U.S. influence needed in Sudan, USCIRF says
- Apr 3, 2006 - comment
The United States must maintain its influence in Sudan if a just peace is to be achieved in the strife-torn, east African country, said the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and members of Congress.
The USCIRF issued a new report on the progress achieved a year after a peace agreement was signed at the close of a two-decade-old civil war based largely on religion. Peace has not been implemented in some areas of Sudan, and religious liberty and other human rights have not been protected consistently, the commission reported.
The January 2005 signing of a peace treaty brought an end to a war marked by what has been described as a genocidal campaign by the militant Islamic, Arab regime in Khartoum against Christians and animists in southern Sudan and moderate, African Muslims. More than two million people died, and about four million were displaced during the conflict.
The peace in Sudan is “very fragile,” USCIRF Chairman Michael Cromartie said March 29 in releasing the report at a news conference in the U.S. Capitol. “Sustained, close engagement by the United States is necessary” if peace is to be established, he said.
Republican Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia said at the news conference, “[W]e have to go back and do something bolder.” Wolf called for President Bush to appoint a special envoy to Sudan. He had a recommendation for the slot, one affirmed at the news conference by House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: Former Democratic Congressman Tony Hall, who was appointed in 2002 by Bush as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture.
In its recommendations, the USCIRF called for the Bush administration to assign an official to the U.S. embassy in Khartoum to promote human rights during implementation of the peace agreement and to select a “special representative” to aid refugees and internally displaced people in returning to their homes. The commission’s other recommendations to the U.S. government included: The continued designation of Sudan as a “country of particular concern” for especially severe violations of religious liberty; a public report every six months on the status of progress in enforcing the peace agreement, and an assurance foreign aid is promoting the provisions on religious freedom and other human rights in the peace agreement.
While the peace agreement resolved a north-south conflict predicated largely on religious differences, a human rights crisis based on ethnicity has occurred in recent years in the Darfur region, which is in western Sudan. Since 2003, Khartoum military forces and Arab militias backed by the government have instituted ethnic cleansing against African Muslims, resulting in the killing of about 400,000 people, as well as rampant torture, rape and kidnapping, the USCIRF reported. The U.S. needs to be engaged to help resolve the crisis in Darfur, the panel said.
The USCIRF is a nine-member panel selected by the President and congressional leaders. It reports to the White House and Congress on religious freedom overseas. ERLC President Richard Land is a USCIRF commissioner.
The USCIRF report on Sudan may be found on its website.
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