Mr. Chair, we meet this evening at an important moment of remembrance and reminder of witness and of the imperative for action, for we meet in the immediate aftermath of Holocaust Remembrance Day, whose enduring lesson is that the genocide of European Jewry succeeded not only because of the industry of death and the technology of terror, but because of crimes of indifference, because of conspiracies of silence.
We have witnessed an appalling indifference and silence in our own day to the unthinkable genocide in the Balkans and to the unspeakable genocide in Rwanda, unspeakable because the genocide in Rwanda was preventable. No one can say that we did not know. We knew and we did not act. In the same way that with respect to Darfur we knew and we know and we did not act, and we have not been acting sufficiently to arrest the killing fields. And so the moral injunction of never again has become tragically yet again, and again and again. The time has come, indeed it has past, to break down these walls of indifference, to shatter these conspiracies of silence, to sound the alarm, to scream as the students put it, to scream for Darfur.
I want to commend the students for taking the lead. As one of them put it yesterday, “The time for complacency, for gradualism, for foot dragging, for anything but overwhelming and immediate action is over”.
What follows is a 10 point agenda for action where Canada, in concert with the international community, can exercise the necessary moral, diplomatic and political leadership.
One, there must be a transformation of the African Union mission, which has fought valiantly to carry out its peacekeeping mission, into a multinational peacekeeping and protection force, pursuant to the UN chapter 7 responsibility to protect mandate, to put an end to the crimes against humanity and in a word to save Darfur. Two, we must ensure that the prospective multinational protection force has the necessary numbers, resources and capacity to fulfill and implement a robust civilian protection mandate. Three, we need to support and enforce UN Security Council resolutions to bring the war criminals to justice as a matter of priority and principle. Four, we need to enforce the UN Security Council resolutions banning offensive military flights which are responsible for killing fields as we meet. Five, the Government of Sudan itself is in standing violation of UN Security Council resolutions calling for the cessation of acts of violence, the banning of the offensive military flights, the enforcement of arms embargoes, the disarming of the Janjaweed, such that additional sanctioning measures under article 41 of the United Nations charter are necessary to hold the Sudanese authorities to account.
Six, there is now a desperate humanitarian crisis unfolding in Darfur, what I would call death by starvation, as a result of the announcement of cutbacks to rations by half, and this after the UN already 18 months ago characterized Darfur as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The Government of Canada must take the lead to ensure that donor nations fulfill their pledges and that humanitarian assistance reach the victims. Seven, we cannot ignore the recent ominous regionalization and internationalization of the conflict including the dangerous Iranian-Sudanese nuclear collaboration axis, the role of China as paymaster and collaborator in the killing fields and the Chad connection. Canada in concert with like-minded nations must address and combat the growing regionalization and internationalization of the conflict. Eight, we need to support the peace process in Abuja, but not allow it to become a diversionary tactic or to allow it to pre-empt what otherwise needs to be done to fulfill our civilian protection mandate. Nine, we need to ensure the protection of the refugees and internally displaced persons is intensified, permitting them to return safely to their homes. Finally, we need to convene an urgent meeting of world leaders from the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union and NATO to draft and implement a save Darfur action plan.
In conclusion, let us resolve that never again will we be indifferent to genocide. Never again will we be silent in the face of evil. Never again will we acquiesce in the killing fields, not on our watch. We will speak, we will act, and we will make never again a moral imperative and a reality.