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 accepted - and is perhaps
one of the starting points of the committee's inquiry - that,
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 U.N. official in Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, went public
in March 2004 with the scale of the disaster, reminiscent of the
Rwandan genocide - an 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 disaster - Kapila had described
Darfur as the world's worst humanitarian crisis - was 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 Darfur
- the 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 new - especially 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",
FT 21 August 2004, copy attached to this submission), 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 profile
- though crucially important in many regards, for media and NGOs
alike - should 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 information - from 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 news - as 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 aware - via newspapers and TV coverage - of 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
others - in Darfur and elsewhere -- have 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 was - a conflict which
had human rights abuses at its very heart. The humanitarian crisis
was not the result of natural disaster - flood, drought, or failed
harvest - but 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 effect - the 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 Cote 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 lead 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 only be achieved 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
Also submitted. Not printed:
Darfur in Flames,
Darfur Destroyed
Darfur Documents Confirm Government Policy of
Militia Support
"Genocide? What Genocide?", Financial
Times, 21 August 2004
"If We Return, We Will Be Killed"
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