19 Jun 2012 – As head of the UN in Sudan in 2004, Dr Mukesh Kapila blew the whistle on the Darfur crisis – making it a global news story overnight – when he stated in broadcast media that the Sudanese Government was committing systematic ethnic cleansing in the region. Now Special Representative on Crimes Against Humanity for the Aegis Trust, on Wednesday 20 June Kapila will be talking to students at Durham University about the ongoing crises in Sudan. The talk, which is open to the public, will take place at 2.15pm, Elvet Riverside 141, New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT.
Visiting Chad and South Sudan earlier this year with the Aegis Trust, Kapila slipped across the border into Sudan’s Nuba Mountains, where since June last year, hundreds of thousands of Nuba have been driven from their homes by Sudanese armed forces. As shown in ‘Nuba 2012: Return to Genocide?‘, there he saw women and children fleeing Sudanese bombers and witnessed first-hand evidence of anti-personnel landmines and cluster bombs being used by Sudan – war crimes under international law.
As Kapila noted in Think Africa Press last week, “The suffering of the Nuba people increases daily and, quite possibly, they face an existential threat….
[but] right now, it appears that the rest of the world cannot or will not use the ample provisions of international law to stop the atrocities being visited upon Nuba – and in Darfur and the Blue Nile.”
“Aegis Students is proud to invite Mukesh Kapila to Durham University for a unique insight into his experience in the international field of humanitarian work and conflict,” says Sophie Lansdowne, President of Aegis Students Durham. “He has had an incredible career, including working in high profile positions at the Department for International Development, the World Health Organisation, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies as well as making his own personal sacrifices to raise the alarm internationally when he witnessed the beginning of the genocide in Darfur.”
