Urge the next U.S. president to make Darfur a day 1 priority.
Don't let Al-Bashir escape justice.
Niemat Ahmadi, Darfuri Liaison Officer at the Save Darfur Coalition today addressed an open meeting of the States Parties to the International Criminal Court at UN Headquarters in New York. The meeting comes just three days after the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, announced that he is seeking an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir.
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David Sullivan, Research Associate at Save Darfur’s partner organization, the ENOUGH Project, wrote for the Wonk Room about China’s support for the brutal dictatorships in Sudan in Zimbabwe.
David suggests that China’s defense of Al-Bashir and Mugabe may soon exhaust the patience of the rest of the U.N. Security Council. But in order to make a difference in Darfur, it’s time for the U.S. to act.
Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo’s pending charges against al-Bashir underscore the need for the U.N. Security Council to finally act decisively with a comprehensive strategy for Sudan. The world at-large, primarily the Security Council, has allowed al-Bashir to continue his reign of destruction, recalcitrance and violence with utter impunity. These pending charges must now sober al-Bashir’s international apologists who continue to shield and protect the Khartoum regime from meaningful measures with meaningful consequences.
A brazen attack launched yesterday in North Darfur killed seven UNAMID peacekeepers and wounded 22, many of them critically. This is likely to be the largest assault ever on Darfur peacekeepers - a sad display of the deteriorating conditions in the region and the world’s failure to address them.
According to a report by the United Nations, the unidentified militia used heavy weapons and exchanged fire with the UNAMID convoy for more than two hours.
It is a miserable state of affairs that a year after the U.N. Security Council authorized UNAMID, the troops have neither the numbers, the training, nor the equipment to protect themselves, let alone the people of Darfur. Twelve months, and the world’s most powerful nations cannot find it within themselves to produce the political will, a few hundred trucks, or even just 24 helicopters to protect Darfuris who have weathered more than five years of genocide.
