Shame on the UN

Despite a cynical move against Christian Solidarity International, slave redemption in Sudan will continue

There is a bright side -- there are several bright sides, in fact -- to the nauseatingly cynical vote by a United Nations panel to "de-accredit" Christian Solidarity International (CSI), the Zurich-based organization that has bought the freedom of nearly 10,000 slaves in Sudan.

First, the outrageous action by the UN Committee for Nongovernmental Organizations has focused renewed attention on the human-rights horrors of Sudan, where the Arab north, as part of a bitter civil war, enslaves Christians and followers of indigenous religions from the black south.

Second, the world learned that the UN allows some of its worst human-rights violators to sit in judgment of independent human-rights organizations such as CSI. The 19-nation Committee for Nongovernmental Organizations includes delegates from China, Cuba, Algeria, and Pakistan, none of which would exactly welcome investigations into their own human-rights records.

Third, and most important, CSI's slave-redemption efforts will continue. After all, CSI is already banned from Sudan, and that doesn't prevent its rescue workers from entering the country. "It doesn't make any difference to CSI. It's not going to stop them from doing their work," says Theresa Perry-McNeil, the organization's American spokesperson. "They're not going to stop until every slave is free."

The UN's action was morally corrupt. Earlier this year, CSI -- exercising its prerogative as an officially recognized nongovernmental organization, or NGO -- infuriated the brutal Sudanese government by inviting John Garang, head of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement, to address the UN Human Rights Commission. The butchers whom Garang's forces are resisting complained to the Committee on Nongovernmental Organizations -- and got even. Acting on the barest of technicalities concerning the way Garang had identified himself -- he violated UN rules by printing his speech on his own organization's letterhead rather than on CSI's, for example -- the committee stripped CSI of its NGO status.

The practice of slave redemption -- buying slaves their freedom at $50 to $100 per person -- has come under increasing scrutiny in recent months. Organizations such as UNICEF and Human Rights Watch argue that it may be worsening Sudan's slavery problem by creating financial incentives for more slave raids. An article in the current Atlantic Monthly makes the same point ("Don't Quote Me," News and Features, June 25). But Charles Jacobs, president of the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group, which has raised nearly $50,000 for CSI, counters that the rescue work is enthusiastically supported by local officials in southern Sudan. "When they see us incentivizing slavery, they'll tell us to stop," Jacobs says.

This newspaper has taken a special interest in slave redemption. In 1995, then-Phoenix reporter Tim Sandler (now with NBC's Dateline), with Jacobs's help, was allowed to accompany a CSI team into Sudan. Sandler's account, "Africa's Invisible Slaves," published on June 30 of that year, was among the first in the Western media to document the existence of slavery, an ugly reality that the Sudanese government and its supporters had vehemently denied.

Organizations such as Christian Solidarity International and the American Anti-Slavery Group deserve the thanks of a grateful world community for exposing the horrors of Sudanese slavery and for taking steps to solve it, one person at a time.

The UN's attempt to discredit such courageous work discredits only itself.

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