Sudan on Tuesday rejected as invalid the findings of a United Nations human rights mission that accused Khartoum of orchestrating and taking part in gross violations in Darfur.
Sudan’s Justice Minister Mohamed Ali Elmardi also told the UN’s Human Rights Council, which had dispatched the mission, that the humanitarian situation in Sudan’s vast western region was ”much more stable now”.
The minister said all the UN team’s original five members had not taken part in the mission, which travelled to the region last month but was not allowed into Darfur, and that this meant it was ”no longer valid”.
”We therefore strongly and resolutely oppose any consideration by this esteemed council of any report that comes out of this mission,” he said in remarks to the 47-state council.
The team, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams, was asked to investigate charges of widespread abuse in Darfur, where observers say about 200 000 people have been killed and more than two million driven from their homes since revolt broke out in 2003.
”The situation is characterised by gross and systematic violations of human rights and grave breaches of international humanitarian law,” the mission said in a report released on Monday.
”The mission further concludes that the government of Sudan has manifestly failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes,” the 35-page report said.
But Elmardi accused Williams of having a ”preconceived and hostile attitude against Sudan”.
In his speech, the minister said two of the five-member team appointed by the chairperson of the council to report on Darfur had dropped out of the mission.
But only Indonesia’s ambassador officially withdrew after Khartoum refused to grant visas to team members. Gabon’s ambassador did not travel with the others to Chad, which borders on Darfur and where the team interviewed humanitarian officials and refugees.
But he signed up to the report’s conclusions, which are due to be presented formally to the council on Friday. — Reuters