Members of the United Nations Security Council have unanimously adopted a resolution, extending for another year the mandate of the panel of experts monitoring sanctions imposed on Sudan.
The panel of experts is tasked with monitoring an arms embargo, travel ban and assets freeze, and inform the Council’s sanctions committee about individuals who impede the peace process, violate international law or are responsible for offensive military flights in Darfur.
After the vote, US ambassador Samantha Power said, “We have an arms embargo in place for eleven years and year after year we receive report after report of arms flowing illegally Darfur. We have created a panel of experts to provide this kind of reporting, and yet when they do a member of this Council blocks the report from being published because its findings are so disturbing.”
The US diplomat also said, “Some of the same Council members who speak in certain contexts of the need for transparency in sanction regimes in theory –including in forthcoming meetings of this Council- now seek to block publication of information related to real sanctions regime in practice because they do not like its findings.”
She added, “We cannot make judgments about what should be transparent and what shouldn’t be on the basis of whether the information is convenient or inconvenient.”
Darfur has since 2003 been wracked by conflict that pits Government forces and allied militiamen against rebel groups. Millions of civilians have been either internally displaced or forced to seek refuge in neighbouring countries.
