In the midst of what feels like an exceptionally tumultuous time in the world and in the Middle East and North Africa particularly, it is easy to let certain issues fall by the wayside. With international intervention in Libya, continued clashes in Egypt, and the escalation of conflict in Bahrain, the people of Sudan cannot afford for the international community to forget about them.

In the past week, clashes between the South Sudan army and rebels have killed at least 70 people. Continued fighting over the disputed oil-producing region of Abyei threatens to derail peace talks between the north and the south.

The tense political climate has led Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party to take action to crush opposition. It has cracked down on opposition party members, students, and activists through violence and illegal detentions. This week the government threatened to silence internet-based dissent by using ”cyber jihadists”.

Fighting in the Darfur region, where villages continue to be burnt down, has forced an estimated 66,000 people—mainly women, children, and the elderly—to seek safety in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps since January of this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The mass movement of IDPs to camps has placed “considerable strain” on resources and services, said Georg Charpentier, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, as arriving IDPs have led to increased demand for protection, food, and sanitation facilities.

Threats to the safety and wellbeing of the people of Sudan remain, and mounting political tension and violence related to the north-south split brings an increased risk of further human rights abuses in the upcoming months. We must keep up international pressure to continue to monitor and protect human rights in Sudan.

Take action to ensure accountability for crimes committed in Darfur

You can also take action now against the illegal detention of political dissenters and human rights advocates

Sara Harden, Africa Program, contributed to this blog post

By Christian Mukosa, Researcher at Amnesty International

Some former child soliders have depicted their experiences of conflict in art © Amnesty International

Rawan is just 13 years old, though he looks older. He was not even 11 when he left his home and became a child soldier. He – and the 40 other boys who talked to us about their experiences – are living proof of the use of child soldiers in Chad.

Children are still being used by both the army and armed opposition groups. Thousands have joined up in recent years as the armed conflict between the Chadian army and rebel groups has intensified in the region and the Darfur conflict over the border in Sudan has engulfed eastern Chad.

Most child recruits are boys aged between 13 and 18, but some are as young as 10. Most receive military training, including weapons handling, and many are involved in combat. Hazam, who was 15 when he joined a rebel group, told us: “What was the most difficult was taking part in the fighting. Many of us were my age. There is nothing joyful in the rebellion.”

Some children have been forcibly recruited. But some said they were encouraged by their communities to avenge killings and looting. Many have been driven by extremes of poverty and the lack of schools and jobs in their villages. For example, Mahamane told us that because his father was old, and there was not enough food to go round, he joined an armed group when he was 13 to help his family and his mother.

The Chadian army officially denies any involvement in recruiting and using children, but Yasin was recruited by government soldiers in late 2008 when he was 16 years old. He lived in one of many camps for the internally displaced in eastern Chad – places of lost hopes and growing despair where boys are at particular risk from marauding recruiters. A resident of one camp we visited said: “There are only old people here. All our young boys have entered the army.” Other very young boys were still visible at the end of 2010 in military convoys in the city of Abéché, in eastern Chad and even in the capital N’Djamena.

There have been efforts to demobilize child soldiers and reintegrate them into civilian life. However, programmes have been partial, ineffective and threatened by continuing violence. Few of the thousands of former child soldiers who need support to rebuild their lives have been helped.

The security situation in eastern Chad is highly volatile, and the United Nations peace keeping forces withdrew at the end of December 2010 at the request of the Chadian government. Deep poverty persists, and many demobilized children drift back into soldiering for want of alternative opportunities such as secondary education or employment.

The recruitment and use of children as soldiers has been universally condemned as abhorrent and unacceptable. Child soldiers suffer physical, social and psychological harm. The recruitment and use of child soldiers is a war crime – taken so seriously by the international community that if a state is unable or unwilling to deal with those responsible, the International Criminal Court can intervene. Yet last month Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno ordered an amnesty for crimes committed by armed groups, which means that countless abuses against children used as soldiers will go unpunished.

Despite repeated promises by the Chadian government, children are still being used as soldiers. This scandalous child abuse must not be allowed to continue.

UPDATE: Please take action to ensure accountability  for crimes committed in Darfur

While the whole world is watching the outcome of the South Sudan referendum, Darfur continues to burn. New satellite images released by Amnesty’s Science for Human Rights Program provide shocking evidence that grave human rights violations continue in Darfur 8 years after the outbreak of the conflict. The situation has deteriorated in the run up to the referendum in South Sudan last month.

More alarmingly, the escalation in violence has been largely ignored by the international community, which is focusing on the formation of a new state in the south of the country.

Click to see full graphic

The Negeha region of South Darfur
The images were analyzed by our partners from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and show irrefutably that civilians were targeted in the Negeha region of south Darfur with whole villages burned to the ground as recently as December. We have previously reported that in December alone more than 20,000 people were displaced by government attacks, including in Dar Al Salam, Shangil Tobaya and Khor Abeche displacement camps in north and south Darfur.

Based on new reports of offensives in the Negeha region in December 2010, we sought to document any apparent violations of international law through the targeting of civilian dwellings. According to reports, the villages of Negeha and Jaghara were burned in December 2010, resulting in more than 7,000 internally displaced persons. Satellite imagery of the region was collected and compared from three time periods: December 2005, January 2010, and December 2010.

In total, AAAS identified 819 individual structures as damaged or destroyed. Of these, 265 suffered damage between December 2005 and January 2010, while 554 did so between January and December 2010.

The release of the findings coincides with other recent high profile uses of satellite imagery in connection with the referendum, and builds on our three-year-old Eyes on Darfur project. It is a continuation of several years of work to use geospatial tools for human rights monitoring.

Where is the commitment to justice?
The new images are a painful reminder of the collective failure of the international community to ensure accountability for the crimes committed in Darfur. Referring to the recent UN assistance for Ahmed Haroun—wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court―Scott Edwards, Amnesty International USA Africa Advocacy Director made the following statement (which I believe leaves nothing to add):

When the United Nations Mission in Sudan gives a ride to one of the alleged architects of systematic murder, rape, and torture in Darfur, we have to question the current state of commitment to justice for Darfur. It then becomes easier to understand why the crimes documented in the Negeha analysis continue unabated. Impunity—that’s what the satellite imagery currently shows.

For updates on this and other stories about human rights in Sudan, follow me on Twitter.

This posting is part of the Sudan Referendum Watch series

While many observers are optimistic that the referendum in South Sudan this Sunday will go ahead peacefully, the last few months do not bode well for the future human rights situation in the country (no matter what the outcome of the referendum will be).

Thousands have been displaced by the government’s military offensive in Darfur, while the international community’s attention is focused on preparations for the referendum and the negotiation of a peace agreement for Darfur.  Since December 2010, more than 20,000 people in Darfur have been displaced during attacks by the Khartoum government’s attacks on various parts of North and South Darfur, including camps for the displaced in Dar Al Salam, Shangil Tobaya and Khor Abeche. The international community shouldn’t repeat its mistakes from 2004 and 2005, when focus on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) led to an ignorance (and acceptance) of grave crimes committed in Darfur.

The April 2010 elections were marked by human rights violations and threats to freedom of expression in both the south and north of the country and  we remain concerned that such violations would occur again during or after the referendum.

Human rights should be at the heart of this coming referendum. The governments of unity and of south Sudan should make it clear that human rights violations will not be tolerated. The respect, protection and promotion of human rights in Sudan are vital to the success of this historic vote.

An Amnesty International delegation recently returned from Juba in southern Sudan where it assessed the human rights situation ahead of the referendum. To get detailed information about our human rights concerns in Sudan, please take a look at some of our resources:

• Media Briefing: Human rights violations surrounding the south Sudan referendum (pdf)
• Maps: Geography of Risk. A Background on South Sudan
• Satellite images: Eyes on Darfur

For an interesting non-AI resource, don’t forget to follow the Sudan Vote Monitor (SVM), which was launched today. SVM is a Sudanese civil society initiative to monitor the referendum and is based on the powerful Ushahidi plattform.

This posting is part of the Sudan Referendum Watch series

Lately, there’s been no shortage of news about Sudan. On January 9^th, the people of South Sudan will vote in a referendum that will determine whether or not South Sudan becomes independent. Thousands of southern Sudanese who have been living in the north for decades are making their way back to South Sudan to participate in what is sure to a historic event.

But as we wait with impatience for the referendum and as we plan ahead for what is likely to be an independent South Sudan, let’s not forget about Darfur.

Civilians in Darfur continue to be faced with violence and are subjected to human rights violations on a regular basis. Humanitarian aid organizations struggle to reach the people who rely on the aid. Armed groups and militias continue to attack villages, leading to more death and more displacement. Human rights defenders are still being systematically targeted.

And these are just some examples of the ways in which the situation has been deteriorating over the past year. Just two days ago, rebel officials in Darfur announced that it was highly unlikely that a peace deal between the government of Sudan and the Darfuri rebel group the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), would be signed on December 19, as originally planned. While the international community focuses on the referendum and on the North-South dialogue, peace efforts in Darfur are  going nowhere.

So as we prepare ourselves for what might come next, let’s make sure that we remember the people of Darfur.

1. Read our Sudan Referendum Briefing (pdf)
2. Follow this weekly blogging series. For daily updates and breaking news, follow me or Amnesty on Twitter
3. Look out for new materials, such as more maps and a resource guide, in the weeks running up to the referendum on January 9. New content will be posted on this blog or on our Sudan Country Page

Today, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a second arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir for three counts of genocide. An arrest warrant was first issued for Al Bashir in March 2009 for five counts of crimes against humanity (which includes murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape) and two counts of war crimes (for intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population and pillaging).

Satellite images provide evidence of the destruction of villages in Darfur. See more at www.eyesondarfur.org. Copyright 2009 DigitalGlobe

While a trial is the only way to determine whether or not Al Bashir is responsible for the crimes he is accused of, this second arrest warrant shows the determination of the ICC to ensure that those who have suffered the most from conflict in Darfur – civilians – have access to justice.

And while President Al Bashir will most certainly continue trying to evade justice and is unlikely to surrender himself in the near future, this new arrest warrant will certainly not make his life any easier. Even since the first arrest warrant was issued, his travel has been heavily restricted as he has been uninvited or at the very least, discouraged from attending many events in foreign countries.

This new arrest warrant, as the very least, reminds us that there is a still a lot to be done to ensure justice for the people of Darfur. That’s why we’re continuing to ask the US government to do all that they can to assist and cooperate with the ICC, especially on the Sudan cases. The Obama administration has stated that it supports international efforts to bring those responsible for genocide and war crimes in Darfur to justice. It’s time to put those words into action.

This coming Saturday, July 17^th, the world will be celebrating International Justice Day, which provides us with a great opportunity to remind the US government that international justice should be a priority and to urge support for the ICC’s cases in Sudan. You can also celebrate by participating and hosting a variety of events. The American NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court (AMICC), which AIUSA is a part of, has an extensive list of great ideas for activities you can plan in celebration of International Justice Day.

An Amnesty research team is visiting Chad for the fourth time since 2006. This time the focus of inquiry will be on violence against women, general issues of insecurity, and new work on the recruitment of child soldiers. Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada, is reporting.  You can follow his blog here.

AI Canada's Secretary General Alex Neve reunites with village chief Abakar Yusuf

The last think I ever would have expected in an isolated corner of eastern Chad is a reunion!

This afternoon we made our way out to Koudigou, a camp near Goz Beida that is home to about 11,000 displaced Chadians, most of who have been there for close to four years now.  It was a bumpy, sandy track through rough terrain, making our way past sporadic groups of people coming and going with supplies of water and bundles of firewood and hay.  Also sharing the road were camels, donkeys, goats and sheep with occasional herds of cattle in the distance.  As has been the case throughout our time on the ground here in eastern Chad the sun was relentless and the heat suffocating.

Even before we had arrived a group of about 15 elders and leaders had gathered to meet with us.  We made our way into a small building that offered welcome shelter from the sun while still allowing a breeze to blow through.

We made our introductions and explained who we were, a bit about Amnesty International and the focus of our mission.  The first village chief to speak, Abakar Yusuf, then astonished me by saying he remembered me from when I was here in 2006 and had spent some time in and around the village of Adé, very near the Chad/Darfur border.  He reminded me that he had spoken with me about the very tragic death of his wife, who was shot and then thrown into their burning home when their village had come under attack by Janjawid militia.

I immediately remembered and even recognized him. I certainly recalled the heart-wrenching story of his wife’s death, which had only happened about two weeks before our arrival. In fact I recall that the report we published in January 2007 following that mission, includes an account of Abakar’s wife’s death, alongside Abakar’s photo.

Abakar pointed out that when I had first met him and the others from his village, their conditions were wretched.  It was true.  Many people had been killed during the attack.  The village had been destroyed.  They had lost most of their livestock and food supplies.  And when we met with them they were living and sleeping out in the open, uncertain where to find food and water and fearful that there might yet be further attacks.  Abakar said, with a wry smile, “you can see that things are much better for us now, but I can tell you that the situation is still very hard and difficult.”

We spent quite some time with Abakar and the other leaders, hearing of the many challenges they face.  Above all else we heard of their fervent desire to return home, but ongoing fear that it is still far too dangerous and insecure to do so.

After the meeting I was able to spend some time talking one-on-one with Abakar.  I told him how astounded I was that he remembered and recognized me.  He said that the unexpected arrival of our Amnesty International team back in November 2006 was the only “sign of hope” that came their way during that terrible time, something he could never forget.  He had been surprised that anyone coming from a country so far away wanted to know so much about what had happened to his wife, he said, and sharing it with me had eased some of his sadness.

I told him how humbled I had been that he had been willing to tell us what had happened, when it was still so recent and painful.  And I described for him how his account of his wife’s death and his photo had been prominent in the materials we produced to tell the harrowing story about what was happening in eastern Chad in 2006.  I told him of the campaigning we had done and the visits I had made to New York to meet with members of the Security Council, as we pressed the UN to send a mission to eastern Chad.  I assured him that our work would not have been possible if he and others had not trusted us with their very personal stories of loss and pain.  I suggested that he should feel proud, therefore, that his voice had played an important role in pressing the UN in the end to agree to establish a mission.

With a very clear twinkle in his eye he then pointed out to me that since the UN was now pulling out, and it was still too dangerous for them to return home, “obviously there is still more for us to do together.” I agreed.  There most certainly is.

We ended with photos, much handshaking and then his final words:  “that he very much hoped that the next time we meet he will be back home and we can simply enjoy a good meal and not have to talk about hardship and suffering.”

Abakar Yusuf desrcibes the death of his wife: read the excerpt from ‘Are we citizens of this country?’ – Civilians in Chad unprotected from Janjawid attacks (2007)

An Amnesty research team is visiting Chad for the fourth time since 2006. This time the focus of inquiry will be on violence against women, general issues of insecurity, and new work on the recruitment of child soldiers. Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada, is reporting.  You can follow his blog here.

Last week, we told you about the need for UN peacekeepers to stay in eastern Chad to help protect refugees and IDPs. We also sent an open letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about our concerns. Now you can check out our new video that sends a powerful message to Secretary Clinton and all of the US Government that we need greater civilian protection in Chad.

And don’t forget to ask Secretary Clinton to support MINURCAT’s renewal! We need you to take action today to make sure peacekeepers can stay in Chad and the Central Africa Republic. MINURCAT still has a chance.

UN peacekeepers that have been crucial in protecting civilians in eastern Chad and northern Central African Republic (CAR) are being asked to leave once the mission’s mandate ends on May 15th. Without these peacekeepers, human rights abuses in the region will almost certainly increase, further endangering the lives of the refugees and internally displaced people living in camps.

Both the conflict in neighboring Darfur, Sudan, and Chad’s own internal conflict have created hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people, many of which now live in refugee camps in the eastern part of Chad, close to the border with Sudan.

Refugees in Mile refugee camp, eastern Chad

Despite recent improvements, security in these camps remains a major issue. Amongst other issues, violence against women and girls is common both within and outside of the camps, and acts of violence are carried with almost complete impunity. And the UN peacekeepers are the only ones who can provide protection for these people.

Chad’s president, Idriss Déby, has asked the UN peacekeeping mission, known by its French acronym MINURCAT, to withdraw from Chad when the mission mandate’s comes to an end on May 15th. But it’s not too late. If the United States can take a leadership at the UN Security Council, MINURCAT has a chance. And so will the people living in eastern Chad.

It’s up to you to take action today to ask the US government to be a leader in ensuring MINURCAT’s renewal.