Thousands of Darfurian refugees huddled under straggly trees in furnace-like heat and unforgiving desert winds in Eastern Chad while a group of Physicians for Human Rights experts stared at the landscape. Goats, donkeys, and other livestock looked like mere skeletons.
That was nearly three months ago, following a field investigation in which dozens of eyewitness testimonies from Sudanese refugees in Chad were taken. We called the Darfur crisis an unfolding genocide. We demanded immediate and concerted international intervention to save the lives of non-Arab Darfurians .
As we've reported, in Darfur, tens of thousands of non-Arab civilians have died of starvation and disease or been killed by Sudanese government forces and their Janjaweed militia. Hundreds of thousands more will die in the coming months if a more vigorous international response -- offering protection from ongoing attacks and ensuring unimpeded delivery of food, water, and medicine -- is not implemented.
For the record: There was a cease-fire. It was called in April 2004 between the rebel forces and the Sudanese government. Unfortunately, it was violated, and more than 100,000 people have died as a result. And in July, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a joint communiqué, demanding that Khartoum improve the security of the civilian population. But the government of Sudan has refused. In addition, it has blatantly defied two UN Security Council resolutions: Resolution 1556 on July 30, which demands that it disarm the Janjaweed and bring all those responsible for widespread human-rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law to justice, and Resolution 1564 on September 18, which implicitly threatens sanctions if it fails to fully comply with the first resolution.
After an extensive State Department-funded investigation this summer, which included more than 1,100 interviews with Darfur refugees in Chad, Secretary of State Colin Powell aptly called the Sudanese policy of mass killings, rape, and the forced expulsion of millions by its true name: genocide. At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on September 9, Powell said that the crisis in Darfur is a genocide that "may still be occurring.” This marks the first time that a country has accused another sovereign nation of active genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Those of us who visited Darfur in June thought that international pressure would have stopped the genocide. It hasn't.
Here is what we believe needs to be done:
Provide help for the victims. There is an urgent need for an enlarged African Union (AU) force, with strong logistical and financial support from the United States and other nations. The African Union requires a robust peacekeeping mandate to stop the violence and to protect the civilians, not merely to monitor. It must also have the authority and the ability to arrest those indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and to transfer them for trial in The Hague. In September, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, current head of the 53-nation regional block, said that with the proper funding, the AU could rapidly deploy up to 5,000 troops to Sudan. That would be a start, but many more would still be needed.
Stop the perpetrators. The ICC was created to address genocide and crimes against humanity when there is no prospect of accountability within the country where the crimes occur. The threat of perpetrators being arrested and prosecuted by the ICC could pressure Khartoum to stop its genocidal policies. Sudan, which has not ratified the ICC, is a textbook case of a state committing mass abuses against its own citizens who have no means of seeking justice from their persecutors.
The whole global community has a clear moral obligation to stop genocide before many more lives are lost. We cannot say we did not know. And we cannot say we did not have the means to stop it.
Richard Goldstone is a former prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia and a Physicians for Human Rights board member. John Heffernan, a Physicians for Human Rights investigator, traveled to the Chad-Sudan border in June.
