First published at Save Darfur’s blog…
On Tuesday, I attended a talk in Washington on “Engaging on Human Rights in the Middle East: Multilateral Frameworks and the Role of the U.S.” organized by the Project on Middle East Democracy and the Heinrich Boll Foundation. The event focused on the ways in which multilateral frameworks work to promote or to inhibit human rights reforms in the Middle East, including the techniques authoritarian regimes employ to undermine the effectiveness of multilateral organizations.
Moataz El Fegiery, Executive Director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, spoke about the Arab League’s strategies and tactics to protect the violations of its members before the UNHRC, as well as other human rights bodies. On Sudan, he discussed how the Arab and African blocs and other countries have consistently sought to restrict the mandate and block reports from UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan. Fortunately these countries lost a major battle in June when the UNHRC members – over the objections of the many African and Arab countries – voted to appoint an independent expert on the situation in Sudan.
In his comments, Joe Stork, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division ofHuman Rights Watch, attempted to assess the Obama Administration’s record on human rights in its first eight months in office. He noted that those driving American foreign policy have said the right things in regards to the importance of promoting human rights. Specifically, he referenced Obama’s speech in Cairo and UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s recent speech at New York University. Overall though, he said that “It’s too soon to tell” whether this rhetoric will actually translate into actual policies.
To follow up on this early assessment, I asked Stork during the question and answer period how advocates should evaluate success on the human rights front in the context of the Obama Administration’s engagement-first approach to foreign policy. As we have seen, engaging with a regime like Sudan’s may mean pushing for gradual change over time despite the existence of grave human rights abuses today in places like Darfur.
Stork responded by saying that in his opinion engagement should always be the default position. Therefore, he supports Obama’s preference for dialogue before confrontation. At the same time, he acknowledged that the U.S. bilateral relations with any country will involve a complicated and competing set of interests and priorities – and human rights usually is not a first order concern. His general advice, therefore, for American foreign policymakers is to choose the one or two most important human rights issues to push aggressively on in their negotiations with odious regimes.
Should we apply Stork’s advice to Sudan?
Whereas human rights have seemed so far to be one cornerstone of the Obama Administration’s engagement on Sudan, there is no doubt that many issues (such as regional stability and combating terrorism to name only two) factor into Sudanese-American relations as well. From experience though, we also know that pushing for policies to change the behavior of the Bashir regime falls low on the U.S. priority list in its bilateral relations with other countries who possess significant leverage (see, for example, where Sudan fell on the agenda for the meeting between Mubarak and Obama two weeks ago, or the U.S.-China Summit in July). As advocates for peace and human rights in Sudan, we must continue to demand that human rights issues in Darfur and throughout Sudan take center stage in America’s engagement of Sudanese leaders. For guidance on the key issues in Darfur today, Bec Hamilton has written a good piece after just returning from Sudan. We must also keep demanding that the U.S. make human rights a higher priority in its relations with regional powerhouses like Egypt and South Africa, as well as global powers like China.
The U.S. should also ensure that non-strategic partners have support in their efforts to promote and protect human rights at home and abroad. Countries like Zambia and Botswana have played an important role in advocating for justice in Darfur, with the former voting for the UNHRC independent expert in June and the latter objecting publicly in July to the African Union’s opposition to the ICC proceedings on Darfur. With several other African cases at the ICC and ongoing efforts to promote justice across Africa and the Middle East, Obama’s approach to Sudan serves furthermore as both signal and strategy for dealing with other complex cases in an increasingly multi-polar world that still often looks to the U.S. for leadership.
It’s my belief that the Obama Administration can amplify its engagement efforts with Khartoum by putting peace, protection and human rights not only at the centerpiece of its relations with Sudan, but also making some of its specific concerns about the Sudanese regime’s egregious behavior a higher priority with others. This does not mean that Darfur or Sudan should be the first priority when speaking to the Egyptians or Chinese, but even raising it to the top five or top ten could go a long way in building a coherent multilateral approach to ensure Sudanese leaders feel the necessary pressure to take the critical steps to end human rights abuses and resolve the country’s interlocking crises.
engagement, Human Rights, Obama, Sudan
