The longer the international impasse about taking action to relieve pressure on the 2.5 million Sudanese refugees in Darfur continues, the more difficult become the efforts to make political progress on the issue.
Recent reports underline the growing complexity of the conflicts between the central government in Khartoum, the Janjaweed militias it has sponsored to terrorise southern villagers into leaving their farms, and the fragmentation of rebel groups based on these displaced peoples. It has not proved possible to convince the United Nations Security Council to take action because China and Russia threaten vetoes. Efforts to bypass the UN by individual western states imposing unilateral sanctions or flight bans have yet to bear fruit.
Five months on from his resignation as UN secretary general, the sombre words of Kofi Annan about Darfur in a departing speech to the international NGO Human Rights Watch still ring true. "Sixty years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps, and 30 years after the Cambodian killing fields, the promise of 'never again' is ringing hollow," he said. Not much has changed since the disasters of Bosnia and Rwanda, he admitted. He blamed many African states for putting sovereignty ahead of the suffering of real families. They have resisted application of the "responsibility to protect" principle adopted at a UN summit in September 2005. It was agreed then that state sovereignty could not be used as an excuse to justify atrocities or to prevent international action to defend citizens when they are under attack.
The UN remains unable to take action to strengthen the woefully inadequate African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur. This does not have the resources to protect the huge refugee camps there from continuing attack, much less to prevent renewed assaults on village communities throughout southern Sudan. Political moves are now under way, supported by the United States, Britain and Denmark, to force the pace in this impasse.
Newly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy of France wants to see an international contact group take the initiative in association with sympathetic African states. These efforts are worthy of support, including from Ireland. They could include a no-fly zone around Sudan and an application of sanctions against the government in Khartoum if it does not co-operate in relaxing pressure on the refugees. Regrettably, democratic nations must take military action to protect those whose rights are being flouted as they work to change the UN's inadequate decision-making structures.
If such pressure is not applied, the outlook is increasingly bleak for the refugees in Darfur and the communities from which they come. Evidence of disintegrating governing authority and fragmentation among competing groups in Sudan as a whole underlines the widespread hopelessness of this humanitarian tragedy. It is all too easy to overlook Darfur's suffering in these circumstances. International leaderships must resist this.