Naming It

“Even Kofi Annan didn't want to call it genocide,” my informant confided in exasperation. I asked him to explain, if the President of the United States, his Secretary of State, and Congress all called Darfur “the crime of crimes,” why so few others answered the call to second this conclusion. Neither the European Union nor Human Rights Watch backed the Bush administration's genocide declaration. My informant continued, “Kofi Annan not only didn't want to call it genocide; he wanted the newly formed United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to draw its own independent conclusions about what to call it within a month.”

The Commission followed from a resolution pushed through the UN Security Council by U.S. Secretary of State Powell in the fall of 2004. Kofi Annan delegated responsibility for the Commission to the Geneva-based UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Louise Arbour. As the former chief prosecutor of The Hague Tribunal, Arbour had indicted Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity rather than genocide in the former Yugoslavia. Crimes against humanity are widespread and systematic attacks on civilians. In contrast, genocide requires proof of willful intent to destroy all or part of a racial, ethnic, national, or religious group. Arbour's Tribunal successor, Carla Del Ponte, upped the Milosevic charges to genocide, and she was still trying to prove the elements of this crime three years later when Milosevic died in his jail cell.