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In Sudan, UN Peacekeepers' Inaction Was "Ambiguous" and So Edited Out

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 31 -- Even before the UN peacekeepers in Southern Kordofan entirely stopped protecting civilians on July 9, they were criticized for inaction on murders of people including their own employees in Kadugli in June.

When Inner City Press asked the Anglican bishop of Kadugli, he said that the UN peacekeepers had sided with government aligned militias.

With surprising candor, a draft UN report on Southern Kordofan, obtained and put online by Inner City, reported that

"29. On 8 June, an UNMIS independent contractor (IC) was pulled out of a vehicle by SAF in front of the UNMIS Kadugli Sector IV Compound in the presence of several witnesses, while UN peacekeepers could not intervene. He was taken around the corner of the compound and gunshots were heard. Later he was discovered dead by UNMIS personnel and IDPs."

When asked about the phrase "UN peacekeepers could not intervene," UN officials including now former Department of Peacekeeping Operations chief Alain Le Roy emphasized that the report could still be changed.

When the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay finally issued the report, the line "UN peacekeepers could not intervene" had been entirely removed:

"17. On 8 June, an UNMIS individual contractor (IC) was pulled out of a vehicle by SAF in front of the UNMIS Kadugli Sector IV compound in the presence of several witnesses. He was taken away from the vicinity of the compound and gunshots were heard. Later he was discovered dead by UNMIS personnel and IDPs."

Inner City Press asked now former deputy spokesman Farhan Haq about the deletion of the phrase and was told to "ask Navi Pillay."

  As Pillay and an entourage left the UN Security Council on August 19, Inner City Press stopped her and asked about edits. "She has an appointment," a staff member intervened. "We will e-mail you an answer."

   After waiting more than a week, Inner City Press sent this and other questions to Pillay's spokesman Rupert Colville in Geneva. To his credit, Colville two days later sent an explanation, published in full below; on this edit he wrote:

"draft para 29 / final para 17: original phrase 'while UN peacekeepers could not intervene' is ambiguous. Does it mean they were not ABLE to? If so was that for circumstantial reasons, or because of rules of engagement? Or does it mean they chose not to? After checking with the field, we were unable to establish the precise circumstances, so the reference was deleted."

  For UN peacekeepers to fail to act during killings, important in this instance to no less that the Bishop of Kadugli and previously of interest from Srebrenica to Rwanda, should not be left ambiguous -- but it should definitely not by deleted, by the UN.

  The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights could and should have determined what were the rules of engagement for these UN peacekeepers, and should have addressed the allegations by the Bishop of Kadugli and others that the peacekeepers decided not to act because they sided with Khartoum and its militias.

  To delete the reference and airbrush out the peacekeepers is, in this view, entirely irresponsible.

   So too, some feel, has been Pillay's silence on the UN at least twice flying in a UN helicopter Southern Kordofan's governor Ahmed Haroun, indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. In this context, to air brush out inaction by UN peacekeepers in the same geography appears even worse.

Ban & Pillay & Deputy Kang, Kordofan edits & comments on Haroun flights not shown

    Another edit involved moving where Sudanese Central Reserve Police moved arms from inside to outside of the UNMIS Protective Perimeter.

The draft:

"42. On 8 June, UNMIS Human Rights witnessed the movement of four armed men (two armed civilians and two Central Reserve Police) carrying weapons in and out of the UNMIS Protective Perimeter without any intervention from the UNMIS peacekeepers guarding the premises."

The "final"--

"30. On 8 June, UNMIS Human Rights witnessed the movement of four armed men (two armed men in civilian clothes and two Central Reserve Police) carrying weapons in and out of the IDP area situated outside the UNMIS protective perimeter."

Of this, Colville writes

"draft para 42 / final para 30: Change made because checking process suggested factual error regarding location of movement of arms, which in turn cast a very different light on behaviour of UNMIS troops."

  Beyond the seeming emphasis on exonerating the peacekeepers, one wonders even if the movement of arms by Central Reserve Police was "outside the UNMIS Protective Perimeter" but still witnessed by the UN, why did the UN not act, and was the peacekeepers' presence airbrushed out of the final report?

  Entirely taken out were two paragraphs about the Sudanese Red Crescent, since accused of filling mass graves and lighting the corpses on fire.

"53. As of the morning of 20 June, there were about 11,000 IDPs in and around the vicinity of the UNMIS Protective Perimeter, most of whom had come from Kadugli and its immediate environs. In an attempt to force these IDPs to return back to their homes, it is believed that National Security agents, donning Sudan Red Crescent vests, came to the UNMIS Protective Perimeter and requested all the IDPs to relocate to the Kadugli Stadium by 17:00 that same day where they would be addressed by state authorities on the security situation and where they would be provided basic services including shelter in schools. Human Rights verified this allegation through multiple interviews of IDPs within the UNMIS Protective Perimeter.

54. UNMIS Human Rights also observed a well known National Security agent wearing a Sudan Red Crescent reflective vest intimidating IDPs. When approached and questioned by UNMIS Human Rights the agent identified himself as a NSS agent and said he had received instructions from state-level authorities to move out IDPs from the UNMIS Protective Perimeter. IDPs interviewed said that they were informed by Sudan Red Crescent personnel that they must evacuate the Protective Perimeter by 16:00 and that they feared the Central Reserve Police would evacuate them forcibly if they did not leave the premises."

Of the deletion in full of these paragraphs, Colville writes:

"removal of draft paras 53-54: After fact-checking, we did not feel we could substantiate the allegations in these two paragraphs. This does not necessarily mean they were not true -- just that we did not have sufficiently solid evidence to include them at the time we finalized the report."

Has OHCHR gotten more information since it finalized the report? And what of the line that UN "Human Rights verified this allegation through multiple interviews of IDPs within the UNMIS Protective Perimeter"? Did these "multiple interviews" not take place? Did witnesses later recant? If so, why?

  OHCHR and the UN should still explain this, particularly in light of what has since come out about the Sudanese Red Cross, which President Al Bashir now says is the only group permitted to provide aid in Southern Kordofan.

  Colville, again to his credit, had more to say, including about other OHCHR reports about Abyei and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His full response about the report and edits is below:

[Geneva, August 30, 2011]

Dear Matthew, 

Regarding the South Kordofan report, first of all I would like to point out that it is perfectly normal that there are many changes between a first draft and a final draft of a human rights report. All such reports go through very careful analysis (and usually several different drafts) by experienced human rights officers and lawyers in the field and in Geneva before the final version is reviewed by the High Commissioner and published. There is careful methodology involved regarding credibility and strength of evidence, and if a particular element does not pass certain thresholds, then it is not included, however interesting or dramatic it may appear to be. 

This particular report was produced under far from ideal circumstances as the UN Mission in Sudan was (a) caught up in a highly volatile and dangerous situation in Kadugli, and (b) was going to cease to exist a matter of days after the events described. You may notice that, in the press release accompanying the launch of the report, the High Commissioner (who ended up publishing it alone because UNMIS had ceased to exist) made a point of saying it was preliminary and that there should be a further, more thorough investigation. Her exact words were: “This is a preliminary report produced under very challenging circumstances and with very limited access to affected areas. However what it suggests has been happening in Southern Kordofan is so serious that it is essential there is an independent, thorough and objective inquiry with the aim of holding perpetrators to account.” 

The information contained in the final version was the information which the various field and HQ reviewers felt was sufficiently well-supported to include at this point in time. This is the reason for the changes you highlight: the original versions of events were checked, and the information gathered during that cross-checking process was insufficiently solid for some of the original material to remain in the final draft, or a detail here and there was found to be factually incorrect and had to be amended. Once again, I stress this is normal practice. It does not of course mean more supporting evidence that may subsequently emerge will be ignored. It is our hope that if there is a second, fuller, more thorough investigation it would revisit all these elements -- and others involving major violations -- to see if more supporting evidence, one way or the other, can be found. 

While I understand it is tempting to imagine some conspiracy lies behind the changes, it is important to understand the meticulous fact-checking processes UN human rights reports go through before they are published. Secondly, given that the report -- preliminary though it is -- still concludes that the violations described in it “could amount to crimes against humanity or war crimes” (i.e. two of the most serious crimes known to man), the repeated claims in your articles that it has been "watered down," "air-brushed" and contains a "systematic underplaying of abuses by Sudan" seems a bit strange: a classic case on your part, perhaps, of not seeing the wood for the trees? 

With regard to your specific queries on the removal/amendments to the first draft's sections that mentioned the UNMIS peacekeepers and the Sudanese Red Crescent, the reasons were as follows: 

removal of draft paras 53-54: After fact-checking, we did not feel we could substantiate the allegations in these two paragraphs. This does not necessarily mean they were not true -- just that we did not have sufficiently solid evidence to include them at the time we finalized the report. 

draft para 42 / final para 30: Change made because checking process suggested factual error regarding location of movement of arms, which in turn cast a very different light on behaviour of UNMIS troops 

draft para 29 / final para 17: original phrase "while UN peacekeepers could not intervene" is ambiguous. Does it mean they were not ABLE to? If so was that for circumstantial reasons, or because of rules of engagement? Or does it mean they chose not to? After checking with the field, we were unable to establish the precise circumstances, so the reference was deleted 

I would like to point out that previous human rights reports produced jointly by the High Commissioner and the human rights sections of peace-keeping missions have not shied away from criticizing the actions of peace-keepers if the facts warranted such criticism (the report on Abyei is one example, and there have been several examples from DRC). There is absolutely no reason why we would hold back in this particular case, when we haven't in others. 

I would like to stress once again that the High Commissioner clearly stated that this report is preliminary, rather than exhaustive, and as a result she called for a further more thorough investigation to be conducted into the events that have been taking place in Southern Kordofan. This was a point she made during her briefing of the Security Council, as well as publicly at the time the report was released. 

I hope this lengthy explanation answers some of your concerns. 

Best regards 

Rupert Colville
Spokesperson
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights