Sudan failing to honour pledges on human rights-UN
By Richard Waddington

May 23, 2006 -(Reuters) Sudan is failing to honour pledges on human rights, with rape continuing in Darfur, rights' activists facing harassment and officials enjoying impunity from prosecution, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Nearly 18 months after the government and rebels signed a peace deal for the south, ending a 20-year civil war, Khartoum had not reformed its national security apparatus or created a promised National Human Rights Commission, the office for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a report.

"The government is falling far short of many of the human rights commitments it made under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)," the report said.

In the western Darfur region, for which the government and main rebel groups reached a separate peace accord earlier this month, it urged all sides to respect a ceasefire and demanded those responsible for human rights abuses and violations of humanitarian law be held accountable.
The report covered the period from December to April, before the Darfur pact was agreed in Abuja, Nigeria.

"As the killing of civilians, raping of women and girls and pillaging of entire villages continued in Darfur, so did a culture of impunity," it said.
The report, the third periodic review by Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, was issued a day after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told Khartoum that it was breaking international humanitarian law by restricting the activities of relief workers and the movement of urgently needed supplies.

In his report on Darfur, Annan said atrocities, including rape, pillage and driving people from their homes, were swelling the population in squalid camps, now about 2.5 million.

U.N. officials are in Khartoum seeking to persuade the government to accept U.N. peacekeepers for Darfur in place of short-staffed and under-financed African Union (AU) troops.

NEW LEVEL OF VIOLENCE

The new report documented 20 attacks on villages between January and April in the Gereida area of south Darfur alone by government-backed militia with or without help from the Sudanese armed forces.

It noted that government troops had reverted to using helicopter gunships in attacks and that there were reports of an airplane being used to bomb a village near Gereida.

"Since January 2006, the conflict in Darfur reached a new level of violence, both in intensity and frequency," the report said.

It was also alarmed at reports that armed groups had been using vehicles painted white -- the same colour used by humanitarian groups. This could make the work of the relief agencies even more hazardous.

The report said the government should remove all obstacles to trying those responsible for rights abuse, including revoking immunity provisions for government officials.

It should stop harassing, arresting, detaining or physically abusing individuals for drawing abuse to official attention.

But as the state security apparatus was largely responsible for such harassment, it was clear that the government "has yet to truly appreciate the value of human rights," it added.

From: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L23796407.htm