Showing posts with label United Nations. Show all posts

Dec 15, 2010

Human Rights Watch - Indifference to Duty

December 14, 2010

Indifference to Duty

Impunity for Crimes Committed in Nepal

Map of Nepal

Summary

Methodology

I. Impunity for Past Human Rights Abuses

Truth and Reconciliation and Disappearances Commissions

Role of the International Community and the National Human Rights Commission

II. Impunity for Recent Human Rights Abuses

Amrita Sunar, Devisara Sunar, and Chandrakala Sunar

Dharmendra Barai

Ram Hari Shrestha

III. Recommendations

To the Government of Nepal

To the Nepal Police Authorities and the Attorney General’s Office

To the Judiciary

To the National Human Rights Commission

To the International Community, especially Australia, China, the European Union, India, Japan, and the US

To the United Nations

Acknowledgements

Appendix: Updates on 62 Cases of Grave Human Rights Violations from Waiting for Justice

Apr 1, 2010

Afghan parliament's lower house rejects Karzai election proposals - washingtonpost.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post staff writer
Thursday, April 1, 2010; A09

KABUL -- The lower house of the Afghan parliament on Wednesday resoundingly rejected President Hamid Karzai's bid to change the nation's elections law and to exert more control over the commission that investigates voting fraud.

The vote represented a sharp rebuke of Karzai's effort this year to change the law by presidential decree while parliament was on recess, and a show of force by a legislature that has become increasingly willing to resist rubber-stamping presidential proposals.

The decision comes after the parliament rejected many of Karzai's proposed cabinet nominees, creating an ongoing state of political limbo, and amid pressure on him by the United States to do more to fight pervasive corruption.

"This is a very important day for Afghanistan's democratic institutions," said Peter D. Lepsch, a senior legal adviser for Democracy International in Kabul. "The legislative branch has used its constitutional authority to stem presidential power. That's a big deal."

The vote by the lower house, known as the Wolesi Jirga, does not appear to mean the end of Karzai's proposal to change the elections law. Afghan and Western officials said that the upper house must also vote on the decree. With parliamentary elections scheduled for September, some officials suggested that delaying long enough might allow the new law to survive.

"I would consider what you have now is a half rejection," one Western official in Kabul said on the condition of anonymity because the official is not authorized to speak publicly. "It is a significant move that the Wolesi Jirga overwhelmingly rejected the decree, but it doesn't give any finality."

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The most contentious proposed change in the elections law would allow Karzai to appoint three of five members of the Electoral Complaints Commission, the U.N.-led body that documented widespread fraud in last year's presidential election, much of it on Karzai's behalf, and became a target for his supporters. When Karzai initially signed the decree in February, it allowed him to appoint all five members of the commission, but under international pressure he compromised to allow the United Nations to appoint two foreign members.

This appointment proposal was a driving force for many lawmakers to vote against it by waving red cards in the air, according to Mirwais Yasini, the deputy speaker of the lower house.

"We had a very bad experience in the presidential election; it cannot be considered legal. The credibility of the current president is under question. Looking ahead, we have to have good transparency. We had to reject this law," he said.

The members present in the lower house -- about half the total -- overwhelmingly voted against the proposal.

Karzai's attempt to seize control of the complaints commission had political implications beyond Afghan elections. The move reportedly angered the White House enough to postpone a trip by Karzai to Washington, even though U.S. officials in Afghanistan initially seemed ambivalent about his proposed decree. Some U.S. officials viewed the parliamentary rejection Wednesday as a positive step, but confusion remained about which law would stand for the September elections.

"There is a lot of lack of clarity still," said the Western official in Kabul. "We have to prepare for all scenarios."

Amid the political wrangling, Afghans dealt with a fresh outburst of violence on Wednesday, when a bomb exploded in a marketplace in Helmand province, killing at least 13 people and wounding 45, Afghan officials said. The blast occurred in a crowded bazaar in the Nahr-e Saraj district, according to a provincial spokesman. Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak blamed the Taliban and said that such attacks continue to turn Afghans against the insurgents.

"This is the most cowardly act, to kill innocent people," he said. "When we're able to hold areas, a lot of people will be anti-Taliban."

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

Sep 27, 2009

"If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die":
How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor
Geoffrey Robinson

Cloth | February 2010 | $35.00 / £24.95
340 pp. | 6 x 9 | 22 halftones.

Shopping Cart | Endorsements | Table of Contents
Chapter 1 [PDF]

This is a book about a terrible spate of mass violence. It is also about a rare success in bringing such violence to an end. "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" tells the story of East Timor, a half-island that suffered genocide after Indonesia invaded in 1975, and which was again laid to waste after the population voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999. Before international forces intervened, more than half the population had been displaced and 1,500 people killed. Geoffrey Robinson, an expert in Southeast Asian history, was in East Timor with the United Nations in 1999 and provides a gripping first-person account of the violence, as well as a rigorous assessment of the politics and history behind it.

Robinson debunks claims that the militias committing the violence in East Timor acted spontaneously, attributing their actions instead to the calculation of Indonesian leaders, and to a "culture of terror" within the Indonesian army. He argues that major powers--notably the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom--were complicit in the genocide of the late 1970s and the violence of 1999. At the same time, Robinson stresses that armed intervention supported by those powers in late 1999 was vital in averting a second genocide. Advocating accountability, the book chronicles the failure to bring those responsible for the violence to justice.

A riveting narrative filled with personal observations, documentary evidence, and eyewitness accounts, "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" engages essential questions about political violence, international humanitarian intervention, genocide, and transitional justice.

Geoffrey Robinson is professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. His books include The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali. Before coming to UCLA, he worked for six years at Amnesty International's headquarters in London. From June to November 1999, he served as a political affairs officer with the United Nations in Dili, East Timor. Robinson lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

Endorsements:

"Those of us with a special interest in the final frenzy of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor will be deeply grateful to Geoffrey Robinson for the narrative power and depth of insight that makes his book the outstanding treatment of these events. But the value of his book goes far beyond that: as a historian who has thought deeply about political violence, as a human rights practitioner familiar with the ways of states and institutions that perpetrate and condone massive human rights abuses, and as a reflective participant in the UN mission that oversaw the referendum on East Timor's independence, Robinson is uniquely qualified to bring out the wider meanings of what happened in East Timor in 1999, and triumphantly succeeds in doing so."--Anthony Goldstone, coeditor of Chega!: Final Report of the East Timor Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation

"In this outstanding book, Robinson provides an authoritative and gripping account of the violence visited upon East Timor by the Indonesian Armed Forces that is unparalleled in documentation, sophistication, and insight. His appraisal of the conditions enabling the belated United Nations intervention in East Timor is likewise unrivalled in its combination of scholarly analysis and insider insights."--John Sidel, London School of Economics and Political Science

"This is the single most important book about the complex and dramatic events of 1999 in East Timor. Combining a scholarly analysis of violence with first-person reporting, it provides a profound and nuanced understanding of recent East Timorese history."--John Roosa, University of British Columbia

Table of Contents:

Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xv
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER TWO: COLONIAL LEGACIES 21
CHAPTER THREE: INVASION AND GENOCIDE 40
CHAPTER FOUR: OCCUPATION AND RESISTANCE 66
CHAPTER FIVE: MOBILIZING THE MILITIAS 92
CHAPTER SIX: BEARING WITNESS--TEMPTING FATE 115
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE VOTE 139
CHAPTER EIGHT: A CAMPAIGN OF VIOLENCE 161
CHAPTER NINE: INTERVENTION 185
CHAPTER TEN: JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION 205
CHAPTER ELEVEN: CONCLUSIONS 229
Notes 249
A Note on Sources 295
Bibliography 297
Index 313

Sep 24, 2009

Bulgarian Who Is to Lead Unesco Advocates Political Pluralism - NYTimes.com

By DAN BILEFSKY

PRAGUE — The Bulgarian diplomat who defeated the Egyptian culture minister in a close vote on Tuesday night to become the first woman to lead Unesco is a 57-year-old mother with two grown children, an expert in arms control and the daughter of an influential family who came of age during the cold war.

But the diplomat, Irina Bokova, who is the Bulgarian ambassador to France and Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said in an interview on Wednesday that growing up in Communist Eastern Europe had made her a fervent advocate of political pluralism and European integration.

She also said she intended to work to diminish the acrimony that underlay the five rounds of voting that led to her election.

Ms. Bokova said she had been a member of the Communist Party as a young person in Bulgaria out of necessity rather than by choice and, like her country, had long since shown a strong commitment to democracy. “I am from this cold war generation that lived through this period; we didn’t choose it,” Ms. Bokova said by telephone from Paris, where Unesco’s headquarters are located. “All my life I have shown I supported the political transformation of my country. I have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Ms. Bokova is a member of the Socialist Party, formerly Bulgaria’s Communist Party, now in opposition. Her father, Georgi Bokov, edited the country’s leading Communist newspaper. Like many children of the elite at the time, Ms. Bokova studied at Moscow’s State Institute of International Relations.

After defeating the Egyptian culture minister, Farouk Hosny, who was accused of anti-Semitism and censorship in his 22 years as culture minister, she called Mr. Hosny a friend. Trying to reach out to the Arab world, she emphasized that she came from a small town in southwest Bulgaria, which had a large Muslim population, and she said she was committed to multiculturalism. She is expected to be confirmed at the Unesco general conference on Oct. 15.

She said she would strive to give Unesco a more prominent role in talks on climate change and would focus more resolutely on gender roles, the financial crisis and other issues. As the first Eastern European director of Unesco, she said she would help improve the region’s prominence in cultural affairs.

Assen Indjiev, a Bulgarian television journalist, said Ms. Bokova was a consummate diplomat, someone who avoided ideological battles in favor of quiet diplomacy. “She is a conciliatory politician who prefers to be behind the scenes,” he said. “No one in Bulgaria believed that she would make it, because we are a small and poor country, but she was determined and she succeeded.”

Meglena Kuneva, a former Bulgarian foreign minister who is now the European commissioner for consumer affairs in Brussels, said Ms. Bokova’s election would “help improve Bulgaria’s image on the world stage.”

Yet her election also prompted some division in her country on Wednesday, with some Bulgarians questioning whether someone with a Communist past was qualified to lead the United Nations’ leading agency for culture and education. Some analysts in Bulgaria said her former ties to the Communist Party had touched a nerve among many Bulgarians, who were dissatisfied that former Communists were still in positions of power.

“Those who dislike Communism in this country are not happy about her promotion,” Ivo Indzhev, a Bulgarian political blogger, said in a telephone interview. “For people in this region, her appointment sends the message that the West can swallow someone’s Communist past very easily but can’t abide an Arab who is anti-Israel.”

A reader on Mr. Indzhev’s blog lamented that while even some people in censorship-prone Egypt had dared to criticize Mr. Hosny, the establishment in Bulgaria had chosen to gloss over Ms. Bokova’s past.

Diplomats said that as ambassador to France, Ms. Bokova was an effective champion of her country, summoning senior French officials to the embassy and presenting Bulgaria’s point of view, in particular when the European Union issued scathing reports criticizing Bulgaria for flouting the rule of law. As a candidate for vice president in 1996, she advocated Bulgaria’s membership in NATO and the European Union.

Fluent in English, French, Spanish and Russian, she said her real ambition had been to be a foreign correspondent, but that was not considered appropriate for a woman in Communist Bulgaria when she was young. “You were expected to be a good and loyal wife,” she said.

Qaddafi’s First U.N. Speech Is a Rambling Diatribe - NYTimes.com

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — The blaring cavalcade of world leaders whisking through the streets of New York has been a fall rite for 64 years, with one leader often thrusting himself above the din — a role played this year almost inevitably by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, making his first appearance despite 40 years in power.

After being introduced in the General Assembly Hall as the “leader of the revolution, the president of the African Union, the king of kings of Africa,” Colonel Qaddafi shattered protocol by giving a rambling speech that stretched for 90 minutes instead of the allotted 15.

Others went over the time, too, of course. But in the case of President Obama, also making his debut speech but forced to share the limelight, he was forgiven his 38 minutes because he made such a ringing endorsement of the American commitment to the world body. “We have re-engaged the United Nations,” he said to cheers.

Outside the building other rituals unfolded with gusto. Hundreds of protesters turned up to denounce the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who used the podium on Wednesday evening to defend his election in June. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France went jogging in Central Park. Security measures turned Midtown Manhattan into a clogged obstacle course, with agents muttering in their sleeves seeming to outnumber pedestrians.

Colonel Qaddafi — dressed in a brown traditional Libyan robe, embroidered vest and shirt, with a black pin of the African continent pinned to his chest — took about 17 minutes to get to the main point of his speech, which was a demand for an African seat on the Security Council.

He also suggested that those who caused “mass murder” in Iraq be tried; defended the right of the Taliban to establish an Islamic emirate; wondered whether swine flu was cooked up in a laboratory as a weapon; and demanded a thorough investigation of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

He offered to move the United Nations headquarters to Libya because leaders coming here had to endure jet lag and because the understandable security against another attack on New York by Al Qaeda was too stringent. And he repeated his longstanding proposal that Israel and the Palestinian territories be combined into one state called Isratine.

The Security Council “is political feudalism for those who have a permanent seat,” Colonel Qaddafi said, speaking in Arabic and riffling through various documents on the hall’s green marble podium.

“It should not be called the Security Council, it should be called the terror council,” he added. “Permanent is something for God only. We are not fools to give the power of veto to great powers so they can use us and treat us as second-class citizens.”

Although a red warning light illuminates after the 15-minute time limit, United Nations officials said they could not remember anyone interrupting a head of state to explain that the allotted time had expired.

Colonel Qaddafi also attracted attention far from the General Assembly Hall. His official home in New York was the mission on East 48th Street; Libyan diplomats briefly seemed to find a place for his controversial reception tent on a Westchester estate owned by Donald Trump in Bedford, N.Y., but he apparently had no plans to go there. At the mission, he welcomed Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, while some supporters outside sang his praises.

Inside the United Nations, reactions to his speech were mixed. Some world leaders were cursing him quietly all day because he threw off schedules for side meetings. “They were not happy,” said Heraldo Muñoz, the Chilean ambassador. “Everybody had to cancel meetings and postpone things and arrive late.” (The normal two-hour lunch break was canceled to squeeze in all the leaders scheduled to speak in the afternoon, although the lunch for world leaders hosted by Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, went ahead a little late.)

At one point in his speech, Colonel Qaddafi waved aloft a copy of the United Nations charter and seemed to tear it, saying he did not recognize the authority of the document. Speaking later in the day from the same podium, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said, “I stand here to reaffirm the United Nations charter, not to tear it up.”

Michele Montas, the United Nations spokeswoman, called the denigration of the charter “unacceptable.”

Arab ambassadors accustomed to tongue-lashings from the “brother leader” laughed off the speech as vintage Qaddafi, and at least one United Nations official expressed relief that he did not talk longer. The last General Assembly address of such length likely took place in 1960, when President Fidel Castro of Cuba delivered a similarly verbose speech with a parallel theme — that all weak states were likely to face aggression from the American superpower.

“I don’t think anybody has ever done a real study of General Assembly speeches because nobody listens to them,” said Stephen Schlesinger, a historian of the body. He noted that it was only the controversial leaders who really attract attention. “It seemed like pent-up fury. It seemed like he had been smoldering over all these issues for years and wanted to get it all out.”

Many seats in the grand hall were empty, as they often remain during the speeches because leaders prefer to chat in the hallways or simply escape the grandstanding on stage.

When a leader finishes speaking, there is a tradition of other heads of state going to shake his or her hand if they so desire. So many leaders leapt up to greet Mr. Obama that it took some 20 minutes to settle the hall back down, with the new assembly president, Ali Treiki, also a Libyan, pounding the gavel and saying, “Please take your seats,” over and over, in Arabic, English and French.

Aside from the tradition of Brazil speaking first and the host country, the United States, second, slots are assigned on a first-come-first-served basis. Colonel Qaddafi, who immediately followed Mr. Obama and whose speech contained no shortage of barbs against the United States without naming it directly, also heaped praise on the idea that the United States had elected a “son of Africa” as president.

In fact he suggested that Mr. Obama remain American president for a long time, not unlike his extended reign in Libya. (Colonel Qaddafi’s Green Book suggests that in a perfect state, the government disappears and the people rule, but Libyans note wryly that the colonel has never seemed to follow his own advice.)

Diane Cardwell and Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.

Sep 20, 2009

Diplomatic Immunity at Issue in Domestic-Worker Abuse Cases - washingtonpost.com

Image via Wikipedia

By Sarah Fitzpatrick
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, September 20, 2009

When Lauro L. Baja Jr. returned to his native Philippines in 2007, he had just finished a four-year stint as ambassador to the United Nations that included two terms as president of the Security Council. A storied diplomatic career that began in 1967 culminated with the Philippine president conferring upon him the highest award for foreign service. Then a three-month episode from his U.N. days returned to haunt him.

He was sued by Marichu Suarez Baoanan, who had worked as a maid in New York City for Baja and his wife, Norma Castro Baja.

Baoanan, 40, said the Bajas brought her to the United States in 2006 promising to find her work as a nurse. Instead, Baoanan said, she was forced to endure 126-hour workweeks with no pay, performing household chores and caring for the couple's grandchild. Baja denied the charges, saying Baoanan was compensated. He also invoked diplomatic immunity -- a right that usually halts such cases in their tracks.

But in June, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the former U.N. ambassador could not claim immunity because Baoanan's "duties benefited the Baja family's personal household needs, and are unrelated to Baja's diplomatic functions."

Baoanan's attorney, Ivy Suriyopas, called the ruling "an important shift" in cases involving diplomatic immunity.

"Only one other case involving diplomatic immunity and domestic workers was able to progress this far," Suriyopas said. Baja's attorney, Salvador E. Tuy, called the charges "untrue." The trial is ongoing.

The case highlights what advocates call a longtime pattern of trafficking and exploitation of domestic workers by foreign diplomats in the United States.

"Unfortunately, cases involving diplomatic employers represent a disproportionate amount of the domestic-worker abuse cases we see," said Suzanne Tomatore, director of the Immigrant Women and Children Project at the New York City Bar Justice Center.

A July 2008 Government Accountability Office report identified 42 cases of abuse by diplomats over an eight-year period but emphasized that the actual number was probably higher. "Nobody expected a number this big," said Thomas Melito, GAO director of the section on international affairs and trade. Under the Vienna Conventions, diplomatic immunity provides a shield from prosecution that is "almost absolute," said George Washington University law professor Sean Murphy, who spent 11 years in the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser.

Workers have historically had little success with complaints of abuse against diplomats. For example, Mildrate Yancho Nchang said she toiled for three years without pay or a day off and then was hospitalized after being beaten by a Cameroonian diplomat's wife. She sued in federal court in Maryland, but the case was dismissed in 2006 when the diplomat asserted immunity.

Advocates and lawyers say that the U.S. government does little to protect workers or hold foreign diplomats accountable. Local law enforcement is often the first to learn of allegations. However, with a diplomat involved, local authorities must wait for guidance from the Justice Department.

"Federal law enforcement doesn't have the capacity to take on every abuse allegation, and local law enforcement isn't always equipped to do so. Victims of abuse and trafficking find themselves in the gap between," Tomatore said.

Justice Department officials must confer with the State Department, the gatekeeper for all complaints against diplomats. As State Department officials weigh the implications of criminal or civil proceedings, a case can take months to resolve, the GAO said.

Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar said the GAO may have overstated the delays.

Although Justice declined to say how many probes it had undertaken, the GAO report cited 19 trafficking investigations involving foreign diplomats from 2005 to 2008. No case brought an indictment.

State Department officials say they must balance protocol and worker protections.

Recently, a draft copy of State's 2008 report on human trafficking cited high-profile cases involving diplomats from Kuwait and Tanzania. The reference to the two countries was cut from the final report, according to sources with knowledge of the draft report who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Luis CdeBaca, the ambassador at large on trafficking issues, said that his office takes abuse reports seriously but that the issue presents unique challenges.

"Immunity should not mean impunity to enslave domestic servants on U.S. soil, and we will continue to work to ensure that these domestic workers are accorded full rights and human dignity in our country," CdeBaca said.

But State has yet to deny or revoke a diplomatic visa or implement sanctions as a result of an abuse allegation.

There are signs of progress. In February 2008, State sent pamphlets to all overseas posts to inform incoming A-3/G-5 visa holders of their rights. Consular officials must verify that each applicant has understood the information. The pamphlet is available only in English.

In December, Congress reauthorized the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, with safeguards for visa holders. The law now requires State to assume greater oversight of complaints and cooperate more closely with Justice.

But the State Department has been slow to implement the policy changes required under the law.

Aug 28, 2009

U.N. Officials Turn Focus to Sudan’s South - NYTimes.com

Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — As the fighting in Darfur diminishes after years of conflict, senior United Nations officials say they are focused increasingly on the deteriorating situation in another part of Sudan: the south.

The shift in alarm has been building for months, but was reinforced late Wednesday when Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, the departing commander of the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, told reporters that the war in Darfur was essentially over.

“As of today, I would not say there is a war going on in Darfur,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “Militarily, there is not much. What you have is security issues more now. Banditry, localized issues, people trying to resolve issues over water and land at a local level. But real war as such, I think we are over that.”

Senior United Nations officials said that while General Agwai was basically correct, they did not want to play down the dire consequences some three million displaced people face in Darfur. Still, they noted, the escalating skirmishes in the south could reignite the civil war there, which in years past proved far more deadly than the conflict in Darfur.

“Whether it is characterized as a war or not, the reality is that threats against civilians do remain” in Darfur, said Edmond Mulet, the assistant secretary general for peacekeeping. Though the level of fighting has diminished there, he said, an additional 140,000 people have sought refuge in camps since January. “It is still far from peaceful,” he said.

Factors contributing to the diminished fighting include a splintering of opposition groups and reduced outside support, officials said. Most current deaths in Darfur come from criminal activity, United Nations officials said, while hundreds of people have been killed in recent months in clashes in the south.

The peace agreement between Khartoum and southern rebels signed in 2005 ended more than 20 years of fighting that killed some two million people. Since then, fighting has renewed along the possible border between north and south, an area rich in oil, as the 2011 deadline approaches for a referendum on southern independence.

The Obama administration has been publicly divided over how to characterize the Darfur conflict.

Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, has continued to call the conflict in Darfur genocide, and officials said she upbraided Rodolphe Adada, the departing civilian head of the peacekeeping forces, after he described Darfur as a “low-intensity conflict” this year.

Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said in a statement, “While the nature of the violence in Darfur may have changed, the crisis over all remains serious and unresolved.”

Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, a retired Air Force officer who is President Obama’s special envoy for Sudan, has described the situation in Darfur as the “remnants of genocide.” He issued a statement Thursday saying he was focused on “ensuring that any government-backed militias are disarmed, displaced persons can ultimately return to their homes, and the people of Darfur who have suffered so much can live in peace and security.”

Mr. Adada resigned after sustained criticism that he was too soft on the Khartoum government. General Agwai is rotating out, to be succeeded by another officer. Some United Nations officials and Darfur activists called it self-serving of the departing peacekeeping leaders to describe the conflict as settled.

“It undermines international urgency in resolving these problems if people are led to believe that the war in Darfur is over,” said John Prendergast, a founder of the Enough Project, an anti-genocide campaign.

The United Nations has long been criticized for failing to fulfill its mandate for some 26,000 peacekeepers in Darfur. It currently has 18,462 uniformed troops there, and predicts a 95 percent deployment by the end of the year, said Nick Birnback, the spokesman for peacekeeping operations.

Aug 26, 2009

Leader of Darfur Peacekeeping Mission Resigns

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) — The head of the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s Darfur region, who some diplomats say has been ineffective, is stepping down, United Nations officials said Tuesday.

Officials from the United Nations are working closely with the African Union to find a replacement for the head of the peacekeeping mission, Rodolphe Adada, who is a former foreign minister of Congo, said Marie Okabe, a United Nations spokeswoman.

The peacekeeping force in Darfur, known as Unamid, said in a statement that Mr. Adada’s resignation would take effect on Monday. Diplomats said he was expected to return to politics in Congo.

Gen. Henry Anyidoho of Ghana, deputy chief of the peacekeeping force, will be in charge until a permanent replacement for Mr. Adada is named, United Nations officials said.

The conflict in Darfur in western Sudan has been going on for more than six years. The United Nations says that as many as 300,000 people have died, while Sudan’s government has placed the official toll at 10,000. About 4.7 million people in Darfur rely on international aid to survive, according to the United Nations.

The peacekeeping force was established by a Security Council resolution in July 2007, but deployment of the peacekeeping troops has been slow and difficult.

At the end of June, about 60 percent of Unamid’s planned full strength of 26,000 troops and police officers had arrived in Darfur, an area roughly the size of France. The United Nations says it hopes that 90 percent of the troops will be on the ground by the end of the year.

The slow pace of deployment has frustrated the United Nations, its member states and aid workers. Diplomats and activists have also complained that the United Nations has done too little to revive the stalled Darfur peace effort.

John Prendergast, a former State Department official and co-founder of the Enough Project, an antigenocide group, said the peacekeeping force had been widely perceived as a failure.

“There is an urgent need to construct a more credible and effective peace process backed by stronger leverage,” he said.