Mr. Chair, when the House of Commons debated the Darfur issue on May 1, the situation in this western province of Sudan was already very serious. We were waiting for a peace agreement to be signed by the two rebel movements and the government of Khartoum.
Today, we are facing an even more serious situation, one which remains as violent as it is complex, and where atrocities continue to be carried out against civilians in violation of the peace agreement signed on May 5. Since last May, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur has continued to worsen and the people are suffering more than ever. Access to populations in need by humanitarian organizations is increasingly difficult. Just recently, those in charge of the world food program deplored the fact that more than 355,000 people in Darfur continue, after three months, to be deprived of food aid because of fighting and rebel attacks.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for the Sudan believes that this is the worse the situation has been since the beginning of the conflict in 2003. The situation has also deteriorated in Chad. Human Rights Watch has accused Chad and Sudan of “supporting armed groups responsible for serious crimes” in eastern Chad, where violence has caused hundreds of deaths and 50,000 were displaced in the first six months.
Besides worsening the humanitarian situation, the partial peace agreement on Darfur signed on May 5 by only one part of the rebel groups, “…is nearly dead. It is in a coma…”, said Jan Pronk, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan. This peace agreement “…ought to be under intensive care, but it isn’t”.
At the last debate on Darfur, the international community was faced with the same challenge: this is the first time that the international committee must try to enforce the responsibility to protect. The responsibility to protect, let us recall, recognizes the need to take resolute action in order to protect people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
Since the last debate on Darfur, a historical step was taken when, on May 28, 2006, the Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on the responsibility to protect, which supported the resolution adopted by the General Assembly in October 2005.
One of the essential keys to enforcing this responsibility to protect is to rely on the forces present and to ensure that the parties involved make peace themselves. A peaceful and negotiated solution is always preferable. “When peace comes from external violence, even if that is sometimes unavoidable”, as my colleague, the member for La Pointe-de-l'Île, said during the last debate, “it brings its share of serious consequences which make the future extremely difficult”.
Several experts and not-for-profit agencies, including the International Crisis Group, to name but just one, have pointed to the international community’s lack of will as being one of the main causes of the failure, not only of the implementation of the May 5 peace agreement, but also of the acceptance by the Sudanese government of a United Nations force that would take over from the African Union force to protect the people of Darfur.
Given the urgency of the situation, the international community must demonstrate greater determination and must continue to do all in its power to convince all the players directly or indirectly involved in this conflict of the merits of sending a UN force.
Just recently, all the rebel groups in Darfur—including the former rebel faction of Minni Minawi, currently in the government—expressed their support for sending UN peace soldiers. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement, a partner in the Sudanese government that represents southern Sudan, also voted in favour of the presence of a United Nations force in Darfur, as did most of the Sudanese political parties.
That is encouraging. The international community needs to keep up the pressure and to press on, without letting up and without losing its sense of urgency, and must rally all the other actors—including, obviously, President Omar al-Bashir at the top of the list—around an effective solution to the crisis in Darfur. The international community must give him assurances and persuade him that a UN force will not open the door to re-colonization of Sudan. That was not and is not the case with the UN mission—UNMIS—that is already present in southern Sudan. There is no reason why a UN mission to Darfur would be different. The only objective here is to protect populations that are in grave danger. That objective will be achieved while fully respecting the sovereignty of the Sudanese nation.
Many people agree that China and Russia are also two important players in this conflict. Indeed, President al-Bashir prides himself on maintaining excellent relations with both of those countries. And both of those countries abstained from voting for resolution 1706 authorizing the deployment of UNMIS in the Darfur region under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.
The international community, including Canada, should put more pressure on China and Russia to have those two countries step up and support replacing the African Union mission with a United Nations mission in Darfur. They must urge China and Russia to step up and put pressure on the Sudanese government to accept that substitution.
The international community and Canada must also approach the Arab League and the other countries in the region affected by the conflict, so that they too will step up and approach the Sudanese government to persuade it of the wisdom of a UN mission in Darfur.
It is also important that the international community continue to press on to persuade the rebel parties who did not sign the peace agreement of May 5 to join it, as Jan Pronk suggests. The holdout rebel parties must be persuaded of the merits of an agreement like this, and it will have to be improved, if need be, and again as Pronk proposed, in order to get the groups that feel left out of the agreement to support it. The welfare of an entire population depends on this.
At the end of May there were already thirty commanders and political representatives from the dissident branches in the minority faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement who had signed a statement committing themselves to supporting the May 5 agreement.
We can see that the conditions that are needed for the situation in Darfur to continue to deteriorate are all present. On the other hand, measures that can foster a resolution of the conflict are also within reach.
The fate of thousands of people and of an entire population that has had its share of misfortune, the future of thousands of children and the future of Darfur itself, demand that Canada and the international community continue to act with sensitivity and tact to persuade the parties involved in the conflict to come to an agreement.
The extreme gravity of the situation demands this increased effort on the part of Canada and the international community. We must come to the aid of the people of Darfur. We must not let them die before our eyes. A little of our own humanity would die with them.