Did NGOs in Darfur Pass Information to the ICC?

[Post updated on March 22nd with a clarification from Alex de Waal]

A question which, depending on how you look at it, can be translated in one of two ways.

- Did NGOs in Darfur help support the cause of international justice, or

- Did NGOs in Darfur spy on the Sudanese Government, and therefore deserve to be expelled?

High stakes - not least because the Sudanese Government has justified its decision to expel NGOs on the grounds that they provided information to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

For instance, the Sudanese Government has stated that:

"[The International Rescue Committee] signed a memorandum of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the year in 2005 to furnish information, documents and witnesses and to provide protection for witnesses in coordination with the United Nations Mission in Sudan."

It's easy enough to dismiss accusations from the Sudanese Government, which has a rather impressive track record when it comes to distorting the truth.  (Especially President "No rape took place in Darfur" Bashir.)  After all, accused war criminals are rarely noted for their honesty.

Further, President Bashir and other members of the government are hardly disinterested parties.

Yet according to  Alex de Waal of the Social Science Research Council, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo himself has indicated that at least some of his information came from NGOs.

[N.B. - please see the clarification from Alex de Waal in the comments below, as well as this recent post by de Waal.]

For their part, aid agencies have vociferously denied the charge, stating that they had nothing to do with the ICC. 

For instance, the International Rescue Committee's policy "specifically directs IRC staff members not to communicate in any way with the ICC and not to support ICC investigations."

Other aid agencies have also taken pains to distance themselves from the ICC - this statement from Medecins Sans Frontieres is fairly representative:

"MSF firmly reiterates that the organization is completely independent of the International Criminal Court and does not cooperate with or provide any information to it."

(For other, similar statements, see these press releases by CHF, Mercy Corps, Oxfam and Solidarities.)

To muddy the waters even further, there's sometimes a disconnect between agency policy and individual actions.  For instance, journalist Rob Crilly recently reported that a volunteer doctor with MSF collected children's drawings from Darfur, including drawings showing atrocities, which were passed to the ICC.

MSF then released a statement that the doctor's actions "were in violation of [MSF policy regarding the ICC] and done so completely independent of MSF and without any support whatsoever from the organization."

My own two cents, for what it's worth (noted, very little) -  I doubt that any operational agency had a policy of cooperating with the ICC.  They all knew the stakes, and the risks.  At the least, I'd have to see an actual statement from Ocampo before I'd believe that agencies were passing him information.

That said, if anyone has information to the contrary, please pass it along.

[Photo of Al Salaam camp from sudanwatch.blogspot.com]