Getting Away With Genocide Is Way Too Easy
Justice is an Essential Precondition for Peace
By Amjad Atallah
Senior Director of International Policy and Advocacy, Save Darfur Coalition
The International Criminal Court's Chief Prosecutor, Moreno Ocampo, will update the U.N. Security Council this week on indictments issued for two alleged war criminals: Sudanese Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Ahmed Haroun and janjaweed militia leader Ali Kosheib. Both were charged with multiple counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including targeted sexual violence and wide scale rape. Today, both remain at large in Sudan.
Sexual violence has become far too common in Darfur. There are recorded instances of dozens of women and girls held in captivity for weeks and repeatedly raped and tortured. Many times, they are released only when they are known to be pregnant.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), for example, released a report in August that gruesomely details the abduction, systematic rape and torture of about 50 women from Deribat in South Darfur. The abductees – many of them children – were held as sex slaves for a month before they managed to escape. Several became pregnant. With no access to health care, pregnancy made some of the women severely ill. Others opted for life-threatening abortions.
Such incidents are not isolated, nor are they prosecuted or even condemned by the Government of Sudan. In many cases, the perpetrators are rewarded for these horrific acts. Often, the government will set up an "investigatory committee," thinly veiled delaying tactics it uses to shelter rapists and war criminals.
U.N. reports have consistently indicated that commanders and leaders of the Sudanese government's Popular Defense Forces (PDF) may share criminal responsibility for sexual violence. Some have authorized or even led the attacks.
Yet the perpetrators remain unpunished. Ahmed Haroun — the same man the ICC indicted on 42 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity — is the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and the co-chair of a committee to investigate human rights abuses in Darfur. Chief Prosecutor Ocampo, best explained the irony of the situation: “the same man, who as Minister of State for the Interior, allegedly attacked civilians and forced people out of their homes and into camps, is today in charge of the camps, controlling the fate of his victims.”
Sudan needs justice as much as it needs peace. As the international community becomes engaged in the deployment of a peacekeeping force, the peace process, and the negotiation of an effective ceasefire agreement, there is a parallel need to raise issues of accountability. Transparent and impartial courts must address widespread accounts of rape, and they must begin breaking down the well-established walls between sexual violence and justice in Sudan.
As it stands now, Sudanese legal structure is more likely to persecute those who report incidents of rape than those who actually committed the atrocities. Further, according to a June 2007 assessment of Sudanese rape law by Refugees International, members of the military, security services, police, or border guards cannot be prosecuted for rape. Since many members of the janjaweed have been integrated into the Sudan Army Forces and PDF, they are granted the same immunity.
The attack on Deribat was not the first instance of massive sexual violence against women in Darfur, and it will likely not be the last. Too often, rape and other forms of gender-based violence are viewed as part of the landscape of war, designated as a footnote in the history books. In Darfur, as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, (or Bosnia and Herzegovina and Rwanda in the 1990s) rape is being used as a tool of war—to degrade and intimidate, and to systematically destroy communities and drive people from their land.
The women of Darfur, like women elsewhere, have a long history of cultural and civic leadership. The abduction of women into sexual slavery, the rape of women as they collect firewood, and the sexual violence targeted at young girls acknowledges this fact and aims to destroy Darfuri women’s ability to lead and rebuild their communities.
As Chief Prosecutor Ocampo speaks before the U.N. Security Council, the international community must bear in mind that rape and sexual violence used as a tool of war is a crime against humanity under the ICC. Beyond Haroun, Kosheib, and their nefarious cronies, there is a clear ringleader of these atrocities. Like the former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic before him, President al-Bashir has command and control responsibility over his forces and must be held to account.
It is our responsibility to ensure that the voices of those terrorized by rape and violence do not go unheard, and that the people responsible for their suffering are brought to justice.
This is not an act of charity for these women – it is self-defense for all of us. Impunity for such crimes encourages similar attacks elsewhere. We did not stand up soon enough against the rape camps in Bosnia and we tried to ignore the genocide in Rwanda and the mass rape that accompanied it. We cannot make the same mistake in Darfur.
justice_is_an_essential_precondition_for_peace
Posted on Sunday, 12/02/07 - 8:26 pm
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for Darfur, December 17, 2007
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