Annan appoints Sudan 'genocide' commission

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today appointed a five-member international commission to investigate whether acts of genocide took place during the 19-month conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

The commission includes legal and human rights experts from Italy, Peru, Egypt, Pakistan and Ghana.

In a resolution adopted on September 18, the UN Security Council asked Annan to rapidly appoint a commission to investigate allegations of genocide as well as reports of human rights violations.

The attacks by government-backed Arab militias against non-Arab villagers have killed more than 50,000 people in Darfur and driven 1.4 million from the their homes.

The US Congress and President George Bush’s administration have called the attacks a genocide, but the 53-nation African Union has said the Darfur conflict is not a genocide.

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said the commission would be chaired by Italian law professor Antonio Cassese, a human rights expert who was president of the UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia from 1993 to 1997.

Eckhard said South African lawyer Dumisa Ntsebeza, a prominent political activist during the apartheid era, would be the executive director of the commission and would head its technical team.