“ATROCITY CRIMES" AND THE DARFUR CRISIS
by Frank Chalk*
26 October 2005
(478 words)

"Atrocity Crimes" is a concept popularized by David Scheffer, President Bill Clinton's Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues from 1996 to 2000, and woven into the foundations of the path-breaking, Canadian inspired Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), The Responsibility to Protect (December 2001). "Atrocity Crimes" is a comprehensive term grouping together three distinct, but often overlapping sets of crimes in international law: genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious war crimes.

At a time when by-standing nations and international institutions are still debating the nature of the crimes underway in the Darfur region of Sudan as if only the commission of genocide could warrant swift and effective intervention, it is wise to recall Ambassador Scheffer's insistence that the massive, planned commission of any of the listed "atrocity crimes" by states which are either unwilling or unable to discharge their responsibility to protect warrants action to halt those crimes and to punish their perpetrators even when this may ultimately require the violation of that state's sovereignty.

"State sovereignty is not a license to kill," Gareth Evans, co-chair of the ICISS, declared at the meeting of the Stockholm International Forum on Preventing Genocide in 2004. "It carries with it the responsibility to protect the state's own people. And, when others fail in their responsibility, it carries an obligation to act to meet that responsibility for them--not to turn away in indifference, saying it is none of our business." Or, he added, to use "definitional nitpicking" as an excuse for inaction.

In Darfur, at least 200,000 have died and two million have been displaced. The Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the United Nations Secretary-General recorded the Commission's conclusion in January 2005 that:
"Government [of Sudan] forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement, throughout Darfur. These acts were conducted on a widespread and systematic basis, and therefore may amount to crimes against humanity."

"Timing is everything," David Scheffer found as he tried to move the Government of the United States to mobilize its resources to protect innocent lives in the Balkans and in Africa. "We found in our work," he observes, "that unless we acted ahead of the curve of events, or reacted aggressively within the bureaucracy once atrocity crimes were launched, the battle for the attention of policymakers and for resources would be lost."

In the case of Darfur, have we already passed the point Ambassador Scheffer characterized so well? Can we cease our "definitional nitpicking" and effectively coordinate aid to the African Union, enlarging its mission to protect the lives of innocent civilians and providing the key resources which it needs to do the job before a full blown genocide erupts from the volcano of crimes against humanity?

*Frank Chalk is a history professor at Concordia and co-director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. The all-day conference which he has organized to explore Canada’s options on Darfur will be keynoted by Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire on Tuesday, 1 November at 9:00 a.m. in Concordia’s Hall Building. The conference is free and open to the public. The full program is available at: http://migs.concordia.ca