SummaryAn increased international presence in eastern Chad is urgently needed to protect civilians threatened by worsening insecurity and brutal militia violence. Civilians in eastern Chad have long suffered the consequences of living across the border from Sudan’s troubled western region of Darfur, but violence in Chad has recently taken on its own momentum. Amid continuing militia attacks against civilians, the Chadian state is not fulfilling its obligation to provide protection. Moreover, actions taken by the government of Chad in response to the threat posed by Chadian rebels based in Darfur, including military redeployments and reduced policing, have contributed to a rapidly deteriorating security situation and left civilians increasingly vulnerable to militia attacks and cross-border raids. In recognition of the deteriorating human rights situation, the United Nations Security Council has sent two technical assessment missions to Chad and Central African Republic to evaluate the feasibility of dispatching a UN protection mission to the region. The Security Council is soon expected to make a decision on the mandate and deployment of this mission. While it will be deeply challenging for the UN to provide protection outside the framework of a comprehensive peace process between the Chadian government and Chadian rebels, the scale and scope of the threats to civilians in eastern Chad are so great that the Security Council should authorize a robust international protection force for the region with all possible urgency. Human Rights Watch urges member states of the Security Council to take quick and decisive action to ensure that civilians are protected in eastern Chad, including 230,000 Sudanese refugees living in camps along the Chad-Sudan border. The Security Council must live up to its responsibility to protect civilians and immediately deploy a UN protection force to eastern Chad equipped with a mandate and sufficient resources to protect civilians, secure humanitarian access, patrol the Chad-Sudan border, monitor the movement of weapons and armed groups and support efforts to ensure accountability for human rights violations. UN military personnel would play a crucial role in deterring violence in eastern Chad, particularly cross-border raids, as well as in responding to ongoing attacks and observing the movement of arms and armed groups. However, military personnel alone would not be enough. A well-resourced civilian component to the proposed mission, in particular a strong human rights unit and a civilian police force, would also play a key role in protecting civilians by building judicial and policing capacity and helping bring human rights violators to justice, thereby deterring communal violence and inhibiting the activities of local and community-based militias. The deployment of a UN mission in Chad would require sustained political support, commitment and sufficient resources. Member states of the Security Council will be instrumental in shaping the mandate and makeup of the proposed UN mission, but engagement and support from regional organizations such as the European Union, the African Union and the Arab League are also essential. In the short term, an international protection mission would not be sufficient to end all attacks against civilians in eastern Chad, particularly those attacks that are related to the Darfur conflict, which have a destabilizing influence on the wider region. Accordingly, the Security Council should at a minimum impose targeted sanctions on senior Sudanese government officials for their failure to end attacks on civilians and other violations of international humanitarian law, and their persistent refusal to accept the full deployment of the proposed African Union-United Nations hybrid international force and to reverse their abusive policies in Darfur. |