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A New Approach to Support Human Rights and Peace: Financial Pressure1

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A New Approach to Support Human Rights and Peace: Financial Pressure1 Mr. John Prendergast’s paper, published in June 2019, makes a strong argument for the need for a multilateral approach in safeguarding and supporting democracy, and for an understanding of the relationship between protecting a healthy civil society and genocide prevention. The paper, while rooted in the contemporary context, challenges readers to consider the lessons that the Holocaust might hold in considering responses to corrupt authoritarian regimes. A New Approach to Support Human Rights and Peace: Financial Pressure1 by Mr. John Prendergast, Founding Director, Enough Project, Co-Founder, The Sentry Any long-term strategy focused on countering mass atrocities, including genocide, must have at its center the civil society organizations working on the front lines of human rights, pro-democracy, and anti- corruption work. International efforts must consciously find ways to support these organizations and create significant consequences for state repression of the independent sector. The ability of civil society to exercise their fundamental rights to self-expression and assembly is increasingly under siege in some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa due to the targeted violence and draconian restrictions on communication that allow autocratic rulers to suppress the voices of their people. The two interlocking and primary financial tools of pressure viz. network sanctions and anti- money laundering measures, can play a key role in creating actual consequences for repression and supporting civil society voices to press for freedoms throughout Africa, despite attempts by officials in those countries to stifle media, religious groups, rights advocates, and other civil society organizations. The connection between the self-enrichment of elites through corruption and the repression of civil society is evident in the cases of certain sub-Saharan African countries that are rich in natural resources and economic potential but lack basic freedoms and respect for human rights.2 Oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, copper, and a variety of other mineral deposits and trafficked wildlife provide immense opportunity for those in power to enrich themselves at the expense of their country’s well-being. Brutal repression of opposition is seen as the only way to maintain control of the spoils. The state is hijacked when those in power profit from having total control and unchallenged power. The international community possesses the tools to apply financial and diplomatic pressure that can create leverage necessary to stop corrupt actors from persecuting groups and committing human rights abuses. Yet these tools have been used sparingly in sub-Saharan Africa. They have been applied to a few individuals at a time, with very little enforcement, and are rarely extended to predatory commercial collaborators, both inside and outside the continent, who facilitate and enable official misdeeds. Civil Society Under Threat Sudan In Sudan, the regime of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had a record of widespread violations of the fundamental rights of its people to free expression, association, and assembly, matched only by its systemic attacks on the freedom of religion and conscience.3 2018 brought additional evidence that the regime did not have the political will to end its attacks on the civic space, even as it engaged in aggressive efforts to normalize its strained relations with the United States, the European Union, and the international community at large. In conflict areas - Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile states - a state of no peace no war prevailed, as the two parties observed unilaterally declared cessation of hostilities. However, the government continued to impose a strict humanitarian blockade on rebel held areas in south Kordofan and Blue Nile state, punishing civilians caught in the crossfire of the decades- long civil war with hunger and denial of basic health and education services. In Darfur, government- controlled militias continued, with impunity, to terrorize civilians in targeted communities through deadly attacks, destruction and looting of property, torching their villages and forcing thousands to flee to overcrowded camps for the displaced. On 10 April 2018, President al-Bashir ordered the release of all political detainees held in connection with the protests in January and February against economic hardships. Many had spent more than ten weeks in detention without charge or trial, denied access to their families, lawyers and doctors. The release occurred days ahead of a scheduled monitoring visit by the United Nations’ Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in the Sudan. However, Sudanese human rights organizations reported on hundreds of other victims of prolonged detention, most of whom were from Darfur, remaining in the regime’s prisons and secret detention centers. This incident illustrates the transactional behaviour of an autocratic regime that believed it could deceive the world of its real intentions, by making token concessions while remaining relentless in its repression of civil society and its people. Mass protests resumed in December 2018 and continued into 2019. The government and security forces responded to the protestors with undue force.4 Following reports that 70 protesters had been killed, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michele Bachelet, and United Nations Secretary- General António Guterres voiced their grave concerns.5 Secretary-General Guterres affirmed the support of the United Nations for the efforts agreed upon by the Sudanese to resolve the current crisis peacefully and urged the Government of Sudan to create a “conducive environment for a solution to the current situation and to promote an inclusive dialogue”.6 The Government extended the invitation to United Nations Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Sudan, Aristide Nononsi, to visit Sudan from 27 April to 5 May. However, on 11 April, the overthrow and arrest of President al-Bashir was announced on State television, and that a military council would govern the country for up to two years. Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of the Sudan to the United Nations, H.E. Mr. Yasir Abdullah Abdelsalam Ahmed assured the United Nations Security Council the morning after the ousting of President al-Bashir, that the military council was committed to respecting all international agreements, and “a peaceful transition”, in which it would be the “guarantor” of a return to “civilian government”.7 A week later, Jeremiah Mamabolo, Joint Special Representative for the UN-African Union Hybrid mission, UNAMID, reported to the United Nations Security Council that the daily curfew had been lifted, political detainees were due to be released, a nationwide ceasefire was in place, and the new military leader, General Abdel Fattah Al-Burnhan, had announced a “military transitional phase” which would last two year at most, before a handover to civilian control.8 As the de facto ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) dragged on the process for handing over power to the political leadership of the protests allied in the Freedom and Change Forces (FCF), protesters staged massive civic actions, including ongoing sit-ins since April 6, the largest in front of the army headquarters in the capital, but also elsewhere in the country, demanding a rapid transfer of power to civilians. In the first phase of the talks, the TMC agreed for the FCF to be responsible for forming the cabinet of ministers and to select 67% of members of the transitional legislature. However, the TMC continued to insist on having a majority membership in and to chair the Sovereign Council that will replace it. The TMC also maneuvered to control the powers of declaring war, engaging Sudan in foreign wars, and the peace process, while the FCF saw the cabinet as exercising these powers, albeit with the agreement of the Sovereign Council. At the time of writing, talks are now suspended, the sit-ins and protests continue, the FCF is threatening and mobilizing for a nationwide political and civil disobedience campaign to achieve the civilian rule for which the Sudanese people have for so long fought, sacrificed, and struggled. South Sudan In South Sudan, civic space continues to be severely constrained by a kleptocracy. The National Security Service (NSS) has sweeping powers of arrest and detention. It has constrained the space for civil society by arresting activists and detaining them for unspecified periods without trial, confiscating their passports, and banning them from foreign travel. In addition, freedom of association is severely curtailed. This pressure extends beyond the borders of South Sudan into the neighbouring countries. Human rights lawyer, Dong Samuel Luak and SPLM-IO member, Aggrey Ezbon Idri, both prominent critics of the government, were kidnapped in Kenya in early 2017 and subsequently killed. There must be accountability for those in the Kenyan and South Sudanese governments responsible for their disappearance and extrajudicial killing. After receiving testimony from more than ten well-placed individuals, including individuals with first-hand knowledge of detention facilities,10 the United Nations’ Panel of Experts on South Sudan concluded in April 2019, that it is, “highly probable that Aggrey Idri and Dong Samuel Luak were executed by Internal Security Bureau agents at the Luri facility on 30 January 2017, on orders from the commander of the National Security Service training and detention facilities in Luri, the Commander
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