Two top UN human rights officials on Thursday stopped short of classifying the situation in Sudan's western Darfur region as a genocide, but said that crimes against humanity and war crimes have "probably occurred on a large and systematic scale."
Moreover, the "climate of impunity" in the conflict-wracked region is such that "we have not turned the corner on preventing genocide from happening in the future, or even in the near future," UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Juan Mendez, told reporters after briefing the UN Security Council.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour presented council members with several recommendations, including the need to deploy international police to aid Sudanese police stationed at refugee camps in Darfur.
The deployment of Sudanese police, she said, has done little to restore the faith of the 1.2 million Sudanese displaced by the fighting in the region and is contributing to the "climate of impunity reigning in Darfur today."
"A mere increase in their numbers is unlikely to restore the lack of faith ... and overcome the sense of insecurity and fear that is prevalent" in the refugee camps, Arbour said.
"It would seem that the only way to reverse that lack of trust would be to accompany the Sudanese police force with an international component in the discharge of their work," she told reporters.
Her recommendations were presented ahead of a Security Council meeting later Thursday with the Sudanese foreign minister -- a meeting which he requested.
Arbour told the council that a key challenge confronting security and aid to the region is "an alarming disconnect between the [Sudanese] government's perception -- or at least its portrayal -- of what is happening in Darfur and the assessment of that situation by almost everyone else."
The government "continues to convey neither a sense of urgency nor an acknowledgment of the magnitude of the human rights crisis in Darfur," she said.
Arbour also highlighted other recommendations, which included boosting the international presence in Darfur and putting an end to the government practice of forcing refugees to return, especially as many of the areas have not yet been secured.
The council on Sept. 18 passed a resolution calling for an international commission to investigate claims of genocide in Darfur.
It also gave the thumbs-up for a significantly expanded African Union force in Darfur, and threatened sanctions against the Khartoum government if it doesn't act to rein in Arab militias blamed for killing over 50,000 people and forcing 1.2 million to flee their homes.
Last week, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who heads the African Union, said the 53-nation body can quickly mobilize up to 5,000 troops to help end the looting and killing in Darfur but it needs hundreds of millions of dollars to deploy the force.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS