Coalition urges 'wake-up call' to address Darfur genocide

OTTAWA — A human rights group and a band of MPs issued a “wake-up call” Tuesday to Canada and other countries to help stop the genocide in Darfur, warning that the worst of the atrocities may still be ahead.

Irwin Cotler, a former Liberal MP and cabinet minister and now a human rights advocate, said Canada and its international allies need to do more to pursue peace in the western Sudanese region, help citizens evade the war zones through safe corridors, and provide other forms of humanitarian assistance.

Cotler, a key member of a “Save Darfur” coalition of MPs that was founded 22 years ago during the previous crisis, said it’s “tragic and painful” that the region is facing another genocide. The MPs told reporters that another all-party parliamentary coalition has been re-established to address the situation.

The human disaster was foreseeable, said Cotler, who is also the founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR). “It’s not as if the compelling horrors were not known,” he said during a press conference in Ottawa. “It’s that they were not acted upon.”

Mutasim Ali, a legal advisor at the Wallenberg centre, said the terror in Darfur puts pretty much everybody in the region of 7.5-million people at risk.

Darfur, an independent region until 1874, has been facing a humanitarian crisis for most of the last 22 years due largely to a battle for political power and rivalries between domestic religious and ethnic groups.

Cotler also highlighted the findings of the centre’s recent independent inquiry on the atrocities in Sudan. The inquiry, which focused largely on the child victims, found that what began more than two years ago as a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has escalated into one of the world’s worst crises. The atrocities include mass starvation, forced displacement, deliberate attacks on the young and vulnerable, sexual violence, enslavement and of course mass murder.

The report, titled A War on Children, A World Complicit, found substantial evidence that RSF and its allied militias are committing genocide and ethnic cleansing against non-Arab populations in Darfur, particularly around the western Sudanese city of El Fasher.

The report also pointed the finger at the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kenya and Chad for supporting or enabling the atrocities. There is also strong evidence, the report says, that China, Russia, and the UAE have supplied arms to the two sides.

The struggle for power has hit children particularly hard, the group found. Despite the scale of the atrocities, UNICEF and some other non-governmental organizations are struggling to provide for the local population, including life-saving assistance for 15 million children.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine are distracting the world’s attention from the genocide and atrocities in Darfur.

National Post

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