US non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are pressing US President Barack Obama to launch a new peace initiative for Darfur, as they express concern about the approach being taken by US envoy Scott Gration.
The administration began a review of US policy towards Sudan in March, but has yet to release the results, despite promising in August that they would be announced shortly.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the issue of Darfur, a region in the west of Sudan, cannot be considered in isolation from a separate conflict between the country’s north and south, which is threatening to flare up again, after several years of peace.
The White House has, however, been far from silent on the subject.
Obama referred to the “genocide in Darfur” in his speech before Ghana’s parliament in July, and early in his term he named Gration, a retired general, as special envoy to Sudan.
Since his appointment, Gration has made multiple trips to the region, seeking to unify the rebel chiefs in Darfur so they will have greater weight in any eventual peace talks.
Sam Bell, the executive director of the Genocide Intervention Network, said he supports the approach.
“It’s very difficult, it hasn’t worked yet, but it’s a key element of peace in Darfur,” he said.
But, more broadly, Bell fears that the US does not “have the right strategy” on Darfur, and he warns that the “status quo plays in favor of the government” of Sudanese President Omar Bashir.
The group wants Obama to take action and renew pressure on the regime by coming up with a peace initiative, which would include countries with sway in the region such as Egypt and China, and could eventually lead to a tentative peace deal.
Since his nomination, Gration has made some risky moves, indicating some openness towards Bashir — who is the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes — and expressing support for the easing of 12-year-old sanctions against Sudan.
Some US non-governmental groups judge that approach ill advised, pointing out that around 2.7 million Darfur residents are still struggling to survive in dire conditions in refugee camps.
The groups were also concerned by an article that appeared in the Washington Post last week, detailing Gration’s most recent trip to Sudan.
The US emissary is described frequently as naive, too inclined to believe the government in Khartoum and overconfident about the possibility of dialogue with the regime.
Interviewed for the article, he also attributed the refusal of many refugees to leave their camps and return home to “psychological stuff,” prompting outrage from groups involved with Darfur.
“It’s incredibly offensive,” said John Norris, director of the Enough Project, said in a statement. “People aren’t going home because they fear being killed, raped and robbed.”
“If Washington is going to start taking war criminals at their word, despite the long list of Khartoum’s broken commitments, an even larger tragedy will unfold,” Bell said.
Since 2003, the conflict in Darfur has left 300,000 people dead, the UN says. The Sudanese government puts the figure at 10,000.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS