A back-room deal to fend off greater scrutiny of abuses in Darfur raises more questions about the point of the UN Human Rights Council
The Khartoum government is likely to escape further censure and scrutiny at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva this week after its officials met secretly with the United States' delegation. Sudanese and foreign rights activists are angered that that the outcome of the UNHRC meeting on 14 September to 2 October, which they had expected to put more pressure on Khartoum, was being decided in back-room deals. 'The only consistency in the work of the UN Human Rights Council is its unfailing capacity to disappoint the lowest of expectations', Sudanese human rights advocate Abdullahi Ahmed An Na'im, a Professor of Law at Atlanta's Emory University, told Africa Confidential.
Delegates from the 47 member governments had plenty of evidence to read on Sudan after a series of UN reports detailing growing human rights abuses, overwhelmingly committed by the National Congress Party government, and this month's devastating account by Human Rights Watch (HRW) of atrocities by NCP forces in Darfur.>
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