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A bi-weekly audio series and podcast service, hosted by Committee on Conscience Project Director Bridget Conley-Zilkic, that brings you the voices of human rights defenders, experts, advocates, and government officials. Vital voices addressing one of humanity's most vital issues. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not necessarily represent those of the Museum.
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8/09/07
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 The former UN envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, sharpy criticized Security Council Resolution 1769 on Thursday. Money quote from the story by Reuters correspondent Opheera McDoom: While conceding that the resolution to dispatch troops was not good, Pronk said "anything is better at the moment (than) not doing anything and just talking".
But he criticised diplomats who negotiated the resolution in New York as "amateurs" playing to their own audiences.
"This is a quick fix in order to please the population in the countries of the West," said Pronk, the former head of the U.N.'s Sudan mission.
"There is no reason for euphoria." In contrast, US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad responded to similar criticism in a letter to the Washington Post on Wednesday. Money quote: I take exception to the assertion in your Aug. 4 editorial "Progress on Darfur" that there is "no ready means to exert pressure" on the government of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al Bashir in the most recent U.N. Security Council resolution. I hope the government of Sudan doesn't similarly misread Resolution 1769, as there will be serious consequences should it do so. He doesn't specify what the "serious consequences" would be (nor does the resolution itself), but asserts that "the entire Security Council [is] responsible to respond with the necessary pressure against those seeking to upset the path toward peace in Darfur."
One might be pardoned for thinking that after 3+ years of relatively little pressure from the entire Security Council, Khartoum is not particularly concerned about how the Security Council might carry out this responsibility.
(UN photo of Jan Pronk (left) by Mark Garten; UN Photo of Zalmay Khalilzad (right) by Paulo Filgueiras).
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5/03/07
4/26/07
4/19/07
4/18/07
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 Earlier this week, Sudanese President Bashir ostensibly agreed to the second of three phases in deploying a hybrid UN-AU force to protect civilians in Darfur. This so-called "heavy support" package would provide much needed assistance to an African Union force that increasingly cannot protect itself, much less civilians. Any optimism about this "step forward" has to be tempered by the fact that Bashir agreed to this phase months ago, then dragged his feet before reneging altogether. So he in effect is re-agreeing after unconscionable delay. One wonders how long it will be before the package is fully deployed. And Bashir continues to reject completely the most important, third phase of the deployment, which would increase the number of troops on the ground to protect civilians to around 20,000.
In any event, a stark reminder (if one were needed) of the worthlessness of Sudanese government promises and its contempt for the UN Security Council is provided by a confidential UN report that was leaked to the New York Times on Tuesday. As the Times summarizes: A confidential United Nations report says the government of Sudan is flying arms and heavy military equipment into Darfur in violation of Security Council resolutions and painting Sudanese military planes white to disguise them as United Nations or African Union aircraft. The report also documents the use of white aircraft to bomb villages. You may recall that the promise to stop bombing people from airplanes painted white was a supposed "step forward" earlier this year. In a few hours, President Bush will address Darfur at the Holocaust Museum. Undoubtedly, this week's step forward was meant to influence what he says. What should be clear beyond any doubt is that in Bashir's dance of death and deceit, every apparent step forward is usually followed by one or more steps back.
(Photo of Sudanese government plane disguised as UN plane from Interim Report of UN Panel of Experts.)
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4/09/07
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 UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon marked the 13th anniversary of the beginning of the Rwanda genocide with what seems to me to be, even by UN standards, a remarkably formulaic, cliche ridden statement, the essence of which is that we should "never forget" and "never stop working to prevent another genocide." No reference to preventing genocide in any particular place, of course, and especially no reference to the whatchamacallit in Darfur. He did say that he intended to make the currently part-time position of Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide into a full time gig (his one example of fulfilling the stated imperative to do "more, much more"). Meanwhile, Monday's LA Times had a summary of the rough seas that Ban has been sailing in his first three months in office. Money quote: On his recent trip to the Middle East, he was stonewalled by the Iranian foreign minister, snubbed by the Palestinian finance minister, misaddressed by the prime ministers of Israel and Lebanon, and shaken by a mortar shell's near-miss in Baghdad. Back home, a mutiny against his first major reform left him similarly shaken and humbled. . . . [S]o far, his cryptic decision-making style at home and his why-can't-we-all-just-get-along approach abroad has diplomats wondering how effective the new secretary-general will be. Not surprisingly, Darfur provides a particularly incisive case study in futility for the new SG: When he met Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir in January, the secretary-general said he looked him in the eye and told him it was unacceptable for the violence to continue in Darfur and that he must live up to his agreement to allow peacekeepers into the western region.
"I made this case as hard as I could. He made his personal commitment to me that he will implement this agreement," Ban said.
A few weeks later, Bashir wrote a letter to Ban gutting his previous commitments to accept the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force. A lesser diplomat might have felt, I don't know, angered by such treatment. But Ban didn't let it faze him. He persevered and apparently got Bashir to say (maybe "personally commit"?) that he would accept 20,000 AU troops, but not under UN command. Bashir knows full well that the AU doesn't have anywhere near that number of troops to provide and that without substantial international participation there can be no effective civilian protection. Bashir knows that, but Ban apparently does not. "I think we broke the stalemate," he said.
Last week, after five AU soldiers were killed in Darfur and with attacks on AU forces on the rise, AU Commission head Alpha Oumar Konare warned that "it has become imperative and unavoidable, in the present circumstances, to speedily implement the [hybrid UN-AU] approach to the peacekeeping operation in Darfur." This week, a parade of diplomats -- including Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, Chinese envoy Zai Jun and South African President Thabo Mbeki -- is passing through Khartoum to push for the deployment of a hybrid force. So far, though, Khartoum's defiance has been without consequence for the Sudanese government.
(Photo of Ban Ki-Moon © UN.)
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4/05/07
3/15/07
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Interview:
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights from 1993 – 1998, and the United States Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 1998 – 2000, John Shattuck now heads the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston. In this interview, he discusses the politics of responding to genocide and the roadblocks encountered and caused by government agencies, the syndromes of past interventions gone bad, the public opinion stalemate, and the conflict resolution paradox. Mr. Shattuck concludes with ideas for bursting through these roadblocks and responding to low level conflicts before they turn into genocide.
This interview is the second of three that Voices on Genocide Prevention is producing in conjunction with Facing History and Ourselves. John Shattuck will participate in an online discussion on March 19th and 20th which you can join by registering here.
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Transcript
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3/13/07
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The "High-Level Mission" led by Nobel Prize-winner Jody Williams that the UN Human Rights Council dispatched to investigate Darfur reported back on Monday with the conclusion that was already obvious:The High-Level Mission concludes that the situation of human rights in Darfur remains grave, and the corresponding needs profound. The situation is characterized by gross and systematic violations of human rights and grave breaches of international humanitarian law. War crimes and crimes against humanity continue across the region. The principal pattern is one of a violent counterinsurgency campaign waged by the Government of the Sudan in concert with Janjaweed/militia, and targeting mostly civilians. Rebel forces are also guilty of serious abuses of human rights and violations of humanitarian law. . . . The Mission further concludes that the Government of the Sudan has manifestly failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes, and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes. As such, the solemn obligation of the international community to exercise its responsibility to protect has become evident and urgent. (Boldface and italics in original) Though the conclusion was obvious, that doesn't mean it will be accepted. Moves were reportedly afoot in the Human Rights Council to reject the report, apparently because it is too critical of Khartoum.
One detail in the report brilliantly captures both the brazeness of the Sudanese government and the impotence of the so-called international community. When Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir met with new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the end of January, Bashir provided "his personal commitment and assurance that the Sudan would fully cooperate with the Mission as constituted." Like so many other commitments made by Bashir, this one was, well, not to be believed. According to the Mission's report, All in all, more than a dozen attempts over the twenty-day period from 26 January through 14 February 2007 were made in Geneva, Addis Ababa and Khartoum to obtain our visas [to travel to Sudan] and secure the cooperation of the Government of the Sudan. Upon our return to Geneva, we continued to offer cooperation, seeking briefings and information from Government officials, but to no avail.
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3/08/07
2/18/07
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Advocacy groups were up in arms last week over reports that new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was going to merge the office of special advisor for genocide prevention, currently held by Juan Mendez, into some other office. So the issue was raised with the SG by reporters on Thursday. His response: First of all on this, I read a report suggesting that this is again an unsubstantiated report on the organization of genocide. I have not taken any action on either downgrading – this was a wrong report – and I am looking at the shortlist of nominating a successor to Mr. Mendez on this matter. I have a high priority on this very important issue, to prevent genocide. That clarifies things, doesn't it?
(Photo of Ban Ki-Moon © UN.)
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2/18/07
2/17/07
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NATO launched an air war against Serbia in 1999 to stop violent persecution -- perhaps even genocide -- of ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo. The result was a UN protectorate. But the province's "final status" remained up in the air. Serbia reluctantly accepted UN administration, while the Kosovar Albanians demanded independence. Earlier this month, UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland, presented his recommendation for resolving the conundrum. In not so many words, it described an independent Kosovo. And nobody was happy. Kosovar Albanians protested because independence was not explicit; two demonstrators were killed by rubber bullets in Pristina, Kosovo's capital. Meanwhile, the Serbian parliament overwhelmingly rejected Ahtisaari's plan. Approval of the plan rests with the UN Security Council, where Russia appears opposed, both because of its historical connections to Serbia and because of its concern about recognizing a regional claim to independence. What if the Security Council is paralyzed by a Russian veto? The Economist offers this prediction: [F]ar from saving Kosovo for Serbia, it risks tipping the region back into chaos. Kosovo will declare independence anyway, and many countries (including America and Britain) will recognise it. There will be no extra protection for Serbs, and no follow-on mission to the UN. If so, the two Albanians who died on February 10th may be only the first victims of a new round of violence.
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1/25/07
1/18/07
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