Darfur Accused
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
GENEVA (AP) – A U.N. human rights team on Monday said the world has an urgent obligation to protect civilians in Darfur from war crimes and crimes against humanity in which the Sudanese government is playing a major role.
The team, headed by Nobel peace laureate Jody Williams, said that Sudan’s government “has manifestly failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes, and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes.”
Ms. Williams filed the report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which had commissioned it in an emergency session last December, after concluding in a 20-day attempt to enter Sudan in February that the Sudanese government had no intention of cooperating with the United Nations.
“War crimes and crimes against humanity continue across the region,” the 35-page report said. “The principal pattern is one of a violent counterinsurgency campaign waged by the government of the Sudan in concert with janjaweed militia, and targeting mostly civilians. Rebel forces are also guilty of serious abuses of human rights and violations of humanitarian law.”
