Speaking with unusual candor, Annan said he feared the U.N. was once again not fulfilling its promise to "never again" stay silent in the face of genocide and war crimes.If his words weren't so tragic and accurate, they would be comic. Annan has done everything imaginable to avoid dealing with the crisis in Darfur. He has refused to call the events there genocide, despite the fact that the Sudanese government and janjaweed were responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of people, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and has refused to take a greater role in putting together a peacekeeping force to deal with the ongoing threat posed by the regime in Khartoum.
"Sixty years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps, and 30 years after the Cambodian killing fields, the promise of 'never again' is ringing hollow," he said in a speech Friday to mark International Human Rights Day, which is Sunday.
In a reference to the protracted negotiations between the United Nations and the government of Sudan, Annan said blame for the continuing "horror" of Darfur could be shared among "those who value abstract notions of sovereignty more than the lives of real families, those whose reflex of solidarity puts them on the side of governments and not of peoples."
In August, the Security Council called for more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers to replace an overwhelmed African Union force, but made their deployment contingent on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's assent.
Last month, al-Bashir agreed in principle to allow a "hybrid" AU-U.N. operation, though he later reiterated his opposition to U.N. troops in Darfur.
Many have criticized the international community for inaction in responding to the crisis in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced by three years of fighting between rebels and government forces.
By failing to utter the key words genocide, he has refused to invoke the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which would have demanded immediate international action to stop the violence.
That China and others have stymied Security Council action because of their close ties to Khartoum cannot go unremarked upon either. Annan, knowing that the situation in Darfur was dire, did not take steps to demand that China relent on the issue - making way for Security Council action to deal with the situation, nor did Annan engage in sufficient diplomatic actions to pressure Sudan into accepting peacekeepers.
Annan has been a colossal failure as Secretary General, and Darfur is only the latest genocide to occur during his tenure at the UN. Perhaps he realizes too late what he has wrought by his inaction, though I doubt it.
Annan also complained about the disproportionate focus of the UN's Human Rights Council in the six months since it was created. The panel has picked on Israel as the sole focus of its gaze, ignoring every other country and their rampant violations of human rights laws - from Darfur to China to Iran. Funny, but it would have been useful if Annan commented about the disproportionate focus months ago - or years ago - considering that the General Assembly engages is disproportionate action on Israel annually and the UN could rightfully be called the Nations United against Israel.
Technorati: darfur, dafur, UN, sudan, chad, somalia, ethiopia, eritrea, african union, janjaweed, and Kofi Annan
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