Global Policy Forum

By Anthony Morland

Resolution 1574 urges Sudan's warring parties to strike peace accord in exchange of massive development aid.

The Sudanese government and rebels Friday signed a pledge to lay down arms in the two-decade war in southern Sudan by the end of the year, as the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution pushing for peace in the war-ravaged country. But the resolution was immediately slammed by aid agencies as weak and wrong-headed, for failing to lay down tough sanctions if the violence in the separate conflict in Darfur is not halted.

Aimed at fostering "lasting peace and stability and to build a prosperous and united Sudan," resolution 1574 specifically urges the Khartoum government and southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) to make good on their pledge to sign a peace deal by December 31. The war has raged since 1983 and cost 1.5 million lives. Some four million have been displaced. The resolution dangles the prospect of massive development aid if a deal is struck, and suggests its signing would help to bring peace to other areas of Sudan, notably the western region of Darfur, which is now suffering from what the UN terms the world's worst humanitarian crisis. The resolution demanded that government and rebel forces in Darfur, where war erupted in February 2003, "cease all violence and attacks, including abduction (and) refrain from forcible relocation of civilians." But it removed a direct threat of sanctions against Khartoum if it failed to end the violence.

The international aid agency Oxfam was quick to slam the resolution, as "weak" and "dithering". "Instead of responding to the ongoing (Darfur) crisis with concrete action, the Security Council could only agree to 'monitor compliance' with previous resolutions," Oxfam said in a statement. "For the people of Darfur, 'monitoring compliance' has become UN speak for more death and suffering," the statement added. While the resolution does indirectly recall that the threat of sanctions hangs over Khartoum if it fails to rein in militias blamed for widespread abuses in Darfur, it stipulates such sanctions would go into effect after another resolution. Tens of thousand of people have been killed since the Darfur conflict flared up in February 2003 and at least 1.6 million displaced.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the council "appears to have watered down its previous threats to hold the government of Sudan accountable for the continuing human rights abuses in Darfur." "We fear that the government of Sudan will take this resolution as a blank cheque to continue its persecution of the civilian population in Darfur," HRW's Sudan researcher Jerema Rone said, describing the resolution as "wishy washy." Amnesty International repeated its call for a mandatory arms embargo to be imposed on Sudan to prevent ostensibly legally imported weapons being used to commit war crimes in Darfur.

Dozens of refugees demonstrated outside the UN's Nairobi headquarters to protest the resolution "What Khartoum needs is tough sanctions like those that were imposed on Iraq. They need trade sanctions, arms sanctions and any other that may threaten to weaken that government," said demonstrator Emmanuel Deng.

The council's president, US Ambassador John Danforth, an old Sudan hand and the driving force behind the current initiative, rejected the criticism, stressing the real responsibility for bringing peace to Sudan lay with its warring parties. "Some are already saying, 'oh just another resolution,' ... and that this whole event is just a photo opportunity... an illusion and that in the meantime... the atrocities in Darfur continue," he told the council. Addressing Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha and SPLM/A leader John Garang, he said: "It is up to you to prove the naysayers and skeptics wrong and move your country forward to joining the family of nations." "The attention of the world is upon you. The United Nations and all the nations of the world expect, demand, that you deliver on your word."

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