The Darfur Regional Authority (DRA) launched a Justice Committee, and a Truth and Reconciliation Committee in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, on Monday. The committees are formed under the terms of the 2011 Doha Document for Peace in Darfur.

DRA Chairman Dr Tijani Sese said at the launch event that justice and reconciliation committees have been established worldwide to deal with human rights violations, especially after conflicts. He pointed to the successes such committees achieved in South Africa, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Morocco, and Argentina.

“Based on humanitarian and social principles, the two committees will work for accountability,” he said.

The newly appointed chairman of the Justice Committee, Maj. Gen. Mukhtar, said that the committee will work “according to the principles of honesty, transparency, and justice”

Ibrahim Abdallah Mohamed, the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, emphasised that his committee will “work in cooperation with the Justice Committee in order to strengthen relations, and enhance peaceful coexistence among the Darfur communities; to realise social solidarity; work on the healing of traumas, and overcome bitterness in a realistic, practical, and thoughtful manner.”

Representatives of the displaced in the Darfur camps told Radio Darfur in May that they do not have any confidence in the committees.

“We prefer an international justice organ, not the justice announced by Sese and this Khartoum regime,” said the coordinator of the North Darfur camps.

He stressed, “What is happening these days in Darfur is a new genocide and ethnic cleansing by the systematic burning of villages and forced displacement of civilians at the hands of the Rapid Support militias under the command of the security apparatus.”

“So how can Sese launch such committees in a time of escalating violence?”

Reporting by Radio Dabanga

File photo: Public rally on the occasion of the launch of the temporary DRA headquarters at El Negaa Stadium in El Fasher (Albert González Farran/Unamid)