ICC Note: The United National High Commission on Human Rights is holding a briefing to discuss religious freedom abuses towards Christians in Sudan. Believers represent a minority community in the Islamic country governed by sharia law. The irony is that Sudan maintains a constitution that protects religious freedom, so the country exists carrying a massive legal contradiction. Sudanese intelligence officials currently hold two pastors in prison suspected of espionage, but they have failed to face charges and are being held incommunicado since December. Sudan is notorious for persecuting Christians all over the country, from bombing majority Christian communities in the Nuba Mountains region, to arbitrarily imprisoning pastors, to destroying churches.

What is happening?

5/4/16 Sudan (World Watch Monitor) – The UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights is scheduled to hold a 3 1/2-hour hearing in Geneva on Wednesday, 4 May, at which UN member nations will examine the state of human rights in Sudan.

It promises to be an interesting meeting. Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, is the world’s only sitting head of state wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity. It’s also the first time Sudan has been required to answer to UN members for its human-rights performance since the 2011 breakup of the country, which created the world’s newest nation, South Sudan. In the years since, the Sudanese government has waged a bombing campaign against restive, resource-rich southern regions on the border with South Sudan.

Sudan’s Christians, who along with indigenous groups have been concentrated in the southern regions of the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim country, are among the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the violence, and whose homes, crops, churches, schools and hospitals have been destroyed.

The UN’s formal name for the 4 May session is the Universal Periodic Review, or UPR.

How does the UPR work?

The UN created the UPR in 2006. Every member nation of the UN is required to go through it. It takes about 4 1/2 years to complete a cycle of all members, and a new cycle begins.

Prior to the actual meeting in Geneva, the country submits its own assessment of how it believes it is living up to human-rights obligations. Other countries can submit their own observations. The UN Human Rights Council may send in an “independent expert” to produce a report on the situation. External groups such as Amnesty International may submit their own testimony.

The final report is a list of findings and recommendations from other UN members. Each country is required to submit reports on how they’re responding to the recommendations, but ultimately there’s no way to compel any country to adopt any UPR recommendations. The UN says the point of the process, besides surfacing human-rights issues for public scrutiny, is to ensure all nations receive “equal treatment” in the examination.

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