Darfur Symposium: An Introduction
* Law Department, Headington Hill Hall, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford OX3 0BP. E-mail: dsedman{at}brookes.ac.uk
The Sudanese northern region of Darfur, in similarity with the rest of the country, has suffered a number of years of unrest but has been particularly insecure since February 2003 when the two main rebel groups of the region—the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M)—launched attacks on the government.1 The people of Darfur were reacting to what they perceived as the systematic and long-term discrimination by the central government against their region and with the advent of an agreement between the government and the south Sudanese to distribute resources and award greater autonomy to that region, that resentment kindled into conflict.2 The result was government-supported forces, including the infamous Janjaweed, responding to the rebel attacks with even greater brutality, indiscriminately targeting a civilian population they regarded as supporters of JEM and SLA/M. The scale of those affected is inevitably difficult to gauge given the insecurity that persists, which hampers accurate monitoring; but the UN estimated that between 2003 and 2007, in the region of Darfur alone, at least 200 000 individuals have died and a further two million have been displaced as a result of the ongoing conflict.3
Continuing international legal developments on the situation in Darfur, such as the deployment of a joint AU–UN peacekeeping force and the UN Security Council's referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court, provided the focus for a symposium held at Oxford Brookes University in December 2008 and the following three articles are based upon presentations given. Zeray Yihdego and I, both of the Law Department, co-organized the symposium with support from the university's Central Research Fund as well as our department. As the topic of the symposium suggested, our intention was for discussion on the situation in Darfur from a variety of international legal perspectives (primarily, international criminal, humanitarian and refugee laws), inviting both academic and practitioner speakers and audience members. The intention behind this approach was to avoid any tendency to consider the situation in Darfur in terms specific to the branches of public international law, and the complexity of situations such as the one taking place in Darfur itself invites and deserves a multifaceted analysis.
The first session, exemplified by papers from Robert Barnidge (The UN and the African Union: Assessing a Partnership for Peace in Darfur) and Zeray Yihdego (Darfur and Humanitarian Law: The Protection of Civilians and Civilian Objects), considered international humanitarian law's role in an ongoing situation, drawing attention to the inadequacies of the law and its use. These two papers were complemented on the day with a presentation from Jean-François Durieux and Florent Marty, both of whom have considerable field experience with UNHCR and spoke specifically of their work and observations in relation to Chad, a neighbour of Sudan that currently hosts around 250 000 Sudanese refugees in twelve refugee camps running along the border.4 Underpinning the session was the tension of how to reconcile practical considerations related to human security within the regulatory framework of international humanitarian and refugee law.
The second session focused on the international criminal law response, with Sarah Williams (The Sudanese President's Indictment and State Immunity) presenting on the very pertinent question of potential legal implications resulting from a possible indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of the Sudanese President Al-Bashir and what immunity he may enjoy in his position as a sitting head of state. The possibility of the ICC's involvement followed the referral by the Security Council of the situation to the Court. This question is, six months later, of even greater relevance following the warrant of arrest against Al-Bashir issued in March by the ICC.
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1 International Crisis Group, www.crisisgroup.org. Accessed 19 January 2009.
2 For a history of the region, see J. Flint and A. de Waal's excellent Darfur: A New History of a Long War (2008).
3 UN Department of Public Information, August 2007, www.un.org/News.dh/infocus/sudan/fact_sheet.pdf. Accessed 19 January 2009.
4 UN High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org/chad.html. Accessed 4 May 2009.
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