A Welcome Act of Honesty
Posted by
Dawn
Congress, as its last official act before summer recess yesterday, unanimously passed joint resolutions in both Houses declaring that the ongoing atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, constitute “genocide” and calling on the United Nations to take note of that fact.
The U.S. Congress passed a resolution on Thursday declaring that genocide is occurring in Sudan, which backers hope will pressure the international community to take action to protect Africans in the Darfur region from marauding Arab militias.In a rare show of bipartisan agreement, the House of Representatives passed the measure in a unanimous vote, and the Senate then approved it by a voice vote, in their last acts before Congress adjourned for a six-week summer recess. . . .
The United Nations has declared the situation in Darfur the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, but has not called it a genocide, which would force it to take action.
The 1948 UN “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” (part of the so-called “Geneva Conventions”) requires the UN to take action in any case of genocide. The UN therefore is slow to recognize genocide, because it would then be forced to intervene.
The United States, as a signatory to the Convention on Genocide, is also officially required to intervene when that convention is invoked. For this reason, the US is sometimes also slow to use the word “genocide” - most notably during the Bosnian atrocities, when the Clinton administration dithered at length trying to avoid using that term (and then was viciously criticized by Republican opponents when they did intervene - the reason ground troops were not used and the atrocities continued for months). The Congress’s willingness to call a spade a spade in the current case is a refreshing change (though one can’t help noticing that in Bosnia, Muslims were the victims of the genocide that dared not speak its name, while in the Sudan they are the perpetrators - perhaps that makes it easier).
