Sudan: how far can a 'sovereign' state go?

The Sudanese government of Omar al Beshir continues to decline to cooperate with the Human Rights Council. This article argues that this defiance has implications for the concept of sovereignty and intervention when states are victimising their own citizens.

Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on Friday rejected a UN peace force for Darfur and said he would not grant visas to UN rights monitors who want to visit the strife-torn region. He also said that the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, led by Nobel peace laureate and anti-landmines campaigner Jody Williams, would not be allowed to travel to Darfur because its members were biased.

While the international community is looking for ways to prevent further human rights abuses in Africa, especially in Darfur, the government of Sudan has declined to cooperate with the Human Rights Council by refusing to issue the necessary visas for the High-Level Mission to carry out its work inside the country in fulfilment of its mandate. Indeed, on the final day of an Africa-France summit gathering in the Riviera resort of Cannes, Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir justified that decision during a news conference, in the following terms: 'There are members of that delegation who in our view are not impartial therefore it is difficult to say that they will be honest and reflect reality.'

This refusal blatantly breaches the Council’s decision to establish the mission, which was adopted by consensus following intense consultations that included the participation of representatives of the Sudanese government. Under Decision S-4/101, adopted on 13 December 2006, the Human Rights Council established a High-Level Mission to assess the human rights situation in Darfur and the needs of Sudan in that regard. The Council asked the Mission to report to its fourth session, which will start on 12 March 2007.

This development is shocking, considering that such statements and decisions come from the head of an African state where at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2,500,000 displaced since 2003 as a result of fighting. Despite repeated pledges to stop the violence, the Sudanese government has utterly failed to do so and political negotiations have stalled. Reasonably, one can argue that the collective shame and regret expressed over the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and the commitment of African states to the promotion and protection of 'human rights, the rule of law and good governance' on the continent as principles and objectives of the African Union have had little or no impact on the gross violations of human rights and mass killings committed with impunity in Darfur.

This case reflects a widely-held view of sovereignty: that allows governments to do essentially what they want within their own national borders. It should provide sufficient cause for a more serious and pragmatic assessment of the practicality of the principles of state sovereignty and intervention. In fact, having experienced genocide in Rwanda more than twelve years ago, what should the world do when a large number of people are victims of violence originating from within their own country?

Weak, failing, failed, and poverty-stricken states often use notional borders to preserve the fiction of effective sovereignty. This is certainly true in the case of Sudan and sets the context in which any discussion of intervention on the continent should be placed. Khartoum’s government is invoking sovereignty, firstly, as a veil to hide its brutal campaign against civilians; and secondly, as a shield to fend off calls for international action to protect its victims. While respect for the sovereignty of Sudan must be upheld as a core principle of international law, general principles of international law and the AU Constitutive Act itself provide for inherent limitations on the exercise of this principle, inter alia, where what is at stake is the protection of citizens from exposure to grave and massive violations of human rights in the absence of the willingness or ability of the state to protect. Therefore, Sudan should be taught that sovereignty, properly defined, is not a defence against demands for redress of breaches or gross violations of fundamental human rights.

The deteriorating situation in Darfur demonstrates how urgent it is for African leaders and the international community to move the debate of sovereignty versus intervention beyond semantics and to reach a consensus on when a defence of 'state sovereignty' is patently unacceptable.

* Joseph Yav Katshung is a human rights lawyer from Congo.

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