Crimes of War

April 2002

Government Action Sparks Genocide Warning for Sudan
By Jerry Fowler

The Committee on Conscience has issued a "genocide warning" for Sudan, by which it means that organized violence is underway that threatens to become genocide. The Committee issued the warning based on a number of government actions:

A divide-to-destroy strategy of pitting ethnic groups against each other, with enormous loss of civilian life;
The use of mass starvation as a weapon of destruction;
Toleration of the enslavement of women and children by government-allied militias;
The incessant bombing of hospitals, clinics, schools, and other civilian and humanitarian targets;
Disruption and destabilization of the communities of those who flee the war zones to other parts of Sudan;
Widespread persecution on account of race, ethnicity, and religion.

Individually, each of these actions is a disaster for the victims. Together, they threaten the destruction of entire groups. The groups that are threatened include the Dinka and Nuer of southern Sudan and the Nuba of central Sudan.

Arguing over whether these actions meet the legal definition of genocide in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is an unneeded and potentially dangerous distraction. The undertaking to prevent genocide, found in article 1 of the Convention, by its terms does not depend on a finding that genocide already has occurred or is occurring. Once there is a clear and obvious threat, as there is in Sudan, the United States and other countries must respond.

The erroneous assumption that the legal determination of genocide must be made before there is an obligation to respond led in 1994 to the appalling spectacle of State Department spokespersons using verbal gymnastics to avoid using the term genocide while hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were being slaughtered.

The legal determination of genocide only becomes necessary for punishing the crime. An appropriate judicial body can sort through intent and other issues presented in the Convention’s definition of genocide and assess charges against the perpetrators. Debating these issues, however, cannot and must not be allowed to divert from the imperative of preventing genocide or responding to threats of genocide.

The threat in Sudan is only getting worse, especially because of the growing role of oil. The presence of extensive oil reserves, mostly in the South, provides both increased means and increased motive for genocide. It provides increased means, because the Khartoum government has made clear that it intends to use hard currency earned from oil exports to buy new weapons. It provides increased motive, because Khartoum can fully exploit the oil reserves only if it either eradicates ethnic groups like the Dinka and Nuer from the land under which the oil sits or arrives at a mutually acceptable accommodation with them. So far, it has chosen the former. Unfortunately, oil has given Khartoum a new international respectability among countries whose companies stand to profit from oil production.

President Bush’s appointments of Andrew Natsios as Special Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan and former Senator John Danforth as Special Envoy were significant steps in demonstrating a U.S. commitment to bringing about a just peace in Sudan. That commitment should not flag as a result of September 11. The Sudanese government has fallen over itself to help in the war against terrorism; it has a lot to offer because of its long history of supporting Osama bin Laden and his ilk. But whatever assistance Khartoum is providing cannot be allowed to absolve it of the terror it continues to inflict on its own citizens.

The plight of Sudan is desperate. However you define it, the situation requires the world’s involvement.

Jerry Fowler, Staff Director, Committee on Conscience, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum