The African Union Panel on Darfur (AUPD) chaired by former South African President Thabo Mbeki released its much-anticipated report and recommendations to African leaders on Thursday. As mandated, the panel submitted specific “recommendations on how best to effectively and comprehensively address the issues of accountability and combating impunity, on the one hand, and peace, healing and reconciliation, on the other” (read the full report). Most reports in the press focused on the panel’s recommendation of hybrid courts to “investigate, prosecute and adjudicate the war and other crimes committed during the Darfur conflict.”
In addition though, the Mbeki panel’s recommendations also covered:
the process for reaching a Global Political Agreement (GPA); the important issues of justice and reconciliation; the promotion of dialogue among Darfurians; mobilising Sudan’s neighbours; the Sudan General Elections and the Southern Sudan Referendum; measures for the implementation of the agreements; support for the AU‐UN mediation process; and the role of UNAMID and the African Union in promoting and consolidating peace in Darfur.
As part of their seven month investigation, the AUPD consulted with a range of actors, including those in the advocacy community. At the panel’s request, the Save Darfur Coalition submitted recommendations concerning ‘a comprehensive and inclusive Darfur peace agreement’; ‘the challenge of justice and the suppression of impunity arising from the conflict in Darfur’; and ‘the challenge of reconciliation and healing arising from the conflict in Darfur.’ In subsequent blog posts, I will compare the AUPD’s report with our recommendations. With that said, we believe strongly that peace, justice and reconciliation are intertwined and cannot be dealt with in isolation from each other.
Overall, the AUPD report generally matches the solutions to Darfur and Sudan’s other interlocking crises that the Save Darfur Coalition has urged the U.S. Government and the international community to support through aggressive diplomacy and mediation. On the specific question of hybrid courts, such courts could work as a mechanism for accountability complementary to the International Criminal Court (ICC). It is important to underscore that the panel did not suggest that these courts would replace the ongoing proceedings of the ICC. Rather, it observed that the ICC necessarily will only deal with those perpetrators most responsible for crimes in Darfur; an additional mechanism is necessary to ensure there is not impunity for lower level perpetrators. The ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo concurred in his reaction to the AUPD: “The primary responsibility lies in national states…The ICC is just doing a piece — prosecuting the most responsible — but then there are other efforts needed.”
At its core, though, the report acknowledges that political transformation is necessary for peace in Darfur and all of Sudan. The report reads:
Characterised by the inequitable distribution of wealth and power, this imbalance has fomented tensions and conflicts in Sudan and given rise to the situation that the Panel has been called upon to investigate. The Panel believes that all the various overlapping layers of conflict must be addressed, but above all that the fundamental problem of Sudan must be confronted if lasting peace for Darfur is to be realised. The Panel defines the fundamental problem of Sudan as “The Crisis of Sudan as manifested in Darfur.”
For this change to happen, the report also specifically suggests that Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP) must make a strategic decision to open up political space:
To enable the people of Sudan to approach the next important phase of their history as one nation, without other distractions, there is an urgent need to secure a definitive peace settlement for Darfur before the 2010 General Elections and to ensure nationwide legal and security conditions to allow political activity to be freely conducted.
While these recommendations strike at the root of the political problem, the NCP seems nowhere close to implementing the National Election Act of 2008 as urged by the report – nor implementing the key elements of the 2005 Interim Constitution that guarantee important political rights. Put another way, the NCP continues to resist fulfilling these obligations to open political space agreed to both in the spirit and text of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The current dispute within parliament between the NCP and the SPLM and northern opposition parties over a revised National Security Act and other issues of freedom of association demonstrates that Bashir and NCP party leaders believe they can keep their tight grip on power by playing the same games they have for the last two decades.
One can even read such an NCP strategy in its reaction to the AUPD report. Second Vice President Taha offered a classic example of the long-practiced NCP delaying tactic of appearing to say “yes” when the real meaning is “no”: “The report listed several recommendations worthy of consideration and is no doubt worthy of our great tribute due to the efforts made by the African Union” (translation from article in Al Ray Al Aam). He and other NCP officials have already expressed their deep misgivings about the hybrid courts. The Mbeki recommendations and other proposals for peacemaking in Sudan must be complemented with a significant set of incentives and pressures designed to achieve behavioral change by the NCP and structural reforms agreed to by all of Sudan’s competing stakeholders.
We are also concerned that the extension of the AUPD’s mandate beyond last week’s report constitutes another “initiative” that provides an alternative forum for the NCP to talk, talk, talk without doing anything. To avoid this possibility, Mbeki and the other panelists should immediately commit their valuable services to support the efforts of AU/UN Chief Mediator Djibril Bassole. He has praised the work of the panel, but stated that the recommendations should be implemented through the Darfur peace talks that are set to resume in mid-November in Doha. The AUPD members’ involvement in the negotiations, as well as active support and leadership from U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration and the other special envoys, could result in a major step forward in these stagnant and fragile talks. If there is a lack of coordination, however, the Sudanese government will inevitably play the various actors off against one another.
Tomorrow I will have more to write on this subject. In the first of three blogs, I will describe our recommendations to the AUPD concerning ‘what can and should be done urgently to conclude a comprehensive and inclusive Darfur peace agreement.’
The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Save Darfur Coalition.
Tags: African Union Panel on Darfur, Darfur, ICC, ICC / Justice, Mbeki Panel, Omar al-Bashir, Sudan
