Comment

Failed

No one can say the war in the west of Sudan is receiving too little attention. The media have been reporting for weeks about attacks on the civilian population by the Sudanese government and the militias in their pay and about the plight of refugees. Darfur is also high on the international political agenda: innumerable appeals have been made to stop the violence and let help through to the refugees. The European Union wants to finance an African observer mission. The German government calls for UN blue helmets. And at a Geneva conference in early June, the donor countries pledged more emergency aid.

All very laudable but too late. The American development agency USAID fears that as many as a million people in Darfur could die of starvation or disease in the coming months. 300,000 deaths are inevitable, it says, whatever action is taken now. Even if these figures should prove exaggerated, one thing is certain: again the international community has failed dismally to timely help people facing the threat of war and famine.

As long ago as February 1999, the BBC reported of “armed clashes” and “up to 100,000 people who have been displaced”. The long-simmering crisis in Darfur was obviously getting worse – with the government as one of the conflict parties. What that would mean for the population had at that time already been shown by the killing in the south of Sudan.

In February 2003, Amnesty International warned of a full-scale war. Not long afterwards, the United Nations’ then special rapporteur for human rights in Sudan, Gerhart Baum, told the UN Human Rights Commission of signs of ethnic cleansing by Khartum. And in June 2003, Sudan expert Marina Peter complained to members of the European Parliament that all the warnings coming out of the war zone had been ignored for two whole years. Darfur makes it crystal clear that international crisis management lacks “early action”, not “early warning”.

Only in December 2003, when the United Nations said the humanitarian situation in Darfur was one of the worst in the world, did the wheels of diplomacy and relief machinery finally start to turn. At the end of February, the US State Department noted that the Sudanese government had declared that humanitarian access will be ensured for relief agencies. But it took another three months for that actually to happen. In the interim, the African states in the UN Human Rights Commission prevented the Sudanese government being described as what it is: a gang of murderers. Africa blocked a draft resolution tabled by the European Union that called on Khartum to end the war. Instead, the Commission approved a wishy-washy statement about working “to enhance the efforts of the Government of Sudan (...) in the peace process”. Only the United States voted against this poor sort of compromise.

On April 6, the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, many politicians looked at Darfur and said the world now had to show it had learned from its failure in 1994. The message Rwanda sent out to victims of future crises was: “Look out for yourselves because we won’t help you.” The message of Darfur is: “We will help you – but not until the worst cannot be averted.” Not what one would call progress.