International elder statesmen including two Nobel Peace Prize winners said yesterday that Darfur was rife with violence and deeply divided, after returning from the Sudanese region.
They warned rape was widespread and being ignored by the Sudanese authorities and also urged Khartoum to hand over war crimes suspects for trial at the International Criminal Court.
The group led by South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu called for the rapid deployment of a joint UN-African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur, after the killing of 10 African troops last week.
"It's quite clear to us that the crucial element to end the suffering of the people of Darfur is for the hybrid force to be deployed as soon as possible," Tutu said.
The mission is the first for "The Elders", a group launched by Nobel laureate and former South African president Nelson Mandela and includes former UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, former US president Jimmy Carter, and Mandela's wife and veteran women/children's rights advocate Graca Machel and British tycoon Richard Branson.
Darfur has witnessed mass or widespread rape, a problem Khartoum denies, trying to muzzle rape reports by the world's largest aid operation.
"Every woman told us, we are raped, we are beaten and we are harassed," Machel said. "We are very concerned that it doesn't seem to have changed for the better, on the contrary it has changed for the worse. We were even told that yesterday a girl as young as 10 years was raped."
Machel said the Sudanese government had to accept the fact that there was rape and then help form a plan to combat it.
But she said bringing up the issue of rape with Khartoum officials was discouraging.
"I must confess it was one of the most depressing moments of discussion. The government doesn't have any understanding of what it means when women have to say repeatedly to different people ... we have been raped, we are being beaten, we are being brutalized, we are fearful," she said.
Carter said Washington's use of the term genocide to describe the situation in Darfur, where international estimates say 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million driven from their homes, was unhelpful.
"There is a legal definition of genocide and Darfur does not meet that legal standard. The atrocities were horrible but I don't think it qualifies to be called genocide," he said.
He said Khartoum should hand over to the International Criminal Court a junior government minister and militia leader wanted for war crimes.
Carter said it was unacceptable that Khartoum had appointed the suspect, State Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Ahmed Haroun, as head of a rights committee.
Meanwhile, Ethiopia yesterday pledged 5,000 troops to a UN-AU peacekeeping mission in Darfur.
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