Gender Report Card on the International Criminal ... - YWCA Canada

OTP Situations and Cases
in the context of the Darfur conflict’. 692 He also
noted that underreporting of sexual violence is
highly prevalent in Darfur and that victims are
increasingly discouraged from reporting rape
and sexual violence out of fear of retaliation. 693
Crisis in Darfur IDP camps
The Women’s Initiatives continues to closely
monitor the situation of women internally
displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfur. 694 Darfuri
IDPs, particularly women, are very concerned
about the Sudanese Government’s attempts to
evacuate camps in Darfur. In particular, IDPs
interviewed by Women’s Initiatives’ partners
expressed concern about the implementation
of the new government strategy for Darfur that
was officially ratified on 16 September 2010,
focusing on security, reconciliation, development
and resettlement of the IDPs and refugees. This
new strategy was drafted without consulting
other stakeholders, including the negotiating
parties of the Doha peace talks. IDPs perceive
this strategy as a move to destroy the camps
and force the IDPs to flee. Many IDPs informed
Women’s Initiatives’ partners that they heard
about this strategy from the media and think
that the evacuation of the IDPs camps will
bring about the departure of the international
humanitarian organisations, thus dramatically
reducing access to information on the real
conditions faced by IDPs in South Darfur, and
creating a dramatic gap in the provision of basic
services.
692 <strong>Report</strong> by the Prosecutor to the UNSC, 8 June 2011, para
42.
693 <strong>Report</strong> by the Prosecutor to the UNSC, 8 June 2011, paras
44-45.
694 Women’s Initiatives for <strong>Gender</strong> Justice, ‘Displaced
women urge the international community to focus on
Darfur’, Women’s Voices e-letter, April 2011, available
at ; and Women’s Initiatives for
<strong>Gender</strong> Justice, ‘Women in Darfur IDP camps suffer from
deteriorating security and humanitarian conditions’,
Women’s Voices e-letter, April 2011, available at .
On 10 and 11 October 2010, a UN Security
Council delegation visited North Darfur, led
by British Ambassador to the UN Mark Lyall
Grant, and including US Ambassador to the
UN, Susan Rice, and Ugandan Ambassador to
the UN, Ruhakana Rugunda. The delegation
met with government officials, community
representatives, including IDPs, and the UN.
Some IDP women leaders were able to meet
with the delegation and deliver a petition in
which they voiced their concerns about the
humanitarian conditions in which IDPs are living
in North Darfur. 695
In the petition, women called for
practical solutions and decried the lack of
implementation of the more than 17 Security
Council resolutions with regard to Darfur, calling
this ‘a sign of the complete inability to face the
events that lasted for a period of eight years
of hardship, accompanied by difficulties and
crimes that continue to occur, including forcible
displacement, assassination, rape, kidnapping,
murder and arbitrary arrest, in addition to
all kinds of inhumane practices and brutal
treatment’.
The petition said that the lack of
implementation of the Security Council
resolutions encouraged the Government of
Sudan and its allies to commit crimes against
humanity in Darfur. The petition called
attention to the deterioration of the security
and humanitarian conditions in the camps, and
called upon the international community to
take urgent action to put an end to the Darfur
conflict, including through the implementation
of the Security Council resolutions and the
prosecution of all those who committed crimes
against humanity in Darfur. According to
Women’s Initiatives’ partners in the IDP camps
of North Darfur, those who met with the
695 The petition is available at .
159