The Darfur Crisis : Why has the World not acted ?

Résumé du document

"The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security". Based on this article of the United Nation charter, the Security Council has increasingly defined gross human rights abuses as threats to international peace and security throughout the 1990's. According to international Law, all States are sovereign. This means that they control their territory and their population and that no other nation should intervene in its internal affairs. However, under the 1948 Genocide Convention, adopted by the United Nation General Assembly, sovereignty is not a barrier to intervention. The first article states that "The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish".

Extraits

[...] It is the tasks of leader of states today, to understand and to find a balance between the needs of good internal governance and the requirements of an ever-more interdependent world” (qtd in Nsongurua J Udombana, 108). The notion of consent is linked with the one of sovereignty. The application of the resolution depends on the consent of Khartoum. According to Nsongurua J Udombana, this requirement does not have to be applied for the case in point. He describes Sudan as a “wasted land”. [...]

[...] The Abuja negotiations did not succeed. The UN has been “appallingly slow to put any real pressure on the Sudanese government” (Grono, 626). This lack of initiative is the most obvious proof of the unwillingness of the international community to be committed in this African crisis. The causes of this behavior will be discussed shortly later. The first UN sanction only came in March 2005, two years after the beginning of the crisis. But it took another year to make a list of the persons responsible for the failure of the implementation of the peace process and committing Human rights abuses. [...]

[...] The report recognizes the principle of non- intervention but argues that when a population suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect”. Intervention is a necessity when the State does not protect its citizens, it is not considered as coming against the principle of non- intervention, and it is a “substitution for the government”. Sovereignty is actually considered as the responsibility of a State to protect its citizens, but not as a right. [...]

[...] During the summer 2004, the crisis became more and more accurate. The United Nations decided to enforce a Joint Implementation Mechanism (JIM) to find a solution. However, the real issue came with the fact that among the Security Council, the major powers did not want to take any important initiative. They did not want to be politically implied (Iyob and Khadiagala 153). The solution was found in designating the African Union to intervene, with promise of the support of the United Nations. [...]

[...] However, its response has never been appropriate to the scope of the conflict. II. The International Response, the failure to intervene The Darfurian disaster continued without any consistent action from the international community to contain the humanitarian crisis. By July 2005, at least civilians had been killed in Darfur. Malnutrition and the spread of diseases had increased the number of casualties to The other victims in every conflict are the refugees. In Darfur, two million of people were internally displaces and had fled to Chad. [...]