• CRISIS GROUP: A New Sudan Action Plan • HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: Sexual Violence Among Displaced Persons in Darfur and Chad • UNITED KINGDOM: Darfur, Sudan: The Responsibility to Protect • GLOBAL IDP PROJECT: Darfur Crisis Adds to Challenge of Mass Return to the South • MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES: The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur • UNITED NATIONS: Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur • AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Sudan: Who Will Answer for the Crimes? • AEGIS TRUST: Darfur: Blueprint for Genocide • WHO: Retrospective Mortality Survey Among IDPs in Greater Darfur • BICC: The Role of External Actors in the War Economies of Sudan INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP A New Sudan Action Plan April 2005 Despite recent Security Council resolutions and a peace agreement covering part of the country, Sudan remains at war, with as many as 10,000 or more civilians dying monthly in Darfur. The UN, NATO and the EU need to get together urgently with the AU, decide who can do what best and then do it without regard for institutional prerogatives or national prestige. How to maximise cooperation to get the necessary additional troops on the ground quickly with equipment, structure and command organisation to be effective is probably the single most urgent and complex issue the international community faces in Sudan. More action is needed to protect civilians and relief agencies in Darfur; implement accountability; build a Darfur peace process; implement the Khartoum-SPLM agreement; and prevent new conflict in the east before it becomes the next major war. Continue Reading More Humanitarian Intervention HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH Sexual Violence and its Consequences among Displaced Persons in Darfur and Chad April 2005 The Human Rights Watch briefing paper documents how the Sudanese security forces, including police deployed to protect displaced persons, and allied Janjaweed militias continue to commit rape and sexual violence on daily basis. Even as refugees in Chad, women and girls fleeing the violence in Darfur continued to face the risk of rape and assault by civilians or militia members when collecting water, fuel or animal fodder near the border. Human Rights Watch interviewed many victims of sexual violence in camps in Chad and Darfur during two research missions to these areas in February. Continue reading More on Gender and Security and Refugees and Internally Displaced People U.K. HOUSE OF COMMONS INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE Darfur, Sudan: The Responsibility to Protect March 2005 Two years after the crisis in Darfur erupted, the international community is still failing to protect the people of Darfur from crimes committed against them, primarily by the Government of the Sudan and its allied militias. In our (the U.K. House of Commons' International Development Committee's) view, the crimes committed are no less serious and heinous than genocide. The violence and suffering continue. More than two million people have been forced to flee from their homes, many left with absolutely nothing. Nearly two and a half million people are currently in need of humanitarian assistance, a figure that looks likely to rise to four million over the course of 2005. The World Health Organization’s widely-quoted mortality estimate of 70,000 is a gross underestimate. Jan Egeland, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, has stated that the real figure is likely to be several times that estimate. That is, we suggest, somewhere around 300,000. Continue reading More on Humanitarian Intervention GLOBAL IDP PROJECT Darfur Crisis Adds to Challenge of Mass Return to the South Following Historic Peace Deal March 2005 New prospects for a lasting peace in Sudan after two decades of civil war have been over-shadowed by the continuing crisis in Darfur. Sudan has been home to the world's worst displacement crisis. An estimated six million of its citizens have been forced from their homes, as a result of over 20 years of fighting between government troops and allied militias on the one hand and various insurgent groups on the other. In the Darfur region of western Sudan alone, the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) was approaching two million by March 2005, with no end to the suffering in sight. An historic peace deal was signed in January 2005 by the government and its main opponent in the South, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), after two years of negotiations, bringing a formal end to Africa's longest-running civil war. A cease-fire signed in October 2002 had already encouraged hundreds of thousands of IDPs to begin returning to the South. Now that a peace deal has been concluded, many more are expected to return and will need assistance to reintegrate, along with half a million returning refugees. Local communities will equally need support to recover from the devastating effects of war. Continue reading More on Refugees and Internally Displaced People MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur March 2005 Since early 2003, the people of Darfur have endured a vicious campaign of violence, which has forced almost 2 million people to flee from their destroyed villages in search of safety. Rape against women children and men has sadly been a constant factor in this violence throughout this campaign of terror. The stories of rape survivors give a horrific illustration of the daily reality of people in Darfur and especially of women and young girls, the primary victims of this form of violence. Rape, a feature of the attacks on their villages, has now followed them insidiously into their places of refuge. Families, in order to sustain themselves, have to continue collecting wood, fetching water or working their fields. In doing so, women have to make a terrible choice, putting themselves or their children at the risk of rape, beatings or death as soon as they are outside the camps, towns or villages. Rape has serious consequences for womens’ health and well-being, especially without adequate access to health care and general proper attention. Between October 2004 and the first half of February 2005, doctors from MSF treated almost 500 rape victims in Darfur. Given the great sense of shame, humiliation and fear felt by victims of sexual violence, a sense which discourages them from going to a health facility to receive treatment, MSF strongly believes that the numbers recorded are only a partial representation of the real number of victims. Continue reading More on Gender and Security, Children and Armed Conflict and Health and Security INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON DARFUR Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the United Nations Secretary-General January 2005 A report by a United Nations-appointed commission of inquiry into whether genocide has occurred in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region has found that the Government and Janjaweed militia are responsible for crimes under international law and strongly recommends referring the dossier to the International Criminal Court (ICC). While concluding that the Government has not pursued a policy of genocide, the Commission found that Government forces and militias "conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement." Summarizing the 177-page report, Secretary General Kofi Annan called on the Security Council to consider possible sanctions over what the Commission called "serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law amounting to crimes under international law." The five-person Commission also found credible evidence that rebel forces were responsible for possible war crimes, including murder of civilians and pillage. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and up to 1.85 million others are internally displaced or have fled to neighbouring Chad since rebels took up arms in early 2003, partly in protest at the distribution of economic resources. Continue reading More on International Law, Justice and Accountability and Human Rights AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Sudan: Who Will Answer for the Crimes? January 2005 To ensure an end to impunity for the worst crimes committed in conflicts in the Sudan, this report argues that the UN Security Council must refer the situation in the country, including Darfur, to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. In the same way, it should refer to the Prosecutor situations anywhere in the world where crimes under international law occur. The UN Security Council has repeatedly emphasized concern at the failure of Sudan to end impunity and must now act to remain coherent. The International Criminal Court would, however, only try a handful of those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The UN Security Council and the international community must also support a comprehensive reform of the Sudanese justice system so as to enable it to bring to justice perpetrators of serious crimes under international human rights and humanitarian law. Continue reading More on International Law, Justice and Accountability and Human Rights AEGIS TRUST Darfur: Blueprint for Genocide November 2004 International law allows wide scope for preventing genocide. There are huge moral and political obligations to do so. The United Nations Genocide Convention (1948) sets a clear legal framework enabling prevention. Resolve and action to prevent depend, however, on the political will to do so. The presence of an exclusionary ideology (usually meaning institutionalised or organised racism) helps to differentiate a genocidal situation from a two-sided conflict. Genocide is organised violence on a massive scale, but it is more akin to extreme racism than extreme conflict. Darfur is suffering the outcomes of ethnic and tribal conflict, power struggles and competition for land. In recent decades, however, an exclusionary ideology has driven policies of the current and previous Government of Sudan (GoS) that have led to jihad and outcomes that can be regarded as genocide. Continue reading More on Armed Conflict, Governance and Security and International Law, Justice and Accountability WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION Retrospective Mortality Survey Among the Internally Displaced Population, Greater Darfur, August - September 13, 2004 September 2004 In February 2003 the conflict in Darfur escalated, affecting about 2.2 million people. An estimated 1.2 million people were internally displaced, seeking refuge in towns and villages in Darfur and also across the border in Chad. In August 2004, 127 settlements for internally displaced populations (IDP) had been identified in Darfur and 15 refugee camps in Chad. The primary objective of the study was to estimate crude mortality rate in the 62 days from 15th June to 15th August 2004, among the Internally Displaced Population (IDP) present in the settlements at the time of the survey, in each of the three states of Greater Darfur (North, West and East) region. The mortality rate was calculated as the number of deaths per 10,000 persons per day. Secondary objectives of the study were: to describe demographic characteristics of the study population; to identify the major causes of death (fever, respiratory infections, diarrhoea, injury/violence, and other); and to describe basic service availability for IDP populations. Continue reading More on Refugees and Internally Displaced People and Health and Security BONN INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR CONVERSION Rejuvenating or Restraining Civil War: The Role of External Actors in the War Economies of Sudan September 2004 Within the last five years, Sudan has gone from being a net importer of oil to producing some 250,000 barrels per day. In the political arena, the revenue from oil had a direct impact on the delicate balance of military power between the Government of Sudan and its principal enemy, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). This report analyzes how the funds from the oil boom have allowed the government side to buy modern weapons in Eastern Europe and Asia, giving it the upper hand against its lightly-armed opponents. This report does not argue that southern Sudan's armed conflict of several decades is primarily about access to natural resources (or 'greed'). It shows that the origins of the fighting can be traced back to colonial times and that the parties are motivated by a mix of ideologies and the quest for political power. However, this report shows how oil has altered the dynamics of the civil war. Continue reading More on Armies, Paramilitaries and Non-State Armed Groups and Natural Resources and Armed Conflict Compiled by Robert Hartfiel Human Security Research is produced by the Human Security Centre at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC. The Human Security Centre produces the annual Human Security Report and is funded by the governments of Canada, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. For more information on human security visit the Human Security Gateway, an online research and information database that contains a broad range of human security-related resources. To subscribe to Human Security Research , send an email to hsc.list@ubc.ca with 'subscribe HS Research' in the subject field or click here. 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