Press Release

"We Would Be Betraying them if We Don’t Talk for Them"

Mahgoub El-Tigani

April 26, 2004

The Middle East NGOs Gateway: Networking Civil Society interviewed Dr. Mukesh Kapila (March 29, 2004):

In Arabic:http://www.mengos.net/interviews/kapila.htm
In English: http://www.mengos.net/interviews/kapilaenglish.htm

The UN Expert affirmed, "Peace talks may end up successfully if the Abyei difficult question is solved... DarFur crisis is a very serious challenge to the peace process . We are deeply concerned about DarFur where ethnic cleansing is continuously occurring ... Because there is no democracy, the people's voice is unheard ... The civil society is very concerned and yet they are arrested or detained if they talk... It is very difficult for them to say anything.... International solidarity is essentially needed to help all progressive elements inside Sudan and to support civil society ..." Kapila further affirmed, "People in DarFur has no means other than us to talk. We'll let them down if we don't talk for them ..."

The previous days witnessed the battling of Human Rights groups worldwide over the UN human rights report on the situation of DarFur before the Human Rights Commission. Most of the victimized millions of DarFur citizens as well as the remaining repressed people of Sudan cautiously followed the Commission’s discussions, which unfortunately turned to a full-fledged battle between western industrial democracies led by the US and the European Union versus the Commission’s Third World membership, including Arab, African, and Asian States. As Sudanese NGOs Federation leader Dr. Peter Adwok Nyaba commented in a public Sudanese List, “Blind hostility to the West has translating into supporting the Pariah state in the Sudan. The issue therefore is not human rights anymore. It is one eyed people supporting a one-eyed person. Many of these states are indeed perpetrators of human rights abuses in their own turfs."

The protection obligations conferred upon these States by international human rights instruments, specifically the Convention on Civil and Political Rights and the other related conventions in addition to the continental human rights instruments such as the African Charter for Human and Peoples’ Rights, were simply replaced with weak administrative apologies such as leaking of the Commission’s report to the press or the need for a “completed version of investigation,” as the Congo representative, whose country suffers steep human rights violations, astonishingly announced.

Instead of this wildering apologetic regards that produced nothing but shameless “softly phrased appeal” to a ruthless government from the highest international human rights functional commission, the thousands brutally massacred by the Sudan Government troops and Janjaweed militias, the hundreds of thousands displaced in the killing desert, the hundreds of women or children savagely raped, and the wealth criminally misappropriated or demolished by the ruthless transgressors of the DarFur Africans certainly expected effective condemnation of all crimes the government committed against humanity as well as the most stringent measures possible on the transgressing Sudan Government to care for the people it so badly governs.

“What always remains for our help is, no doubt, the Almighty Allah. His justice is way above all man-made political deals,” interviewed Zagawa sadly commented. “We already know that nothing comes out of dishonest businesses. First, we thought the very name of the Human Rights Commission indicates clearly a place of international authority where human rights come first before any political dealing. That is not what our people finally received ... Now we surely know the Commission equally houses culprit governments as well as humanitarian nations, exactly as General Assembly contains evil rulers with good regimes. A human rights house deserves a better formula” emphasized the DarFurian speaker.

The beleaguered DarFurian has certainly captured a significant portion of the international reality, which simply boils down to political struggles between blocs of competing interests rather than honorable law-abiding consensual agreements developed and required by international norms.

Dr. Mukesh Kapila, an international human rights’ expert strongly announced in an interview with The Middle East NGOs Gateway: Networking Civil Society (Dr. Marlyn Tadros: March 29, 2004): “DarFur crisis is a very serious challenge to the peace process [of Sudan] ...We are deeply concerned about DarFur where ethnic cleansing is continuously occurring . International solidarity is essentially needed to help all progressive elements inside Sudan and to support civil society … People in DarFur has no means other than us to talk. We'll let them down if we don't talk for them ..."

The DarFurian citizen, however, exclaimed: “why is it humanitarian officials appear less competent to force decisions upon transgressing governments even though they do have the law with perhaps some means to make it through?”

Dr. Kapila statement: “Because there is no democracy, the people's voice is unheard ... The civil society is very concerned and yet they are arrested or detained if they talk... It is very difficult for them to say anything” with respect to the non-democratic conditions now prevalent in Sudan throughout the years 1989-2004 is equally valid concerning the actual functioning of the Human Rights Commission, which despite all democratic procedures to ensure the best management of a law-abiding civilized forum of international human rights on all Member States suffers a democratic dilemma of equal chance representation by the worst violators of human rights side by side with law abiding states.

Operating with equal vote, the right to no action, and the other determining mechanisms, the Commission consistently fall prey to a state of non-competency, neutrality, or a sweep away of the most serious motions to allow real procession of human rights matters upon culprit regimes through out the world.

The Commission on Human Rights is a “functional commission” of the Charter-based organs of the United Nations that consist of the General Assembly and ECOSOC as principal organs. As such, the HRC is formally subject to politicization of all human rights issues. The United Nations, however, has other committees that care for the human rights situation although they complain from communication problems as well as non-human rights political pressure.

Because there is enough space under UN decision-making bodies for States to gather in blocking blocs versus human rights matters, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the Committee on the Right of the Child (CRC), the Committee on the Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Committee against Torture (CAT), and the Human Rights Committee (HRC) among others should be actively utilized to help the HRC exert the right pressure on straying members.

There is also good hope for the victimized people of DarFur when human rights concerned parties cooperate closely with human rights NGOs and other humanitarian bodies versus ruthless regimes. To strengthen the meaningful intervention of human rights NGOs with the United Nations treaty bodies:

(1) It is expedient for NGOs, in particular, to authenticate information on human rights violations in order to campaign effectively before treaty-bodies for compliance of governments with recognized international law; (2) human rights NGOs should acquire and actively utilize Consultative States with the HRC, as well as the other treaty bodies; (3) consistent intervention at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights versus African governments should be continually ensured to verify the extent to which a State Party appears to be in compliance, or otherwise, with the African Charter; and (4) special attention should be centered on women’s representation in national, regional and international organizations to advance women’s rights.

The volume of crimes committed by the Sudan Government and the Janjaweed government-backed militias is worthy of full utilization of all UN treaty-based system. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among a few other international human rights or humanitarian NGOs, have done a good job pursuing the DarFur Crisis with documentary materials and peaceful diplomatic pressure. Unfortunately, African, Asian and Latin American human rights NGOs are battling their repressive regimes all over the world. It is, however, an urgent issue to convene an international conference for all these groups, the voice of the voiceless human rights victims, as soon as possible.

In the meantime, all DarFur indigenous human rights groups (the Massaliet in Exile, the DarFur opposition intellectuals, and former democratic governors) should be officially recognized by the United Nations HRC as equal partners to the newly-assigned United Nations Human Rights Reporter on DarFur and the Sudan Government to expedite workable solutions to the ongoing Holocaust of DarFur.

The Sudan Government, in particular, is advised to listen with full care and consideration to the national democratic opposition, the NDA and the other Sudanese civil society groups, including the SHRO-Cairo follow-up statements on the situation of human rights in the country, to avoid the persistent globalization of a crisis the government alone is fully responsible of initiating and recklessly escalating, without stoppage, for almost two consecutive decades.