الحملة بقيادة منظمة نشر السلام البريطانية و مقرها لندن… بإرسال اسمك و منصبك و اسم منظمتك و المدينة و الولاية و القطر الي :
olivia.warham@wagingpeace.info
قبل يوم غد الأربعاء 5 أكتوبر 2016
All – See sign-on letter below, led by Waging Peace in the UK. To sign-on, review quickly to make the deadline and send your name, title, organization, city, state, country to olivia.warham@wagingpeace.info
Letter to UNHRC asking for investigation into chemical weapons – REPLY WED 5PM
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2016 14:08:47 +0100
From: WP Olivia olivia.warham@wagingpeace.info
Dear all
We are circulating a global letter for signature in response to Amnesty’s report. Following Aicha El Basri’s suggestion, we are targeting the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva as the Security Council is unlikely to be effective. We would like UNHRC to mirror the work they did on Syria in 2011 and set up an independent commission of inquiry. Currently France is the only member of the UNSC to have publicly called for an investigation.
Please note that we have purposefully kept the letter brief and focused, and are not addressing other concerns, in order to gain a win (we hope) on this particular issue with a strong and undiluted message. The letter is below. Please reply by Wednesday end of play with your name, title, organisation and country. Please also circulate to your networks.
In addition, we are asking for your urgent support for a social media campaign we have launched urging the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Prince Zeid, to react to Amnesty’s report. Arabic messages are strongly encouraged as well. Please tweet to HC Zeid (see our message below) and push this out to your networks.
.@UNGeneva @UN_Spokesperson HC Zeid pls react to @AmnestyOnline report on chemical weapons in #Sudan:bit.ly/2dbYkQw Set up inquiry
Chemical weapons in Darfur
In 2013 the international community rightly expressed its outrage at the use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians. In its recent report, Amnesty International has documented that chemical weapons have been used by Sudanese government forces more than 30 times since January 2016 against civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan.
The use of chemical weapons by Sudan directly contravenes the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997 to which Sudan is a party. We, the undersigned, as representatives of domestic and international civil society, non-governmental organisations, and the Sudanese diaspora, call on the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva to open a formal investigation into the use of chemical weapons and other illicit munitions used against civilians in Sudan by their own government, and for the UNHRC to work in concert with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to push for access to verify these findings which can then be responded to via UN channels. Failure to treat these attacks with the same seriousness as those in Syria will leave the UN system open to accusations of dereliction of duty.
For several years some of the signatories of this letter have been aware of the repeated and systematic use of chemical weapons and other illicit ordnance by Sudanese government forces against civilians. Our attempts to bring these breaches of international law to the attention of the relevant authorities have been ignored, despite the witness testimonies we have gathered. With Amnesty International’s detailed account, now is the moment for the international community to finally shine a light on the Sudanese government’s illegal conduct in Darfur, rather than allowing impunity to continue.
Many thanks and best wishes
Olivia
Olivia Warham MBE
Director
Waging Peace
www.wagingpeace.info
020 3752 5818
0772 0771 113
