United Nations Diplomat Jack Christofides delivered the Charles Francis Adams Lecture yesterday in Cabot 206.
The talk, which was given to a small audience comprised mostly of graduate students, was titled "Making and Keeping Peace in Darfur: A Personal Journey."
Specifically, Christofides focused on why past peace efforts have not worked and gave suggestions for the future of a region torn by conflicts between the Janjaweed, an Arab militia group, and other ethnic groups including the Fur, Zaghawa and Massaleit.
Estimates on exact numbers vary, but a Washington Post article published several months ago put the numbers at 450,000 deaths and 2.5 million displaced persons.
Having been a member of the U.N. team at the Darfur peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria last May, where the Sudanese government and the Sudan Liberation Movement signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), the diplomat had much to say about exactly what failed in the aftermath of the negotiations.
"You had misplaced priorities immediately after the agreement - you had a failure to make any part of the security arrangements of the agreement stick," Christofides said. Specifically, he said that the African Union (AU) was not concerned enough with enforcing the agreements.
The DPA called for the government to "complete verifiable disarmament and demobilization of the Janjaweed militia by mid-October 2006," according to the Department of State's Web site, something that has not been accomplished.
To rectify the current situation, Christofides called for an "integrated approach," which would combine military, political and humanitarian aid strategies while simultaneously resurrecting the country's social and physical infrastructure.
"We have to help reconstruct this shattered Darfur, because to get the people back they're going to have to have their livestock, their jobs, their infrastructure. And that's where we can help," Christofides said.
He said the situation is so grave that the services offered in refugee camps are an improvement for many people displaced from troubled regions. "The shocking thing is that the people in the camps are enjoying record levels of social services. There are more kids that are going to school in the camps than ever before."
Christofides also conveyed strong opinions about the international community's response to Darfur's plight.
"I think my biggest criticism is of the great powers on the [U.N. Security] Council - the United States and the United Kingdom, which I really do think could have done a lot more, not just back in 2003, but right now," he said.
One major mishap, he said, occurred last June, when the U.N. Security Council failed to serve Sudanese President Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir with a strong resolution favoring a U.N. peacekeeping operation. Christofides faults the United States and Britain for this failure.
"If they were able to demonstrate to the leadership that they could hold the council together, we would've had the declaration, but the council made no such request of Bashir - at least in a way that worried him at all," he said.
Christofides also addressed how to best force the Sudanese government to enact its commitment to controlling the Janjaweed, something he said that it failed to do in the long run after the DPA.
The Sudanese government, he said, does have the ability to control the Janjaweed. He said that this was evident because immediately after the DPA, they made an effort and violence fell.
"We've actually tracked security incidents with the help of the African Union. In the immediate aftermath of the DPA, the government did want the Janjaweed quiet," he said.
This period of inactivity ended last July, however. The government in the capital city of Khartoum is not even willing to accept a definition of who is part of the Janjaweed, according to Christofides. "They would say to people like myself, 'You don't know what the Janjaweed is ... We don't understand it. How can you understand it?'"
In order to bring about peace, he said that the government must engage itself in stopping the violence.
"Make no doubt about it - it doesn't matter what you call them, but there is a group of individuals that has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even crimes of genocide," he said.
