The multilateral organizations of this planet, created to promote peace and security, morally and politically suck. From Human Rights Watch:
Member States of the African Union
Your Excellencies:
Human Rights Watch is writing to express its concern at the current proposal to hold the next African Union summit in Khartoum in January 2006. Furthermore, if the presidency of the African Union is transferred from Nigeria to Sudan in 2006 as a result of a vote held at the Summit, we believe that the credibility of the African Union will be seriously damaged. We believe that it is inappropriate for a government complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity such as the government of Sudan to be able to host an AU summit or to have the option of presiding over the African Union.
Holding the Summit in Khartoum would contradict the African Union commitment to human rights as expressed in article 3 of its constitution and would be an unfortunate signal to African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) troops, to the people of Darfur where the AU has been playing a particularly important role and to the people of Africa. Human Rights Watch believes that the African Union should strive not only for propriety, but for the appearance of propriety in choosing its president and the location of its Summit. Leadership matters: it sets a tone for the way the African Union functions and is perceived within Africa and beyond.
We are particularly concerned that the role of the African Union in Darfur in providing mediation of the conflict and forces on the ground to monitor the ceasefire and protect civilians may be undermined by the holding of the Summit in Khartoum and even more so if Sudan were to assume the presidency.
HRW is calling on the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate President Omar El Bashir of Sudan and other senior officials for crimes against humanity. Read the full HRW report on Darfur, Entrenching Impunity, here.
Also pages 9 and 10 of the December forecast of Security Council Report have further information on responses and non-responses to Darfur.