Global Policy Forum

United Nations human rights experts have begun an urgent 10-day mission to investigate what a senior official of the world body called "ethnic cleansing" in Sudan's western Darfur region. A U.N. spokeswoman said Bacre Waly Ndiaye, head of the U.N. human rights office in New York, is leading the four-member team which is starting work in Chad while waiting for permission to enter Sudan.

U.N. human rights spokeswoman Annick Stevenson told a news briefing on Tuesday the team would interview refugees from Darfur in Chad and then go to Sudan to investigate what U.N. officials say is one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters. Relief agencies say tens of thousands of refugees -- mainly Muslim black Africans from the vast, arid Darfur region -- have crossed the border into eastern Chad over the past few months to escape marauding Arab militias and, they say, government troops.

Last week, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland told reporters in New York that what was happening in and around Darfur was "ethnic cleansing" in which some 750,000 people in all had been driven from their homes. Egeland said the outside world should put pressure on the Sudanese government to intervene to halt the activities of the militias, known as the Janjaweed.

Although there was no evidence that the government had been actively planning the militia's campaign, he declared, Khartoum had done little to stop them "and therefore it seems as if it is being condoned." Sudan has denied any official involvement, and accused the United Nations of inflating figures in describing the situation. But Egeland said many aid workers had seen beatings, gang rapes and killings which local authorities had done nothing to stop. "Scorched earth tactics" were being used against the local people, he added.

Ndiaye is a former special investigator for the U.N. Human Rights Commission into summary, arbitrary and extrajudicial executions around the world. Stevenson noted that the Commission was holding a special session -- to be addressed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- on Wednesday to mark the 10th anniversary of the start of the genocide in Rwanda where some 800,000 were killed. "The horror must not be forgotten in order to avoid it happening in the future. That is why we are mobilising ourselves for other missions...," she said.

The Khartoum government blames the Darfur violence on the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and another rebel group which launched a revolt accusing Khartoum of neglecting Darfur and of arming Arab militias to burn and loot African villages.