20100917
all africa

Sudan is woefully unprepared for the upcoming referenda on the possible independence for the southern region of Africa's largest country and the Government has a duty to ensure that all people can vote free from fear or intimidation, a United Nations human rights expert said on Friday.

Mohamed Chande Othman, the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in the Sudan, also told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that a worrying deterioration of the human rights situation in the war-torn Darfur region exemplified the human rights crisis raging in the country.

The 9 January referenda are the final stage of a 2005 peace accord that ended two decades of civil war between the south and the central Government. Inhabitants of southern Sudan will vote on whether to secede or remain united with the rest of the country, while residents of Abyei area in the centre of the country will vote on whether to retain Abyei's special administrative status in the north or become part of southern Sudan.

Mr. Othman said time was the biggest challenge and registration of voters must start as soon as possible, including identifying those who are eligible to vote to avoid post-referendum violence.

Turning to human rights he said the institutions in Sudan were incomplete although some progress was made, for example, in establishing the national forum for human rights. The Council must urge the Government to set up the institutions and build up the culture of human rights, he added.

Protection of civilians is an area on which the Council should focus. The biggest challenge to the protection of civilians, particularly in Darfur, is access by the UN. Technical assistance and capacity building for the promotion and protection of human rights must go in parallel with other issues, Mr. Othman declared.

More needs to be done to bring to justice those who committed crimes and grave violations of human rights in Darfur, and those responsible for the recent killings of peacekeepers there, he added.