South Africa has a moral responsibility to help other countries in crisis, a Human Rights Institute of South Africa seminar heard on Tuesday.
”In our struggle for human rights, we were assisted by our brothers and sisters on the continent, so that creates a moral basis and a moral obligation for us to assist people in similar situations,” said the chief executive of the South African Human Rights Commission, advocate Tseliso Thipanyane.
He was speaking at a seminar in Johannesburg to commemorate the Global Day for Darfur and International Human Rights Day.
Thipanyane said the South African response to crises in other countries over the past 12 years was not good.
”Human rights are universal; all of us who are human activists should know that human rights know no borders.”
Dismas Nkunda, of International Refugee Rights in Uganda, agreed, and said South Africa had a moral responsibility, given the support provided to it during apartheid.
South Africa had a strong investment in Sudan’s oil industry and the South African government could use the influence to convince the Sudan government to stop killing the Sudanese people, Nkunda said.
As one of the leading members of the African Union, any decision given by South Africa at the AU will have a big impact on resolving the situation in Darfur.
Nkunda said since South Africa will be joining the United Nations Security Council in January 2007, it will give South Africa an important voice on what the world should do on the crisis in Darfur.
Nkunda said the situation in Darfur has the potential to be another genocide in the continent.
The troops sent by South Africa to the Darfur region are not enough, where women are raped and men are killed, Nkunda lamented.
On Monday, a visit by top-ranking South African National Defence Force officers to Sudan as part of a goodwill visit to South African troops deployed beyond the country’s borders had to be cancelled when the group was refused entry into Sudan.
Nkunda suggested that for South Africa to end the crisis in the war-torn region, more troops should be deployed, more money has to be provided and help should be provided to the AU to expand its force in Darfur.
Thipanyane said the South African government needs to explore effective ways to ensure that the violation of human rights in Sudan comes to an end. — Sapa