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UN Security Council to Covene in Africa for Special Session on Sudan
Nov 15, 2004
The United Nations Security Council heads to Africa this week to push for an end to 21 years of civil war in southern Sudan and to demand Khartoum take stronger action to stop a separate conflict in the country's western Darfur region.
On November 18-19, the Security Council will convene in Nairobi for a special session on Sudan. A U.N. commission is currently in Sudan to determine if genocide has occurred in Darfur. The 20-month conflict has displaced more than 1.5 million people.
The international rights group Human Rights Watch urged in a report released today that "the Security Council must take immediate action to reverse ethnic cleansing and avert further displacement in the western Sudanese region of Darfur."
In the report, Human Rights Watch documents the continuing climate of violence and insecurity in Darfur, and the urgent need for an expanded international protection force, especially near the camps that hold many of Darfur’s displaced persons.
“The Sudanese government continues to terrorize its own citizens even in the face of the U.N. Security Council arriving in Africa,” said Peter Takirambudde of Human Rights Watch. “Unless the Security Council backs up its earlier ultimatums with strong action, ethnic cleansing in Darfur will be consolidated. And hundreds of U.N. personnel will be on the ground helplessly watching as it happens.”
The special session of the Security Council is also intended to bring pressure on the Sudanese government and the southern rebel movement, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), to finalize a peace agreement that has been almost three years in the making.
The Security Council has only convened outside U.N. headquarters in New York three other times.
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