Human rights – A notion which is quite foreign to Africa’s governments?

If the Sudan takes the chair of the African Union Africa’s governments will in the opinion of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) completely lose their credibility. ”Giving this task to someone who commits genocide would not just be disservice for the attempts to bring peace and democracy to the black continent. This would also be an unbelievable affront to the surviving victims of the genocide in southern Sudan and in Darfur in the west of the country,” warned the GfbV expert Ulrich Delius on Monday. It is now the turn of the Sudan to take the chair, so at the summit meeting of the AU in Khartoum the Sudan will probably do so.

"The planned upgrading of the Sudan by the AU shows what a low value most of the African governments place on human rights”, criticises the GfbV. This is also shown by their blockading attitude in the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations (UN) or in the discussion of a reform of the UN human rights instruments.

The AU is also put to a severe test if it takes seriously its role as a peacemaker in Darfur. There in the west of the Sudan Arabian militia and troops of the future AU chairman from the Sudan is carrying out a campaign of destruction against his own population, to which since 2003 up to 400,000 black Africans have fallen victims. At the present moment 5,700 AU soldiers and observers are stationed in Darfur to supervise the keeping of the ceasefire agreement. At the same time the AU is negotiating with the Sudanese conflict parties in Nigeria for peace in Darfur.

The murdering in Darfur is continuing just as it is in the east of the Sudan in the land of the Beja. In southern Sudan some 2.5 million black Africans were killed by genocide from 1955 until the peace agreement in January 2005. The Nuba people in the Nuba region Kordofan bordering on southern Sudan were also victims of genocide from 1987 until 2003. The death roll there amounted to 500,000.