Mr. Chair, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Yukon.
I rise tonight to add my voice to those who are calling for the fastest possible transition from the AU observer mission to a United Nations led, full chapter VII, all necessary means approach to the humanitarian disaster in Darfur.
I would like to emphasize the fine work that has been done by Canadians in addition to the support that the minister and the parliamentary secretary mentioned that Canada is providing both in logistics and equipment as well as in humanitarian aid, but also in diplomatic aid. As has been noted, our ambassador to the United Nations, Allan Rock, is in Abuja now trying to assist those negotiations.
The current Government of Canada and the previous government have had the wise counsel of Senator Roméo Dallaire and Senator Mobina Jaffer, who are highly experienced in that area of the world, as well as Robert Fowler, ambassador for Africa and ambassador in Italy. This has certainly been a tremendous support for peace activities in that area, but it is not sufficient and we must do more.
I would like to use my brief time to talk about the beginning of the 21st century when there were two important changes in international criminal law which must be brought to bear in order to bring peace to this area. The first is the realization that over the last 100 years those killed in wars have shifted from 80% plus being members of military forces and 20% or less being civilians to where now, it is the reverse and over 80% of the victims of war are civilians. We have seen the growth in humanitarian intervention law around the concept of human security and moving away from the inviolability of state sovereignty and the Westphalia tradition. This is a major advancement.
We have seen post-Kosovo a commission that looked at the criteria that are necessary to support this type of humanitarian intervention. We have seen the responsibility to protect the commission of which the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore in his current profession was a member. It was passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations last September.
This is a responsibility of us all, to intervene against even the inviolability of state sovereignty if there is a humanitarian disaster occurring. This is certainly the situation that the world is facing in Darfur, where the government of Sudan is perhaps unable but certainly is unwilling to intervene to stop that disaster.
The other major change in international criminal law has been the sanctions, the growth of the body of law, and court actions against impunity for those who would brutalize their own citizens. Thirty years ago people like Idi Amin and Baby Doc Duvalier were given sanctuary in third countries just to get them away from brutalizing their own citizens. Now we have the International Criminal Court following on the experiences of the ad hoc prosecutions for Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone. We are building a whole body of international criminal law which Canada has been at the forefront of establishing through its leadership in the negotiation of the Rome treaty which established the court. There are now indictments being laid against perpetrators of these acts in Darfur. That is a major advance and we must follow through with it.
Let me just end by making the observation that the House commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust last week in serious and unified terms, but we also saw last weekend the world food program cutting in half its support for the victims in internally displaced camps in Darfur.
We have to remember those chilling words of Samantha Power who has said to us all that we cannot both say we will never forget and then at the same time say that there is not enough. There is enough. We need collective action. Canada has been at the forefront of work not only in Darfur, but also in the process that led to the peace in southern Sudan. We must do more however. We can do more. The circumstances have never been more demanding and right in front of us. We must complete this work that we have begun.