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Protectors or Pretenders? - Government Human Rights Commissions in Africa, HRW Report 2001

Sudan








Overview

Summary

International Standards: The Paris Principles

Important Factors

Examining the Record in Africa

Innovative and Positive Contributions by Commissions

Regional Iniatives

The Role Of The International Community

Conclusion

Recommendations

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements




Assessment

    The creation and functioning of the Advisory Council for Human Rights is institutionally limited and not autonomous; it was not lodged in any existing governmental executive agency. Its members are representatives of other state agencies and its head is also the minister of justice and the attorney-general. The Advisory Council for Human Rights apparently can be dissolved at will by presidential order and replaced by another ad hoc group. Its creation appears to have been prompted in response to international human rights demands on the Sudan government. The Sudan government seems to float responsibility for human rights issues in the government from one ad hoc group to another, which illustrates the government's reluctance to make human rights a part of its on-going, institutional concern, not just a fire to be put out.

    The department of human rights, located in the ministry of justice, is growing and seems to have evolved into a department with a possible institutional future for the protection of human rights, rather than the Advisory Council for Human Rights. Many of its functions are those entrusted to the Advisory Council for Human Rights and the same personalities serve on both bodies. Its director, Dr. Ahmed El Mufti (also the rapporteur for the Advisory Council for Human Rights), reports directly to the minister of justice (who is also the chair of the Advisory Council for Human Rights). Indeed, it is the justice ministry's human rights department, not the Advisory Council for Human Rights, that is running the principal human rights program of the government in 1999, regarding slavery, or "abductions and forced labor of women and children." The Advisory Council for Human Rights' role in this CEAWC program is its most serious endeavor undertaken to date, although a large part of the CEAWC's mandate remains unfulfilled.
    Despite its record of inactivity, an important reason for Advisory Council for Human Rights to exist is to foster the appearance that the government of doing something about the egregious human rights situation for which Sudan has come in for the most harsh international criticism.

Human Rights Watch World Report 2001

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