UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has set up a commission of inquiry to investigate and determine whether genocide has been committed in Sudans strife-torn western region of Darfur. He appointed an Italian judge to lead the probe, reports IRIN Friday.
The five-member commission, which was formed on Thursday, will also investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights in Darfur. Here militias locally known as the Janjawid stand accused of killing and raping thousands of villagers since February 2003, when rebel groups took up arms against the Sudanese government.
The Janjawid, made up largely of ethnic Arab tribes and who are allegedly allied to government troops, have been accused of committing atrocities against black African communities in Darfur.
The United States Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate committee in Washington on 9 September that American government investigations had showed “that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjawid bear responsibility” for it.
The US subsequently proposed a resolution to the UN Security Council that threatens to impose sanctions on Sudans fast-growing oil industry that currently produces about 320.000 barrels per day.
Khartoum vehemently condemned Powells statement and said that Washington was sending “a wrong signal” that would discourage the two rebel movements in Darfur – the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) – from entering into meaningful peace negotiations with the government.
Annans decision to set up the commission of inquiry followed the Councils request that he do so in a resolution adopted last month on the humanitarian and security crises engulfing Darfur, a vast and impoverished region.
About 1,45 million people are internally displaced within Darfur and another 200.000 are living as refugees in neighbouring Chad. UN officials have described the situation as the worlds worst humanitarian crisis.
Antonio Cassese of Italy, the first President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), will be the commissions chairman. Professor Cassese has taught international law in Italy and the United Kingdom and also served on human rights committees for the Council of Europe.
The other members are Diego Garcia-Sayan of Peru, Mohammed Fayek of Egypt, Hina Jilani of Pakistan and Therese Striggner Scott of Ghana. Dumisa Ntsebeza of South Africa will act as executive director, heading the technical team that supports the commission.
Garcia-Sayan, previously Foreign Affairs and Justice Minister of Peru, was a legal professor for nearly 20 years and a UN negotiator during the Guatemalan peace talks in the early 1990s.
Fayek is Secretary-General of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, a non-governmental organisation, and has served as both a minister and as a presidential adviser during his time in the Egyptian parliament.
Jilani has been the Secretary-Generals Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders since August 2000. She has a long record as a human-rights lawyer and activist in Pakistan and started the countrys first firm of female attorneys in 1980.
Striggner Scott, currently chair of Ghanas Law Reform Commission, has worked as a High Court judge in Ghana and Zimbabwe and has also been an ambassador for her country during a long diplomatic career.
Kilde: FN-bureauet IRINnews
