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Joschka Fischer, the 2007 Bartels World Affairs Fellow, speaks at Cornell University.

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Lakhdar Brahimi calls for sustained solidarity and patience for Darfur

Posted on: 11/29/2006

The former Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Lakhdar Brahimi addressed the Darfur crisis in his public lecture, “May We Please Listen to the Darfurians Themselves? Sudan's Lost Voices,” on November 21, as part of Cornell University’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies Foreign Policy Distinguished Speaker Series.

The crisis in Darfur has already led to 2,200,000 people being displaced – representing a third of the population – and more than 300,000 people being killed.

Brahimi’s lecture focused on the reasons for the crisis, the actors involved, and their actions. Among the root causes of the conflict Brahimi identified the economic and political marginalization of the Darfurians, environmental desertification, land ownership, the spread of small arms, and the breakdown of traditional conflict resolution mechanisms. He discussed in detail the role of the key actors: the Government of Sudan, the rebels, Chad with 240,000 Darfurian refugees, the international community, and the International Security Council. According to Brahimi, none of these groups represents the interests of the Darfurians, and, with the notable exception of the international human rights community, their actions have not been helpful.

Brahimi is not optimistic about the future of Darfur and questions whether a U.N. mission alone would solve the crisis. “What can the U.N. do with a force of 17,000 to protect 6,000,000 people in an area as big as the state of Texas?” He concluded that the situation calls for a complex political process of which a U.N. mission can be only one component. There also needs to be a real agreement among the parties, a coordination of humanitarian assistance and a genuine attempt to address the root causes of the conflict. He also pointed out that the crisis cannot be solved in six months or even a year. “A lot of patience, hard work, and solidarity is needed for Darfur to be saved from its situation and for the people of Darfur to recover their identities.”

Brahimi used his depth of experience in the region and in negotiating peace and resolving conflicts between and within nations to offer his analysis of the crisis in Darfur. In May 2006, he was sent to Khartoum by Secretary-General Annan to discuss the role of the U.N. in the implementation of the Darfur peace agreement and preparation for the proposed U.N. force. He was also the Algerian ambassador to Sudan from 1963 to 1970.

Through December 2005, Brahimi advised Kofi Annan on a wide range of issues, including the prevention and resolution of conflicts as Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. He was entrusted with overall authority for the political, human rights, relief, recovery, and reconstruction activities of the United Nations in Afghanistan as the head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in that country from 2001 to 2003. During that time he presided over the U.N. Bonn Conference on Afghanistan, which led to the peace agreement now referred to as the Bonn Process that was implemented with the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan in 2005.

Brahimi was also the top official responsible for overseeing the U.N.’s Iraq role. He was appointed to the job shortly after the head of the U.N. office in Iraq and 22 other U.N. officials were killed in a bomb blast in Baghdad. In March 2006, Brahimi came to Cornell as the Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels World Affairs Fellow and to speak on “Iraq: the Present Crisis and its Implications for Stability in the Middle East.”

In his introductory remarks, Professor David Wippman, Vice-Provost for International Relations, highlighted that the Distinguished Speaker Series is part of a new Foreign Policy Initiative of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and related it to the new University-wide Africa Initiative announced by President Skorton. Cornell hopes to bring Ambassador Brahimi back to Ithaca on a regular basis.

Contact Information
Heike Michelsen
Einaudi Center
255 8926
hm75@cornell.edu

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