He said that the AU’s mandate from the UN does not provide peacekeepers with sufficient authority to shield civilians from government-backed militias.
“It is my belief that the mandate that the AU has is dooming them to failure. Their mandate is to observe and report—not to protect,” Dallaire said.
But Smith said that “while the AU has limitations...the fact of the matter is that the AU was in Darfur while the rest of the world was issuing statements.”
Meanwhile, news of Harvard’s historic decision to divest from PetroChina, an oil company with links to the Khartoum regime, has spread among aid workers in Sudan and boosted morale, panelist Rebecca Hamilton said last night.
Hamilton, a joint-degree candidate at the Law School and the KSG, said she had received e-mails from workers in south Sudan and the Darfur region hailing Harvard’s move.
—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.