UN rights envoy to keep investigating in Sudan
Sunday, 16 December 2007
GENEVA (Reuters): The United Nations human rights envoy for Sudan, overcoming resistance from African and Islamic states, had her mandate extended for another year on Friday, but a team of Darfur investigators was disbanded.
A compromise resolution was adopted by consensus at the U.N. Human Rights Council, following several days of negotiations with the European Union, officials said.
Sudan's government has been accused of sanctioning killings, rapes and looting in the vast Darfur region, where conflict has raged since 2003, uprooting an estimated 2.5 million people.
African and Muslim nations successfully argued that it was unnecessary to renew both Sima Samar's investigative mandate and that of a separate U.N. group of seven independent experts on Darfur that Samar led this year.
"It has been decided to maintain the mandate of the special rapporteur on Sudan," Romania's ambassador Doru Romulus Costea, who chairs the 47-member state Council, told a news briefing.
A compromise resolution was adopted by consensus at the U.N. Human Rights Council, following several days of negotiations with the European Union, officials said.
Sudan's government has been accused of sanctioning killings, rapes and looting in the vast Darfur region, where conflict has raged since 2003, uprooting an estimated 2.5 million people.
African and Muslim nations successfully argued that it was unnecessary to renew both Sima Samar's investigative mandate and that of a separate U.N. group of seven independent experts on Darfur that Samar led this year.
"It has been decided to maintain the mandate of the special rapporteur on Sudan," Romania's ambassador Doru Romulus Costea, who chairs the 47-member state Council, told a news briefing.