by Kristen Houp

Retiring United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanded on Tuesday that the Human Rights Council send a clear message that the “nightmare” of violence in Sudan’s Darfur had to stop.

This is a cry the UN heard repeated for nearly three years now as rebel and government armies continue fighting, human rights continue to be violated, and the African province of Darfur continues to fall apart. Since ethnic African rebels rose up against Sudan’s Arab-dominated government in early 2003, more government militaries raid, pillage, and destroy villages. This situation, which ahs been defined by the U.S. as genocide, is now being described by some as comparable to Rawanda. The UN has declared it the world’s “gravest humanitarian crisis.”

The regime in Khartoum is accused of responding to the rebels by unleashing the janjaweed militias of Arab nomads, who have been blamed for some of the worst offences, including rape and wide-scale murder. Sudanese officials continue to deny their support of the janjaweed, but oppose replacing African Union peacekeepers with a joint mission of some 20,000 U.N. and African soldiers, accusing Western countries of trying to re-colonize it in pursuit of its oil wealth.

This type of government resistance makes the situation even more difficult to handle. Information from Darfur is increasingly hard to come by because the government has prohibited foreign journalists from traveling there and have imposed tight restrictions on what aid workers are allowed to say. Some 160 UN staff and aid workers have left North Darfur towns during the past week, and 41 aid workers have been withdrawn from various places in South Darfur where armed men raided an aid group’s compound and stole vehicles.

The situation continues to spin out of control as the janjuweed continue to terrorize civilians and civilians are becoming increasingly more hostile toward the existing peace forces that can not protect them.

On Wednesday December 13 the United Nations new human rights watchdog responded to Kofi Annan’s statement, and organized a high-level mission to Sudan’s Darfur to probe allegations of worsening abuses against the civilian population. Many hope that increased pressure on the Sudanese government will allow the UN to make some headway in decreasing the number of human rights violations and hopefully allow them to move toward a more stable situation.

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