Living up to our 'Responsibility to Protect' in Darfur
At the UN World Summit in 2005, world leaders unanimously adopted the principle of the Responsibility to Protect.
“The principle stipulates, first, that states have an obligation to protect their citizens from mass atrocities; second, that the international community should assist them in doing so; and, third, that, if the state in question fails to act appropriately, the responsibility to do so falls to that larger community of states. R2P should be understood as a solemn promise made by leaders of every country to all men and women endangered by mass atrocities.”
-according to the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect
| |
| With the Save Darfur Coalition report's launch, Crisis Action organized a press conference in New York for the UN press corps, a media stunt outside the UN involving a helicopter and national work in all major target countries. |
But on the one-year anniversary of the UN resolution agreeing to make good on that obligation in the Darfur region of Sudan, authorizing a joint UN – African Union (UNAMID) force to support peacekeeping efforts, a report endorsed by 36 Human Rights groups calls the international community’s lack of contributions to the effort a “betrayal”.
The report, by the Save Darfur Coalition, says helicopters are vital to the success of the peacekeeping mission, yet no country has offered a single helicopter.
Four members of The Elders who traveled to Sudan last year – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Lakhdar Brahimi, President Jimmy Carter and Graça Machel – contributed the foreword, stating:
“This report sets out for the first time which states have the necessary helicopters and estimates how many are available for deployment to Darfur. It identifies a number of countries -- including the Czech Republic, India, Italy, Romania, Spain and Ukraine -- that have large numbers of helicopters that meet the required specifications and are not on mission or mission rotation elsewhere. Many of these helicopters are gathering dust in hangars or flying in air shows when they could be saving lives in Darfur.”
It also says that peacekeepers are short of even basic equipment, with some soldiers wearing blue plastic bags on their heads because they do not have the standard blue UN helmet.
Groups like the Save Darfur Coalition are joining with human rights organizations and people around the world to pressure states to live up to the Responsibility to Protect.
Do your part. Pledge to stand up for Human Rights and take action. You can learn more about Save Darfur Coalition’s work and read their report "Grounded: the International Community's Betrayal of UNAMID" at globefordarfur.org. Learn more about Amnesty International’s work in Sudan here.
