SUDAN President Omar el-Bashir will not attend the AU summit on refugees, returnees and internally displaced persons in Kampala this week. By doing so, Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over crimes against humanity, has once again spared Uganda international embarrassment.
As a signatory to the Rome Statute, Uganda is obliged to apprehend and hand over suspects indicted by the ICC.
Bashir had been invited by President Yoweri Museveni. At a press conference last week, Museveni reiterated his position that Africa appointed its own probe team, headed by former President Thabo Mbeki, to look into the allegations. “When the ICC warrant came out, our position in the African Security Committee was: Let us not condemn Bashir and let us not condone him. But let us do our own investigation,” he told journalists.
Inviting Bashir to a conference on refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDPs) made sense. Sudan hosts the world’s highest number of IDPs, an estimated 4.5 million, including 2.7 million in Darfur. People continue being displaced in Sudan. This year alone, 317,000 were forced to flee their homes in Darfur and another 250,000 in the south. Government-backed militia are said to be the main cause of displacement.
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which for a long time received arms and support from the Khartoum government, has displaced hundreds of thousands more in Uganda, Congo and the Central African Republic.
In addition, Sudan exports its displaced people to the entire region. Chad alone hosts 200,000 refugees from Darfur. Whoever is part of the problem should assume responsibility and be made part of the solution, argue those who consider Bashir’s arrest inconceivable in the near future. With modern communication means, the Sudanese leader could participate in the summit through tele-conferencing.
It would involve him in a debate affecting millions of people, where his participation is crucial, without making his presence become the focus of attention and overshadow the entire summit.
