Tuesday, January 04, 2005
The Almost Forgotten Crisis - Darfur
Forced evacuations and mass rapes; brutal ethnic killings and rampaging militias; oil profits and arms sales. The deadly mix of politics, economics, and insecurity has displaced 1.6 million people and killed tens of thousands in the Darfur region of western Sudan since early 2003. The United Nations recently described Darfur as the "world's worst humanitarian crisis."
This is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a war.
Thus says Sarah Kenyon Lischer. She makes a very important point:
The label "humanitarian crisis" conveniently absolves the rest of the world from taking political and military action in Darfur. By providing generous humanitarian assistance, governments and the UN claim to take meaningful action.
Stories have been coming out of the Sudan for a long time now, and yet nobody has really wanted to do much. There has been pressure put on the Sudanese government, but no real action taken, as the government there knew.
Yet this is a tragedy every bit as evil as the tsunami, and worse, because it is caused by human agency, and didn't have to be.
Get more information:
Save Darfur is a website with information about the situation, and information about what you might be able to do to help keep this in the public mind.
Human Rights Watch: If We Return, We Will Be Killed
CareUSA: Emergency Crisis in Sudan
# posted by Knitting a Conundrum @ 7:37 AM 
