Il blog di Italians for Darfur

mercoledì, maggio 09, 2012

Segnalazione: "Why did the United Nations stop reporting atrocities in Darfur?" - By Colum Lynch | Foreign Policy

The Silence in Sudan - By Colum Lynch | Foreign Policy
Why did the United Nations stop reporting atrocities in Darfur?

Darfur once captured the world's attention as a contemporary symbol of the international failure to confront mass atrocities. In recent years, however, it has fallen off the radar screen, as the level of government-sponsored violence has subsided and as other pressing Sudanese crises, including the threat of war between Sudan and South Sudan, have captured the headlines.
But there is another reason you don't hear much about the troubles in Darfur these days: The United Nations human rights agencies essentially stopped issuing public reports on abuses there three and a half years ago, according to U.N. officials, human rights advocates, and a leaked U.N. report. The sunnier accounts of events in Darfur in some ways reflects the tendency of the U.N. and African Union leadership to trumpet the successes of a peace process that they have helped brokered, and downplay its failures. But the long silence owes much to the Sudanese government practice of intimidating U.N. officials and independent aid workers into remaining quiet or minimizing government violations -- by threatening possible expulsion or harassment on the ground.
Indeed, the U.N.'s reticence to report publicly on rights abuses intensified after the Sudanese government expelled 13 relief organizations in March 2009, heightening fears that open criticism of the regime could trigger a swift crackdown on outsiders. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has not issued a single report on abuses in Darfur, Sudan, since January 2009... [continua su Foreign Policy]