Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I thank Deputy Allen for facilitating me, as I have another engagement. I am happy to support this all-party motion on behalf of the Labour Party. I commend the decision of the Minister for Foreign Affairs to visit Darfur so early and to remain engaged with the tragedy that is taking place there. It is important that we recognise what is at stake in Darfur. An enormous tragedy is unfolding in front of us. It is a real tragedy of a scale that involves a significant level of loss of life, as we heard in the Minister's speech and in Deputy Carey's contribution.

I would like to make some points that are equally challenging. When people use the term "genocide", they usually define it in terms of what is the intention. In this case, the intention is about occupation and dispossession. What is happening meets nearly all of the characteristics of genocide in international legal discourse. The issue is also raised of the rights of indigenous peoples and minorities and the lacunae that exist in international human rights law on such protection. Human rights law is challenged by our action or inaction on Darfur. The media and the public in many countries are interested in seeing, reading and hearing about the number of victims, but they sometimes do not see these minorities as the carriers of rights.

The next important challenge is in regard to the United Nations. The UN, moving in the direction of being active in the vindication of international human rights, has been stressing the nature of the concept of human rights protection. Human rights protection is crucially different from human rights intervention. In the case of human rights protection, it is the need of the indigenous people or the minority that defines the case for protection. Human rights intervention has been abused over many decades as it is the intention of the invading force which is the defining moral justification. We cannot accept any longer the suggestion that sovereignty can stand as a veil between the rights of people who are minorities or indigenous people. Neither can we accept the suggestion that people can participate in horrific crimes with any sense of impunity.

The proposal for the enhanced peacekeeping force, strengthened as it is by the most recent UN resolution, needs to be better resourced in the short term. It is probably the best prospect for acceptability if increasing numbers are drawn from African neighbours. It also needs logistical and financial support if it is to be able to sustain its activities. There are other important issues and I do not want to underestimate the depression people feel now that both the signatories and the non-signatories of the southern Sudan agreement have factionalised, sometimes on personality grounds. That is deeply depressing. The international community must take a clear and unequivocal stand on the external context of this conflict. Interested parties that seek to put their economic and commercial interests above the rights of those whose rights are so grievously being trampled upon, need to be shamed internationally. The position of China on Sudan is simply unacceptable for a member of the international community that has begun to acknowledge, through its notional acceptance of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, the concept of international responsibility.

The Darfur case shows the importance of accepting an indigenous definition of the notion of governance. Governance must mean something that is rooted in people's experience and in people's memory. There was a tragedy in Somalia, where the clan system was the best prospect of providing a mechanism that would stand against the two warlords in Mogadishu. The clan system was rejected at the time of the Somalian famine. It has been recommended by international scholars since then, but it has never been accepted. If we are to see past the tragedy of Darfur, it will require addressing of regional issues, as the Minister's opening speech stressed. It will also mean taking the concept of governance as something that is not to be imposed from outside, but something that is to be amplified from within acceptable local structures. This is always more difficult and is slower to bring about, but it has a much better prospect of being accepted.

At this stage, there have been calls for immediate sanctions on the Sudanese Government, including the divestment mentioned. However, we must remember that the attacks on civilians, with the clear intention of dispossession and removal, qualify as genocide and justify intervention. I regret to say that, but it is the case. I also believe that the UN refugee camps for internally displaced people are no longer safe havens. Women are in danger of being raped and appalling decisions must be made, such as sending older rather than younger women to collect firewood, in the desperate hope that they will be safer. The duplicity of the Sudanese Government, which has clearly been involved with the Janjaweed in the attacks on villages, should be exposed for what it is. Those people who have been captured and exposed are clearly operating with the direct and indirect support of the Sudanese Government.

It is clear from population movements that have taken place that a kind of ethnic cleansing has occurred. Half of the 6 million population has been devastated since December 2005 and 2 million people are in camps, and I do not know of any aspect of a definition of genocide or displacement that is not being met by these statistics. I wish it was true that the May 2006 agreement was not in tatters. However, it is sometimes suggested in the media that this is a religious conflict, but it is not that simple. It is a conflict about resources and about the relationship and use of resources for different peoples with different identities in an international context. That is why there are such powerful interests refusing to act or acting malignantly in regard to the conflict itself.

It is important to state that the Minister and the Government have the support of all of us in the Dáil in seeking to take such steps as may be necessary. There is a UK proposal for a regional meeting which would involve all of the interests, conditional on the acceptance of the President of Sudan. In the preparation for such a conference, which would address all of the issues on a regional basis, if some prospect is offered as the first phase of a desperate movement towards a peace process, it should be taken.

There is no doubt that there have been crimes against humanity. The UN can only have credibility if we support it internationally, giving it moral and political support, but also by making contributions and granting resources. The UN is also being tested because following the reviews of its powers and future functions, its future seems to involve a greater regional activity. If it is to involve a regional activity, it will involve the transfer of resources. It will also be important that the previous colonising powers get out of the way and allow countries with a record in peacekeeping and peace building to put genuine initiatives in place.

I am seriously concerned about another feature that is revealed by the Darfur experience. Issues of identity within state borders are increasingly the source of the most desperate conflicts. Therefore I come back to the point I have suggested, namely, that no longer can we regard the sovereignty argument as an absolute that stands in the way of making human rights universal. We are tested by that because whenever we have appeared to loosen before as regards the concept of sovereignty, we were accused sometimes of having changed ideologically on issues of colonisation and decolonisation. The reality is that if human rights is to be universalised and become a major perspective, we must accept the need for its protection and we must be seen to be willing to have it vindicated. This is true for the source of and impulse to rights as well.

The media, in covering Darfur, must invite their readers and viewing public to move again from seeing people as just the victims of a humanitarian crisis. They should see them rather as people with differing identities and positions on land and resources who are being deprived of their rights. They should be seen as people who are rights carriers, whether Palestinians, Afghans or, as in this case, the different groups that comprise Darfur. What we need to stress therefore is that the new type of rights we must enable are within as well as between countries.

For all these reasons relating to the invasion, occupation, dispossession, appalling loss of life and extended rapes that have taken place as well as the cynicism in which members of the international community have viewed these matters, it is very important that we should act together. Indeed, I very much welcome the suggestion that our motion, having been passed, should be communicated to equivalent assemblies in Europe and committees such as the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, of which I am proud to be a member, to advance such views. In this way we shall be able to say that even though we knew it was going to happen, we did not remain powerless to act, as has often happened before. However much it takes, by whatever different means, we must act, and I believe the Government, in taking such steps as will either build peace or put an end to the massive abuse of human rights in the failure of peace, will have the support of all Members of the House. It certainly will have the support of the Labour Party.

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