The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC), in a letter today to South Africa’s Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, has urged that the UN Commission on Human Rights presently meeting in Geneva continue Item 9 status for Sudan (as a country with “special human rights problems”), and that the mandate of the Special Rapporteur for Sudan be renewed. The SACBC thus joins numerous other church and human rights organizations in declaring unambiguously that the appalling human rights record in Sudan, which all evidence makes clear is overwhelmingly the responsibility of the Khartoum regime, must continue to receive vigorous international scrutiny. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch last week issued an extraordinary joint press release, declaring the urgency of retaining the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, indeed increasing human rights scrutiny in Sudan: “Now is the time to increase UN human rights monitoring, not to end it.” The Sudan Human Rights Organization (Cairo Office) was equally emphatic. So, too, was the Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Regional Conference. And in a powerful plea, the Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold, Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church USA, urged the US ambassador to the UN to “call on all members of the UN Human Rights Commission to adopt a resolution that recognizes the seriousness of the human rights problems in Sudan.” He added, ” I encourage you to work to maintain Sudan’s current human rights classification and to renew the mandate of Special Rapporteur Gerhart Baum.” A broadly representative group of Canadian humanitarian and church groups has urged Canada’s Foreign Minister in similar terms. The international community has begun to find its voice on Sudan and human rights. The question is whether the French and their European allies, and the nations of the Africa bloc, will hear this call for justice.
Eric Reeves [April 9, 2003]
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
413-585-3326
ereeves@smith.edu
The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) has squarely addressed the issue of “African solidarity,” behind which too many African nations are hiding rather than taking a principled stand on the egregious human rights record of Sudan, and the Khartoum regime in particular:
“While the SACBC appreciates the importance of African solidarity, this should not override moral choices in the case of individual countries. Neither should it be viewed simply as solidarity between governments. We in South Africa, with our own particular history of struggle, would never have achieved our liberation if our African brothers and sisters had shown solidarity with the apartheid government rather than with our people.”
The case for Item 9 status for Sudan, as a country “with special human rights problems,” and the renewal of the mandate for the Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan has also been made by Amnesty International/Human Rights Watch in a joint press release of April 1, 2003:
“The Special Rapporteur on Sudan’s 2003 report states: ‘in spite of the commitments made, the overall human rights situation has not improved.’ The Special Rapporteur describes how in the area under the control of the Government of Sudan ‘the role of the security apparatus as the main entity responsible for the human rights abuses as well as the impunity enjoyed by security remains an issue of serious concern.'”
At another point, in speaking about the work of the Civilian Protection Monitoring Team (CPMT), the AI/HRW press release speaks of the need for additional human rights monitoring:
“The recent report by the CPMT, found that the government and allied militia had committed a number of attacks targeting and killing civilians in the oil rich areas south of Bentiu in January and February 2003. ‘Monitoring and public reporting is the one way to end abuses and impunity,’ the organizations said. ‘Now is the time to increase UN human rights monitoring, not to end it.'”
The Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Regional Conference (SCBRC) has also called for the renewal of the mandate of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the country:
“‘The mandate for the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Sudan,’ the bishops said in a statement, ‘needs to be renewed at this session of the UN Commission on Human Rights that is now meeting in Geneva. It is especially important that the mandate be renewed, because of the present peace process and the continued human rights violations that threaten the process,’ the SCBRC said in a March 12, 2003 statement issued in Nairobi.”
(Catholic Information Service for Africa, Issue No. 209 b, Wednesday, April 2, 2003)
In an April 2, 2003 press release, the Sudan Human Rights Organization (Cairo) made the same case in the most brutally frank of terms:
“The Sudan Human Rights Organization-Cairo Office (SHRO-Cairo) is deeply distressed that the U.N. Human Rights Commission is considering upgrading Sudan’s human rights status from an Item 9 to Item 19 category, which would in effect let Sudan off the hook for its ongoing genocide and other severe human rights violations. The move from Item 9 to Item 19 would remove the U.N. Rapporteur for Sudan, thus freeing the regime from useful scrutiny at a time the Rapporteur confirms that there has not been any improvement in the human rights situation in Sudan.”
This is indeed not a morally ambiguous decision: the UN Special Rapporteur for Sudan, Gerhart Baum, has declared emphatically and publicly that there has been no significant improvement in Sudan’s human rights record, among the most appalling in the entire world. It is clear that his mandate to report on human rights abuses should be renewed; there are simply no credible reasons that argue against such renewal—only expediency and indifference. France and Sweden deserve to be singled out in particular for their unhelpful roles in the present Geneva meeting of the UN’s Human Rights Commission. But it should be noted as well that Great Britain and Italy have hardly been energetic in working for a strong resolution on Sudan, the UK Foreign office indulging in an expedient “fatalism” about the outcome of the debate.
Many of the countries represented in Geneva have, of course, very poor human rights records, including the Commission chair, Libya. Another is Zimbabwe, one of the twelve African nations represented in Geneva. Zimbabwe is pushing especially hard for “Africa unity” as a means of insuring that it will not be singled out in the future for the terrible human rights record that President Robert Mugabe has amassed (it is hardly surprising that France recently hosted Mugabe).
Here again the words of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference are of critical importance, most particularly for the African peoples of southern Sudan:
“While the SACBC appreciates the importance of African solidarity, this should not override moral choices in the case of individual countries. Neither should it be viewed simply as solidarity between governments. We in South Africa, with our own particular history of struggle, would never have achieved our liberation if our African brothers and sisters had shown solidarity with the apartheid government rather than with our people.”
The twelve African nations represented in Geneva are: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe (contact information for all of them is available at www.google.com). It is not too late for them to be urged to make the truly “moral choice” urged by the SACBC. But time is rapidly expiring, and a resolution on Sudan could come very soon. If the Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva abandons serious human rights scrutiny of Sudan, it will have betrayed not only the people of southern Sudan, but the very idea that the UN Commission on Human Rights has any meaningful role to play in the arena that defines it.