Memorandum submitted by Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch appreciates the invitation
to comment to the International Development Committee on the subject
of "Darfur, Sudan: Crisis, Response and Lessons".
It is probably now generally acceptedand
is perhaps one of the starting points of the Committee's inquirythat,
despite the depth of the crisis, the initial response to events
in Darfur was inadequate. It must be hoped that lessons will indeed
be learnt. The establishment of this inquiry is therefore welcome.
THE MEDIA:
REACTING TOO
LATE
Questions of how best to develop "early
warning systems", so that we are not taken by surprise by
the outbreak of conflict, can be discussed at length. Such discussions
can play a valuable role. It is the view of Human Rights Watch,
however, that in the context of Darfur there is an even more pressing
question: why the crisis was ignored not just before it began,
but long after the crimes and the killing of civilians were already
well under way.
The violence began in 2003. There were only
isolated reports in the UK media in 2003 and early 2004, even
as human rights organisations and humanitarian agencies alike
were eager to sound the alarm. The senior United Nations humanitarian
official, Jan Egeland, denounced the humanitarian crisis in Darfur
in late 2003; the top UN official in Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, went
public in March 2004 with the scale of the disaster, reminiscent
of the Rwandan genocidean unusual and controversial move.
But, with few exceptions, Egeland's and Kapila's words, though
carried by the international news agencies and therefore seen
by news desks all over the world, went largely unreported, or
reported only in the news-in-brief columns.
The immensity of the disasterKapila had
described Darfur as the world's worst humanitarian crisiswas
simultaneously highlighted, and relegated to a footnote. A small
number of newspapers carried news stories on Darfur on the inside
pages. But none shone a spotlight on the region, although the
facts of what was happening were not seriously in dispute, even
at that time.
That pattern continued. Human Rights Watch has
long experience in seeking to create impact through the publication
of its reports, which are often prominently reported in the newspapers,
on radio and TV. But the 50-page Human Rights Watch report Darfur
in Flames, published on 2 April 2004 and filled with first-person
testimonies, received less attention than many of the organisation's
other reports. Urgent action alerts and reports by Amnesty International
on Darfur had equally little reaction.
A newspaper or television channel may well choose
to ignore a report by a human rights organisation if it merely
overlaps with what the organisation's own reporters have already
documented, or even a story that the newspaper is already planning
to publish. That was, however, clearly not the case on this occasion.
There was almost complete silence on the Darfur issue at this
time.
Even the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide
provoked little reflection about what was happening now in Darfur.
Even when the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, used the occasion
of his speech on the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide,
on 7 April 2004, to highlight the crisis in Darfur, there was
little response.
A reader's letter, with signatures by the respected
Africa Confidential, distinguished academics and others, was published
in the Guardian in early April. The letter referred to
the Darfur reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International,
and pointed out: "`Never again', pledges a world which this
week commemorates a million Rwandans who died in the 1994 genocide.
Yet in western Sudan a similar catastrophe is unfolding amid a
deafening silence."
The International Crisis Group talked of Darfur
as "the potential horror story of 2004". That, too,
gained little reaction. Paradoxically, it took the suppression
in late April of a report by a United Nations team on the horrors
of Darfurthe team talked of government and militias causing
a "reign of terror"to begin to make the story
bigger "news".
The first powerful front-page and inside-page
coverage in the UK media came on 23 April, with a story under
the headline: "Rape, torture, and one million forced to flee
as Sudan's crisis unfolds. Will we move to stop it?" That
and related stories, quoting Human Rights Watch and others, ran
across three pages. A column on the same day, headlined "Sudan
is another Rwanda in the making" quoted Kofi Annan's words,
that "the risk of genocide is frighteningly real". (The
Independent, 23 April 2004)
Through the following weeks, and especially
through June and July, the importance of the story began to trickle
through to all the main papers, and on the TV screens. During
the summer months, there was powerful television coverage which
had dramatic political impact. All of this was, however, very
late: by then more than one million people had been forcibly displaced
from their homes and were living in insecure and squalid conditions
in overcrowded displaced persons camps. Six months before, the
number was half that.
The failure to pick up on a major story while
it was already brewing was, of course, nothing newespecially
in Africa. In 1984, the Ethiopian famine was under way for many
months, and was not regarded as news, until Michael Buerk's powerful
reports for the BBC about "the closest thing to hell on earth"
suddenly changed all that in October of that year. In 1994, during
the Rwandan genocide, there was an equally strong tendency to
ignore the unignorable. Thus, the media failures of Darfur can
clearly be seen as part of a pattern.
The author of this note is a former journalist.
As noted in an article in the Financial Times magazine
which partly addresses these issues (Steve Crawshaw, "Genocide,
what Genocide", Financial Times 21 August 2004, the
innate small-c conservatism of media judgements mean that one
cannot necessarily expect the media lessons to be quickly learned.
Darfur showed us that the lessons were not learned after Rwanda.
Why should one assume that they will be learned after Darfur?
In those circumstances, a strong case can be
made for suggesting that the answers must lie with politicians
and policy-makers themselves. The question of how to raise media
profilethough crucially important in many regards, for
media and NGOs alikeshould for the purposes of this discussion
and analysis, for and by elected parliamentarians, be put to one
side.
POLITICIANS SHOULD
NOT NEED
MEDIA IN
ORDER TO
ACT
News editors will always be reluctant to devote
major resources to a news story until they are convinced, not
least by the competition, that they have to. There will always
be other priorities, and budgets will always be tight. This has
been the case in Africa especially. That therefore places much
responsibility on the shoulders of the policy-makers who are in
possession of the necessary informationfrom NGOs, from
UN officials, and from their own diplomats.
In the spring of this year, human rights organisations
and humanitarian agencies agreed on the scale of the Darfur crisis.
Why, then, did so little happen?
Politicians and policy-makers feel partly constrained
from acting or speaking out unless the issue is already on the
front pages or on the television newsas Darfur was, during
the summer months of 2004. In the intervening months, many lives
had unnecessarily been lost. We would urge strongly that policy-makers
should not feel obliged to wait on the editorial-writers before
responding promptly to the commission of crimes against humanity
committed by governments or groups, like the Janjaweed militias,
which are sponsored by and act in concert with government.
Politicians in the UK rightly emphasise the
importance of the constituency mailbag, in a parliamentary democracy.
But the mailbag will not be full with letters on a given issue,
unless voters are awarevia newspapers and TV coverageof
the issues. If, for the reasons laid out above, there is insufficient
media coverage, another yardstick is needed.
Britain pressed for some accountability at the
Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Overall, however, there
was a woefully slow reaction to the unfolding nightmare. The strong
comments, and visits to the region, by the Secretary of State
for International Development, the Foreign Secretary and then
the Prime Minister were welcome when they came. But the attention
was late in the day.
The United Nations Security Council was equally
slow to react; nor did Britain seek to change this. Despite the
issue of a press release as early as October 2003, the Security
Council waited until July 2004 before a full discussion of Darfur.
It is regrettable that the important report "Responsibility
to Protect", published by the Canadian government and submitted
to the United Nations in 2001, with its emphasis on the need to
respond earlier to emerging crises in order to prevent potential
large-scale loss of life, has largely been ignored. The appointment
this year of a special United Nations rapporteur on the prevention
of genocide is to be welcomed. It will be important, however,
that he is listened to in a way that the warnings of NGOs and
othersin Darfur and elsewherehave previously not
been.
WRONG SIGNALS
None of the above failures can be put down to
ignorance. The general public knew little about Darfur at this
time, because of the lack of media coverage, as described above.
But there was no shortage of knowledge, among officials and diplomats.
British and other foreign diplomats in Khartoum were regularly
briefed by the international aid agencies operating in Sudan who
were worried at the failure to address the problems of Darfur.
Experts from at least one leading aid agency flew to New York
in January 2004 to brief members of the United Nations Security
Council on the extent of the crisis.
In this context, it is all the more remarkable
to note the tone of a speech by the British ambassador to Khartoum
on 27 April 2004. This was already several weeks after the dramatic
comments by Mukesh Kapila, Kofi Annan and others, quoted above.
The HRW report Darfur in Flames had been published three
weeks earlier, and a follow-up HRW report, Darfur Destroyed,
would be published the following week; other organisations had
already spoken out. These reports documented many crimes against
humanity, including widespread ethnic cleansing and civilian massacres.
And yet, the ambassador felt able to talk optimistically of Sudan
as standing "on the threshold of a new era". Emphasising
that "we are and wish to remain true friends of Sudan",
the ambassador boasted that British trade with Sudan was up by
a quarter; and noted that British Airways had just reopened flights
to Khartoum. The ambassador noted with satisfaction: "In
June I expect to see the first British trade mission for a number
of years". Such speeches are always cleared in advance with
the Foreign Office in London, so that the views expressed should
be taken as representing the views of the British government,
not merely those of the ambassador.
It is difficult to reconcile these optimistic
statements with the well-documented facts on the ground. The British
government position later changed, to include support for the
possible imposition of international sanctions against the abusive
regime. The crimes against humanity committed by Sudan were, however,
clear by April. It is regrettable that the British government,
and other members of the UN Security Council, did not feel it
appropriate to address the scale of these crimes at the time when
they were first aware of them, but only once those crimes were
on the front pages.
A HUMAN RIGHTS
CRISIS, NOT
JUST A
HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
It was noticeable, too, that there was an apparent
reluctance to call the crisis for what it wasa conflict
which had human rights abuses at its very heart. The humanitarian
crisis was not the result of natural disasterflood, drought,
or failed harvestbut the result of the ethnic cleansing
and the pattern of killing which made it impossible for people
to plant or harvest crops, or to return safely to their homes.
There was nothing new about the tactics of the
Sudanese government. The same tactics, including the use of proxy
militias, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, were the same
that had been used in the south for the past 20 years.
When UK government ministers later began to
take a strong stance, that had a clear positive effectthe
first Sudanese concessions came in response to such pressure,
including fuller access for humanitarian agencies operating in
Darfur, and the African Union force. The pressure from Jack Straw,
the Foreign Secretary, during his August visit to Khartoum, for
visas to be granted to HRW and Amnesty International was directly
responsible for the issuing of such visas. (Sudanese officials
had until then repeatedly claimed that HRW's carefully documented
reports on Darfur were "fiction".) HRW hopes that the
evidence gained during those visits to Sudan will, in turn, be
valuable for the future prosecutions of the crimes committed in
Darfur. Strong words from Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for
International Development, also played an important role when
they finally came. It is regrettable that these strong words came
so late.
THE NEED
NOT TO
"COMPARTMENTALISE" HUMAN
RIGHTS PROBLEMS
In spring 2004, there sometimes appeared to
be an official eagerness in London to put the problems of Darfur
to one side, because of the fragility of the Naivasha talks on
a possible end to the long-running, separate north-south war in
Sudan. It was suggested that a tough stance on Darfur might endanger
those talks. British officials used the word "sequential"
to explain, in effect, why the issue of Darfur should be left
on one side until the Naivasha peace agreement was secured.
It is important to see the problems of peace
and stability in the round. The problems of Naivasha and the north-south
conflict should not be ignored, because of Darfur. The converse
is equally true, however. There has been a constant tendency to
water down Security Council resolutions on Darfur, because of
Naivasha. And yet, Kofi Annan was right to emphasise that a failure
to address the problems of Darfur would be more likely, not less
likely, to endanger the Naivasha agreement. The "we're too
busy now to think about that other problem" school of policy-making
may seem sensible in the short term; in the long term, it is not.
The pattern is in constant danger of repeating itself. Thus, at
the time of writing, the problems in Côte d'Ivoire are receiving
too little international attention. The dangers of continuing
to turn a blind eye are difficult to overstate.
LASTING JUSTICE
It is essential to press for real accountability
at a high level. There has been caution in some quarters about
proposals for an international commission of inquiry, which could
"name names" for those responsible for the crimes against
humanity that have taken place. That commission has now begun
its work, and should be encouraged to be fearless in its judgements.
"Command responsibility" is a key concept in international
law for allocating responsibility for crimes committed. This allows
senior politicians and commanders to be brought to justice both
for crimes that they have ordered or encouraged, and for crimes
which they were in a position to prevent.
The international efforts for accountability
should not stop with the commission of inquiry. The UN Security
Council should refer the crimes to the International Criminal
Court for prosecution, where appropriate.
It is important that there should be no selectivity
on this point. If blame deserves to be allocated to senior Sudanese
politicians, then that finger must be clearly pointed. "Pragmatism"
in allowing certain perpetrators off the hook because of their
perceived "usefulness" in another context (for example,
peace talks or the possible formation of a new government) is
short-sighted and counter-productive. It is unclear at the time
of writing whether that lesson has been learnt.
The north-south agreement contains no provision
for accountability for the two million dead and four million internally
displaced, mostly southerners, in that 21-year conflict. It does
not set up a tribunal nor even a truth commission to punish those
guilty of the massive human rights abuses during that conflict.
This failure to address human rights abuses has led directly to
the widespread abuses in Darfur: the government, not having had
to pay any price for its atrocities in southern Sudan, has continued
this pattern of abuse in Darfur.
Stability can be achieved only through justice.
Short cuts on justice are likely to be politically more expensive
in the longer term. This is true in Darfur, just as it is true
in regions of crisis all around the world.
Steve Crawshaw
London Director
November 2004
Articles also submitted. Not printed:
Darfur in Flames, Human Rights Watch,
April 2004.
Darfur Destroyed, Human Rights Watch,
May 2004.
Darfur Documents Confirm Government Policy
of Militia Support, Human Rights Watch, July 2004.
"Genocide? What Genocide?", Financial
Times, 21 August 2004.
If We Return, We Will Be Killed, Human
Rights Watch, November 2004.
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