Darfur and the Genocide Debate

Scott Straus

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005

Summary:  As western Sudan continues to suffer, much international attention has focused on whether to call what is happening there "genocide." Yet once the term was invoked, it did not trigger outside intervention. Terminology turns out to matter far less than was expected. And once more, the world has dithered while people die.

Scott Straus is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Proponents of applying the "genocide" label emphasized two points. First, they argued that the events in Sudan met a general standard for genocide: the violence targeted an ethnic group for destruction, was systematic and intentional, and was state supported. Second, they claimed that under the Genocide Convention, using the term would trigger international intervention to halt the violence. Salih Booker and Ann-Louise Colgan from the advocacy group Africa Action wrote in The Nation, "We should have learned from Rwanda that to stop genocide, Washington must first say the word."

Colgan and Booker made a fair point. During the Rwandan genocide--exactly a decade before Darfur erupted--State Department spokespersons in Washington were instructed not to utter the "g-word," since, as one internal government memorandum put it, publicly acknowledging "genocide" might commit the U.S. government to do something at a time (a year after the Somalia debacle) when President Bill Clinton's White House was entirely unwilling. As a result, the United States and the rest of the world sat on the sidelines as an extermination campaign claimed at least half a million civilian lives in three months. In the aftermath, many pundits agreed that a critical first step toward a better response the next time would be to openly call a genocide "genocide."

The idea that states are obligated to do something in the face of genocide comes from two provisions in the Genocide Convention. First, the treaty holds that contracting parties are required to "undertake to prevent and to punish" genocide. Second, Article VIII of the convention stipulates that signatories may call on the UN to "take such action ... for the prevention and suppression" of genocide. Prior to the Darfur crisis, and in light of the way the genocide debate unfolded in Rwanda, the conventional wisdom was that signatories to the convention (including the United States, which finally ratified it in 1988) were obligated to act to prevent genocide if they recognized one to be occurring. The convention had never been tested, however, and the law is in fact ambiguous on what "undertaking to prevent" and "suppressing" genocide actually mean and who is to carry out such measures.

In July, the U.S. House of Representatives entered the rhetorical fray by unanimously passing a resolution labeling the violence in Sudan "genocide." The resolution called on the Bush administration to do the same and, citing the convention, to "seriously consider multilateral or even unilateral intervention to prevent genocide" if the UN Security Council failed to act. The Bush administration, however, interpreted its international obligations differently. Facing mounting appeals to call Darfur "genocide," Powell insisted that such a determination, even if it came, would not change U.S. policy toward Sudan. Powell argued that Washington was already pressuring Khartoum to stem abuses and was providing humanitarian relief; applying the "genocide" label would not require anything more from the United States. He did, however, commission an in-depth study of whether events in Darfur merited the "genocide" label.

Meanwhile, other world leaders and opinion makers continued to show reticence about calling Darfur "genocide." EU, Canadian, and British officials all avoided the term, as did UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was pilloried in the media for limiting his description of Darfur to "massive violations of human rights." Human Rights Watch and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power favored the slightly less charged term "ethnic cleansing," arguing that Darfur involved the forced removal of an ethnic group, not its deliberate extermination, and that genocide is hard to prove in the midst of a crisis.

The debate took a surprising turn in early September when, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Powell acknowledged that "genocide" was in fact taking place in Sudan. Powell based his determination on the U.S. government-funded study, which had surveyed 1,136 Darfurian refugees in Chad. Their testimony demonstrated that violence against civilians was widespread, ethnically oriented, and strongly indicated government involvement in the attacks. Two weeks after Powell's speech, Bush repeated the genocide charge during an address to the UN General Assembly.

ONCE MORE, NEVER AGAIN

Taken together, the congressional resolution and the two speeches were momentous: never before had Congress or such senior U.S. officials publicly and conclusively labeled an ongoing crisis "genocide," invoking the convention. Nor, for that matter, had a contracting party to the Genocide Convention ever called on the Security Council to take action under Article VIII (as the United States has done). But the critical question remained: Would the Genocide Convention really be any help in triggering international intervention to stem the violence?

So far, the answer seems to be no. In late July, before Bush or Powell ever spoke the word "genocide," the UN Security Council had passed a resolution condemning Sudan and giving the government a month to rein in the militias. That deadline passed without incident, however. After Powell spoke out in September, the council passed a second, tepid resolution, which merely called on Kofi Annan to set up a five-member commission to investigate the charge (which he did). The resolution also vaguely threatened economic sanctions against Sudan's oil industry (although it gave no concrete deadline for when sanctions would be imposed) and welcomed an African Union plan to send a token force to the region to monitor a cease-fire (to which neither side has since adhered). Despite its weak wording, the resolution almost failed to pass. China, which has commercial and oil interests in Sudan, nearly vetoed the measure, only agreeing to abstain--along with Algeria, Pakistan, and Russia--after Annan strongly endorsed the resolution.