CIAO DATE: 11/5/2006

Getting the UN into Darfur

October 2006

International Crisis Group

Abstract

The impasse over deploying a major UN peacekeeping force to Darfur results directly from the international community’s three-year failure to apply effective diplomatic and economic pressure on Sudan’s government and its senior officials. Unless concerted action is taken against the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), Khartoum will continue its military campaign, with deadly consequences for civilians, while paying only lip service to its many promises to disarm its Janjaweed militias and otherwise cooperate. No one can guarantee what will work with a regime as tough-minded and inscrutable as Sudan’s, but patient diplomacy and trust in Khartoum’s good faith has been a patent failure. The international community has accepted the responsibility to protect civilians from atrocity crimes when their own government is unable or unwilling to do so. This now requires tough new measures to concentrate minds and change policies in Khartoum.

UN Security Council Resolution 1706 (31 August 2006) extended to Darfur the mandate of the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), which presently has 10,000 personnel in-country monitoring the North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement: it “invited” the consent of the Sudanese government to the deployment of 20,600 UN peacekeepers. This expanded UN force was in effect to take over the African Union’s overstretched African Mission in Sudan (AMIS), which – although threatened with expulsion in September – has now been extended to the end of December, with its numbers on the ground expected to grow to 11,000.

 

Full Text (PDF, 20 pages, 447 KB)