EU Darfur Draft Falls Short

EU Darfur Draft Falls Short, NGOs Demand Endorsement of Jody Williams’ Recommendations

Geneva, March 21, 2007 — An international coalition of 60 leading non-governmental organizations, including the Save Darfur Coalition, the World Federation of United Nations Associations, the Presbyterian and Anglican churches, and UN Watch, issued a joint appeal today urging the UN Human Rights Council to fully endorse the recent recommendations of the high level mission to Darfur headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams. (See full text of appeal below). The NGO appeal comes as the European Union and the African group at the Council have submitted competing draft resolutions addressing the Williams report.

Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights monitoring organization, issued the following statement:

The EU resolution just tabled to the Council falls short and fails to endorse the minimum recommendations of the Jody Williams report. Although we commend the EU for seeking to finally cite Sudan for violations—something the Council has shamefully failed to do since its inauguration in June—its draft of today is weak and ignores key recommendations made by the Williams report, including its call on the Council to:

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The EU text compromises basic principles to appease the political forces that dominate the Council. If adopted, the EU-sponsored resolution would treat Sudan with deference by saying that the Williams Mission “could not visit Darfur”—obscuring that it was Sudan that barred them entry. Worse, the EU draft minimizes Jody Williams’ attribution of primary responsibility for Darfur war crimes to the Government of Sudan, equating the regime’s violations with those of the rebels, who are actually listed first (see par. 3 of the EU draft) . Regrettably, the EU today showed it did not have the guts to say the truth as Jody Williams did: the Khartoum regime "has itself orchestrated and participated” in “large-scale international crimes."

If, as some diplomats claim, this is the strongest possible text that has a chance of winning a majority vote, that is an indictment showing the Council’s inability to properly address the world’s greatest human rights crime. Tragically, even this soft text is expected to be watered down further to compromise with the draft submitted by Sudan’s allies in the African group, itself a complete whitewash of Khartoum’s crimes.

As NGOs from around the world have said today, if the report’s recommendations are not endorsed in full, the Council will face a credibility crisis that will cast a shadow upon the reputation of the UN as a whole.

UN Watch spoke on behalf of the largest NGO coalition at the Council’s special session on Darfur in December, and will be convening a Darfur Activist Summit at the Council on March 28.

ENDS

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