Crimes Against Humanity (Updated)

report of the U.N. Secretary General; and the ICC Prosecutor’s briefing. In March the Council referred Darfur to the ICC and the Prosecutor opened an investigation on June 6.

Although the U.N. Security Council established a mechanism in March 2005 to enforce a partial arms embargo and to impose sanctions on individuals committing abuses, not a single person has yet been sanctioned by the U.N.

“Nine months ago the Security Council set up a Sanctions Committee to penalize individuals responsible for abuses in Darfur but it has yet to act against anyone,” said Takirambudde. “If the Security Council wants to see real progress in Darfur it must act now.”

There’s also this:

The African Union is not only providing troops in Darfur; it is negotiating a peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the Darfur rebel groups. Despite the Sudanese government’s involvement in ongoing crimes in Darfur, the A.U. is allowing Sudan to host January’s A.U. summit in the capital, Khartoum. A new A.U. president is also due to be elected, and there are indications that President Bashir might obtain the post.

Update: Eric Reeves writes about this, under the heading “Darfur Betrayed“:

Without public objection from any African leader, the next African Union summit is scheduled to be held in Khartoum, January 23-24, 2006. The countries of the AU have evidently concluded that a regime guilty of massive, ongoing genocidal destruction can serve as an appropriate host for the business of Africa. Such a conclusion is wholly remarkable, since presumably the business of Africa includes the vast human catastrophe in Darfur that has been engineered by this very same regime of genocidaires. […]

It is a profound scandal that not a single African leader has publicly objected to this travesty, even as not a single African country has dared to declare the realities of Darfur to be genocide, despite overwhelming evidence of the ultimate human crime. Tragically, this moral cowardice and political perversity are reflected everywhere in AU policy toward Darfur, a policy that is increasingly defined not merely by inadequacy and incompetence, but by shameful expediency.