that could have real impact: Stop America’s Middle Eastern allies from arming the perpetrators and get behind a Kenyan-led African initiative to end the bloodshed.
In recent weeks, Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, a mercenary-commercial enterprise, has overrun four of the five main cities in Darfur, a region in western Sudan. Each conquest has been followed by massacre and pillage targeting communities of the cities’ darker-skinned residents.… Seguir leyendo »
In 2003, mass atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region shocked the world. A coalition of human rights organizations mobilized in response, accusing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and his Janjaweed militia of genocide. Although the United Nations did eventually dispatch troops to protect Sudanese civilians, the response was too slow.
Today, Sudan is again ravaged by war, and atrocities are happening on a comparable scale in Darfur. The Janjaweed’s successors are the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and they are killing, raping and looting the same Darfuri communities. The international response to the war has been glacial and the reaction to the situation in Darfur ever slower.… Seguir leyendo »
On September 21, Sudan’s government announced it had averted another attempted coup by army officers and supporters of the former deposed president Omar al-Bashir. The army quashed it quickly, arresting scores of suspects.
Sudan’s history is replete with coups, including one in 1989 that brought al-Bashir into power. Even after al-Bashir’s ouster 30 years later, the new transitional government has already faced several, including a brazen attempt on Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok’s life, in early 2020. But this one appears to have shaken the transitional government to its core. Amid speculation about who orchestrated it, leaders have traded recriminations and blame for weeks.… Seguir leyendo »
The demand for justice was a major driver of the December 2018 Sudanese revolution that saw former President Omar al-Bashir removed after almost three decades in power, and ensuring accountability is now one of the biggest challenges facing the transitional government which replaced him.
Atrocities committed under the Bashir regime are already well documented, such as the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the displacement of millions in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, and Blue Nile.
The Darfur situation was referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the UN Security Council back in 2005, and arrest warrants were issued against Bashir and four others.… Seguir leyendo »
The ongoing crisis in Darfur has long since dropped out of public view, overshadowed by Syria and other more recent global crises. But Darfur is back in the headlines because the government of Sudan has just held a three-day referendum (11-13 April) on its political future. Voters were asked whether they wanted Darfur to become a single region or to continue to be administered as five separate federal states. Some 3.5 million people were registered to vote. Officials have claimed a high voter turnout, but witnesses on the ground have reported seeing many empty polling stations. The results are expected later in April.… Seguir leyendo »
Le président sud-africain Jacob Zuma est dans la tourmente. Il a décidé de laisser filer Omar el Béchir, son homologue soudanais sous le coup d’un mandat d’arrêt de la Cour pénale internationale (CPI) pour crimes contre l’humanité et génocide commis sous ses ordres au Darfour. L’Afrique du Sud en tant qu’Etat parti de la CPI aurait dû procéder à son interpellation et le transférer à La Haye. Zuma s’est abrité derrière « l’immunité » des participants au XXVe sommet des chefs de gouvernements de l’Union africaine (UA) qui se tenait à Johannesburg. Cette décision est lourde de conséquences.
Et d’abord de mettre en échec la justice internationale qui a pourtant exercé de vives pressions pour que l’Afrique du Sud honore ses engagements.… Seguir leyendo »
After days of wrangling to try and have him arrested the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, has left South Africa before a court there could decide whether to arrest him.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been trying for years to have al-Bashir apprehended since charging him with the commission of atrocities against civilians in Darfur, which resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 people. He has flouted the ICC’s arrest warrant since it was issued in 2009, blithely travelling throughout Africa and the Middle East despite a UN Security Council resolution that requires all states to co-operate with the ICC.
There were some signs that this time, things might be different.… Seguir leyendo »
The Darfur genocide in western Sudan — the first genocide of the 21st century and the longest one in more than a century — is about to achieve another distinction. It will be the first genocide in which the victims will be abandoned. An international peacekeeping force designed to halt violence against civilians and humanitarians — the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur, or UNAMID — is on the verge of being gutted or perhaps eliminated altogether.
This is despite the fact that some 3 million people have been internally displaced or turned into refugees; almost 500,000 were displaced last year alone.… Seguir leyendo »
Au Darfour, dans le silence médiatique et le murmure diplomatique, les massacres continuent. La situation est tellement intolérable que l’ONU ne totalise plus les morts, le compteur a été bloqué en 2008. Pourtant, rien n’a cessé. Parfois, un entrefilet signale une attaque, un bombardement, des morts, des viols. Mais on répète sempiternellement depuis 2008 : 300 000 morts et plus de 2 millions de réfugiés et déplacés. Le 17 novembre, le secrétaire général de l’ONU, Ban Ki-moon, exhorte le Soudan à ne pas bloquer les Casques bleus qui enquêtent sur des accusations de viols collectifs impliquant l’armée au Darfour. Que s’est-il passé ?… Seguir leyendo »
Des policiers ivres parcourant les rues en titubant et en tirant des coups de feu au hasard. Un garçon de 14 ans atteint par une balle perdue alors qu'il dînait avec sa famille. Deux garçons tués après que les objets qu'ils prenaient pour des jouets explosent. Une jeune fille de 17 ans enceinte enlevée par des miliciens armés, victime d'un viol collectif puis jetée sur la route. Cinq personnes, dont un enfant, qui faisaient la queue à un point d'eau, réduites à néant par les bombes du gouvernement. Razzias de villages par des centaines d'hommes de tribus munis d'armes que leur a fournies le gouvernement.… Seguir leyendo »
After years of obscurity and little reliable international reporting, the vast human catastrophe in Sudan’s Darfur region is again in the news. It was regularly making headlines before 2008, when the then-five-year-old genocide in Darfur had claimed hundreds of thousands of African lives, but a lack of sustained mainstream attention meant that the surging violence fell off the radar.
Few could have predicted that this remote and obscure region in western Sudan would galvanize American civil society. Then again, how could the loss of attention have been so rapid?
The United Nations recently estimated that 300,000 Darfuris had been displaced in the first five months of this year; more than 1 million civilians have been displaced since the fall of 2008.… Seguir leyendo »
With General Radko Mladić now in the dock in The Hague to face charges stemming from the atrocities committed by troops under his command during the Bosnian War, the contrast with events in Southern Sudan could not be more appalling. Sudan’s government, led by President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, has taken a page from its Darfur playbook by waging war once again on civilians and their property, this time attacking the disputed border region of Abyei on the eve of South Sudan’s legal secession next month.
This is the same Bashir who is currently charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court.… Seguir leyendo »
Looking back on his presidency, Bill Clinton has often expressed regret over his administration's failure to stop the genocide that ravaged Rwanda in 1994 and cost 800,000 lives, even referring to it as a "personal failure" on his part. And President George W. Bush, who labeled the mass killings in Darfur in 2004 as "genocide," has voiced frustration over his inability to persuade the United Nations and others to intervene more forcefully.
Now President Obama is trying to avoid having to issue his own mea culpa.
Obama's test comes in Sudan, which on Jan. 9 is supposed to hold a referendum on whether the country's southern region will secede from the north.… Seguir leyendo »
No more excuses. No more denial. This week, the international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for three charges of genocide against the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir.
The world once claimed ignorance of the Nazi atrocities. Fifty years later, the world refused to recognise an unfolding genocide in Rwanda. On Darfur, the world is now officially on notice.
The genocide is not over. Bashir's forces continue to use different weapons to commit genocide: bullets, rape and hunger. For example, the court found that Bashir's forces have raped on a mass scale in Darfur. They raped thousands of women and used these rapes to degrade family and community members.… Seguir leyendo »
Thirty Sudanese political leaders will meet in Washington today with 170 observers from 32 countries and international organizations, as well as four African former prime ministers, to confront the issues that are slowly pushing Sudan over a cliff. The United States ought to be in a commanding position to mediate in these negotiations, as it did in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended 22 years of civil war between Sudan's North and South. But disputes within the Obama administration are inhibiting U.S. efforts to stop Sudan's slide toward civil war at a time when unified American leadership is essential.
Darfur: el estado de la situación humanitaria y de seguridad en 2009.
Introducción:
Según datos de principios de 2009, el conflicto en Sudán ha provocado hasta este momento el asesinato de unas 300.000 personas, que 4,7 millones dependan de la ayuda humanitaria y que 2,7 millones de ellas hayan tenido que abandonar sus hogares, convertidos en desplazados y refugiados, hacinándose en alguno de los 200 insalubres, superpoblados y peligrosos campamentos de refugiados instalados tanto en el propio Darfur como en Chad, país al que esta situación plantea graves problemas. Por si fuera poco, Darfur es una de las regiones más pobres del mundo, sufre una inexorable desertización que obliga a luchar por cada gota de agua y sus líderes padecen una crónica y patética ansia de poder personal que les hace indiferentes a los sufrimientos de los seres humanos que de ellos dependen.… Seguir leyendo »
Sitting in the sands of Northern Darfur last month, there seemed little to suggest that the UN ban on offensive military flights over Darfur was being taken too by the Khartoum Government. Flying at high altitude above us two Antonov aircraft took it in turns to roll barrel bombs off their cargo ramps on to the sub-Saharan desert.
I suppose they were targeting the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels with whom we shared the only cover - a thorn bush in a dried wadi. A few bombs fell quite close, a few hundred metres away, sending chunks of the wilderness skyward in grey, rolling banks of smoke.… Seguir leyendo »
Durante años, el régimen sudanés encabezado por el presidente Omar Hasán al-Bashir ha actuado como un grupo terrorista, tomando rehenes a millones de refugiados en campamentos en Darfur y advirtiendo al mundo de que no hiciera ninguna maniobra agresiva. Ahora el mundo se enfrenta a una duda: ¿qué hacer cuando los captores empiezan a matar a sus cautivos? Después de que el Tribunal Penal Internacional dictara una orden de detención bajo la acusación de crímenes contra la humanidad, Bashir respondía expulsando a 13 grupos internacionales de ayuda humanitaria, incluyendo a cuatro importantes socios del Programa Mundial de Alimentos responsables de distribuir comida entre los 1,1 millones de habitantes de Darfur.… Seguir leyendo »
En sus pocos años de existencia, la Corte Penal Internacional está haciendo un trabajo impecable e implacable, con rigor jurídico e imparcialidad, sin las alharacas, inconsistencia y arbitrariedades a las que nos tienen acostumbrados la Justicia española y, de modo escandaloso y presuntamente delictivo, algunos magistrados, sin que el imperio de la ley recaiga sobre ellos.
El tratado internacional (Estatuto) que creó la Corte Penal Internacional entró en vigor en julio de 2002 y ya tiene abierto proceso a una decena de personas -algunos ex-ministros-. Uno de los aspectos más progresivos e impactantes del Estatuto de la Corte para el ordenamiento internacional es su afirmación de que «se aplica por igual a todos, sin distinción alguna basada en el cargo oficial» y especifica que el cargo de jefe de Estado o de Gobierno «en ningún caso les eximirá de responsabilidad penal» (artículo 27).… Seguir leyendo »
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