By Edward Horgan, Ireland for a World BEYOND War, May 7, 2023
This letter has been published in the Irish News and the Irish Times.
The present conflict in Sudan once again demonstrates the abject failure of the UN and the international community to prevent or stop conflicts in Africa that have amounted to genocide and widespread human rights abuses.
In 1994 the international community stood idly by as up to quarter of a million Rwandan people were brutally slaughtered. This conflict then spilled over into the Democratic Republic of Congo, igniting a conflict that is still ongoing, causing several more million deaths. European and western lives are given priority over the lives of the rest of humanity. The US and Nato intervened eventually to stop the conflict in Bosnia in 1995 although their attempts to impose democracy there have arguably failed.
Little has been learned from the 20-year US-led unjustified war of vengeance waged against the Afghan people. In the resulting 2021 evacuation chaos, military dogs were given priority over Afghans who worked with western forces and whose lives were in danger. No accountability has been achieved for the ongoing trauma that the Afghan people are still going through. While most western citizens have been successfully evacuated from Sudan, far too little consideration is being given to the trauma being suffered by the citizens of Sudan. How many Sudanese refugees will be allowed into fortress Europe? Many of these conflicts in Africa and the Middle East have roots in European colonial abuses. There is now a serious risk of the present Sudan conflict deteriorating into crimes against humanity. When a popular uprising overthrew the autocratic government of Omar al-Bashir, their efforts to establish democracy were thwarted by the two main perpetrators of this present conflict, General al-Burhan and RST leader General Dagalo/Hemedti, both of whose forces were implicated in the Darfur genocide.
The United Nations is once again being prevented from doing its primary task of maintaining international peace by several of its most powerful states who are pursuing their national interests at the expense of the most vulnerable members of humanity.
See also:
Sally Hayden’s “‘I feel betrayed’: How Sudan’s pro-democracy movement lost its hope and found new unity”
and
Sally Hayden’s My Fourth Time, We Drowned
