U.S. and European media

June 19, 2023

Reuters: Sudan talks with Darfur rebels adjourned without deal. Talks between Sudan's government and a Darfur rebel group have been adjourned without agreement, both sides said on Friday, blaming each other for the impasse. The move will be seen as a setback to the United States and mediators from the United Nations and African Union who have been stepping up pressure for a resolution to the festering six-year conflict in Sudan's remote west. Khartoum has been holding on-and-off discussions with the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) -- Darfur's most militarily active insurgent organisation -- in Qatar since February. The discussions, also brokered by Qatari mediators, are supposed to pave the way to full peace talks, but have stalled on arguments over a series of confidence-building measures including the exchange of prisoners.

Associated Press: Obama's Darfur policy lacks clarity, advocates say. Human rights groups working to end the dying in Darfur fear for the survival of 2.5 million people huddled in refugee camps if the Obama administration doesn't put on record its plans to bring security to them. The administration said Thursday it still considers the Darfur problem genocide. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley emphasized that to counter a comment by President Barack Obama's special envoy on Sudan, retired Air Force Gen. Scott Gration. Alex Meixner, director of policy and government relations for the Save Darfur Coalition, said Obama considers the situation genocide, and "he's the decider." "The real questions are whether the Darfuri people are in crisis and whether lives are hanging in the balance. The answer to each of those questions is an unequivocal 'yes,'" Jerry Fowler, the coalition president said in a statement. "It is past time for the administration to speak with one voice on Sudan and unveil its plan to help bring peace and security to the country."

Reuters: U.N. human rights body keeps investigator in Sudan. The U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday narrowly opted to keep an investigator in Sudan for another year, despite calls from African states and their allies to stop scrutinising conditions in war-ravaged Darfur. Western countries triumphed in a close vote to amend a weaker African-backed resolution and create a new mandate for an independent expert to monitor conditions in Sudan. The post will replace the one held since 2005 by Sima Samar, a former deputy prime minister of Afghanistan, whose term as special rapporteur in Sudan is about to expire. Since being set up in 2006, the Human Rights Council has dropped its investigators for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Belarus and Liberia. That leaves eight country-specific investigators for Burundi, Cambodia, Haiti, Myanmar, North Korea, the occupied Palestinian territories, Somalia and Sudan. Amnesty International said in a statement that the U.N. body needed to keep a presence in Sudan to give it credibility as a watchdog for gross human rights violations.

Reuters: Detained Darfur men at risk in Sudan: Amnesty. Rights group Amnesty International said on Thursday 13 Darfur men arrested two months ago in Sudan during protests over the execution of nine Darfuris were "at risk of torture" and that it had no news of them. No one was immediately available to comment from Sudan's security service or ministry of justice. The authorities have dismissed allegations of torture in the past. A report from the British-based campaign group said the men were picked up by Sudan's security services in April in Khartoum during protests against the execution of nine Darfuri men found guilty of killing a newspaper editor.

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].