Annan decries failure to halt Darfur killings

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan scolded governments on Dec. 8 for failing to halt mass murder in Darfur, saying that the world has not learned the lessons of Rwanda and Srebrenica, where genocidal killings in the early 1990s defied the global ability to stop it. "Sixty years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps, and 30 years after the Cambodian killing fields, the promise of 'never again' is ringing hollow," Annan said in his final speech on human rights as the UN leader. Annan said the failure to protect civilians in the Sudanese region marked a low point in recent UN history. In a speech organized by Human Rights Watch in honor of International Human Rights Day, he faulted the "shameful passivity of most governments" in the face of a government-backed military campaign that has driven more than two million people from their homes and killed hundreds of thousands. Annan provided a gloomy assessment of the organization's performance in confronting abusers of human rights during his 10-year tenure. He charged that the US-led fight against terrorism has helped erode human rights standards. He said the United Nations needs to pursue an "an anti-terrorism strategy that does not merely pay lip service to the defense of human rights but is built on it."