The Darfur Resolution Currently Before the UN Security Council

A chronology of international responses to the Darfur genocide over the past year provides a deeply dispiriting time-line, and suggests how unlikely it is that security for civilians and humanitarians will improve any time soon. Despite current debate in the UN Security Council over a resolution that would authorize, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, deployment of the so-called UN/African Union “hybrid force,” there are few reasons to believe that Khartoum will actually allow this force to deploy in effective form, or in any remotely appropriate time-frame. The backdrop for current debate continues to be massive human suffering, destruction, displacement, and insecurity on the ground in Darfur (an overview the most recent reports appears below). Despite upticks in international sound and fury, there is too much evidence that they signify nothing.

The critical voice at this juncture, dismayingly, belongs to China---a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, and longtime enabling partner of the Khartoum regime. Last August, in a highly significant and revealing moment, Beijing ordered its UN ambassador to abstain on the crucial vote for UN Security Council Resolution 1706; and even this abstention (as opposed to a veto) was secured from China only by including language in the Resolution that “invited the consent” of Khartoum’s génocidaires for the UN-authorized force. The “invitation” was resolutely refused and no movement was made toward deploying the 22,500 civilian police and troops authorized by Security Council Resolution 1706 under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which confers enforcement authority. The mandate of the force was to have been civilian protection, protection of humanitarian personnel and operations, and to staunch the flow of genocidal violence from Darfur into eastern Chad and Central African Republic, countries now experiencing a tremendous increase in ethnic violence and displacement. Read more >>>>>>>>>>>>