Sudan: Peace Deal Must Tackle Past Abuses

(Nairobi, November 18, 2004) — The impunity enjoyed by the Sudanese authorities in their ongoing atrocities in Darfur demonstrates why the near-final peace deal to end the country’s North-South conflict must include accountability for human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said today.

Unless they are held accountable for abuses in the South, the Sudanese authorities will continue to believe they can get away with murder in Darfur. There’s still time for U.N. Security Council members meeting in Nairobi to insist that the final peace agreement includes accountability for past abuses and protections against future ones. Jemera Rone,   Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch

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On November 18-19, the United Nations Security Council will hold an extraordinary session in Nairobi to push the North-South peace negotiations to a conclusion. The draft peace deal to end the 21-year conflict is known as the Naivasha protocols, named after the Kenyan town where the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) have negotiated a series of protocols since June 2002.  
 
“Unless they are held accountable for abuses in the South, the Sudanese authorities will continue to believe they can get away with murder in Darfur,” said Jemera Rone, Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch. “There’s still time for U.N. Security Council members meeting in Nairobi to insist that the final peace agreement includes accountability for past abuses and protections against future ones”.  
 
In a new briefing paper addressing the human rights shortcomings in the Naivasha protocols, Human Rights Watch called for prosecutions of those implicated in grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Sudan. In addition, it called for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to ensure full disclosure of human rights abuses in the armed conflicts that have ravaged Sudan since 1983.  
 
Human Rights Watch said that the international mediators—led by the United States, Britain and Norway—have a solemn responsibility to insist that both the government and the rebels be held accountable for past abuses, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.  
 
“A North-South peace deal is vital for the people of Sudan, who have suffered a war that has killed two million people,” Rone said. “But we have learned the hard way that ignoring grave abuses such as those we saw in the South will not bring Sudan lasting peace.”