Darfur follow-ups
The President of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Vaclav Balek, announced the appointment of independent members of a fact-finding mission in Sudan led by Tanzanian Mohamed Osman. The statement stated that the Council established a fact-finding mission in October to investigate and verify the facts, circumstances and root causes of all allegations related to violations of human rights and humanitarian law. International.
He announced in a letter addressed to all permanent delegates to the United Nations mission in Geneva yesterday, Monday, obtained by Darfur Follow-up, he announced the selection of Mohamed Shandi Osman from Tanzania, Ms. Joy Ezelio from Nigeria, and Ms. Mona Al-Rishmawi from Jordan and Switzerland.
The decision named Mohamed Chandi Osman as head of the mission. The formation of the committee was based on Human Rights Council Resolution No. 54/2 issued last October 11 on “Responding to the human rights and humanitarian crisis resulting from the current armed conflict in Sudan.”
The UN resolution stipulates the urgent formation of an independent international fact-finding committee on Sudan, and that its membership should include experts specialized in international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and that it be appointed at the earliest date by the President of the Human Rights Council.
The mission, which initially has a one-year duration, was asked to collect and analyze evidence, identify individuals and entities responsible where possible, and make recommendations with the aim of ending impunity and ensuring accountability and access to justice for victims, the statement added.
The statement stated that the Council requested the mission to provide an oral update on its findings, followed by an interactive dialogue at the fifty-sixth session of the Council, which will be held in June to July 2024.
Osman served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Tanzania between 2010 and 2017. Subsequently, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres selected him as a “prominent person.” He was assigned to study new information related to the killing of the Second Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld, in 1961.
In 2015, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him as Chairman of the Independent Expert Group on the Hammarskjöld investigations. Between 2019 and 2020, he served as a member of the Independent Expert Review Committee of the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute.
Othman’s previous experiences include working as Prosecutor General for East Timor between 2000 and 2001, Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda between 1998 and 2000, and Senior Advisor for the Law and Justice Sector of the United Nations Development Program in Cambodia.
He also served as a member of the High-Level Committee of the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the situation in Lebanon after the 2006 war, an independent expert of the Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights in Sudan between 2009 and 2010, and Chairman of the Committee of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia between 2022 and 2023. .
Task member Esiello, a distinguished law professor and senior lawyer in Nigeria, has experience in international human rights, criminal law, comparative constitutionalism, and women’s and children’s rights in Africa.
