Ethnic Violence in Darfur and International Response - Essay Example

Yet, the Sudanese government has repeatedly violated their own constitutional grants of liberty in that countless ethnically 'black' Sudanese have been trafficked, murdered, and enslaved by Arab militia, supported by the government. Moreover, since law-abiding non-Arab Muslims have been treated in much the same way as violators of the law, racial identity is the prevalent factor in government actions. For this reason, critics of the government argue that it is practicing ethnic cleansing, which is not only a violation of Sudanese law, but international law.

While Sudan is a member state to the United Nations Charter, whose purpose is to prevent atrocities such as the Holocaust from reoccurring, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which the Sudan is a signatory is incapable of enforcement absent consent to international jurisdiction. Yet the question remains; is there legal recourse for such victims of government abuse More specifically, does the Sudanese constitution grant liberties for the breach of which there is a right to file a claim If there are such explicit rights, how can these rights be enforced within an oppressive regime This paper seeks to examine how notions of individu.

While the United Nations offers to protect such victims, without the consent of the offending country to submit to international adjudication, individual rights exist only to the extent of the will of a member state. Therefore, this paper will also examine the origins of individual rights within the context of natural rights, and how natural law limits human rights protections. In this way, it can be shown why absent physical power to effectively halt the murderous Sudanese regime, victims have neither national nor international legal recourse.

History of Violence Sudan is the largest country in Africa. In antiquity Sudan was part of a ancient civilization The country has been through a number of forced religious conversions. First, it was converted to Coptic Christianity in the 6th century of the Christian era. Then Islam was introduced by Arab invaders in 7th century but did not supplant Christianity until the 15th century. The name Sudan means a "land of the blacks" which denotes the ancient racial composition of the country. As a result of invasions from Syria and immigration of nomadic Arabs has since changed the racial composition.

The country is roughly divided into two between Arab controlled dominated north and the black dominated south. The country is further divided along religious lines between Arabs in the north and Christians and animist in the south. Approximately, 40 percent of the population is Arab and 60 percent are African. Roughly 60 percent are Muslim. There are close to 600 ethnic groups and over 100 spoken languages in the South. (UUSC, 2004). This explosion combination has resulted in a protracted struggle for control of the country and its resources which so far has been dominated by Arabs in the north.

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