On Sept. 9, 2004, former Secretary of State Collin L. Powell first recognized the killings taking place in Darfur, Africa as genocide.
Now almost a year later, approximately 400,000 have died as a result of the conflict that erupted in February 2003. As the months wind on, there are around 15,000 Sudanese deaths per month. Due to the conflict, and the resulting famine, badly weakened populations are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of disease and malnutrition, ensuring that a recent decline in mortality rates within more accessible camp areas will not continue.
Indeed, the huge disparity between humanitarian need and humanitarian capacity strongly
suggests that gross mortality in the coming “hunger gap” (April/May through September) and its aftermath will be measured in the hundreds of thousands lives lost. If this trend is not ended, the final toll from genocide in Darfur will likely exceed the 800,000 who died in Rwanda’s genocide of 1994.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Darfur just last week, and she defended the Bush administration’s response to the ethnic violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, saying U.S. actions have helped “avert some of the humanitarian disaster that was foreseen” a year ago. She also credited U.S. involvement in a recently implemented peace agreement that ended a two-decade civil war between the northern and southern parts of Africa’s largest country. She said the deal — which this month brought former rebel leader John Garang into the government as first vice president — provides a framework for resolving the unrelated Darfur conflict.
In a press conference on the conflicts in Darfur Rice said in reference to the United States stated “ We don’t rely on words, we rely on actions.”
During past genocides against Armenians, Jews and Cambodians, it was possible to claim that we did not fully know what was going on. This time, President Bush, Congress and the European Union have already declared genocide to be under way. A finding of genocide does not impose obligations on the United States. That stated, the International Genocide Convention was signed by the U.S. and one-hundred and thirty four other countries. It obligates signatures to “prevent and to punish” genocide where it is happening.
Sudan’s strategic value to the U.S. is also far more evident then any attempts to help the people of Darfur. Since the north-south peace deal, oil exports have spiked and the United States of America. relies on much of its oils from the Sudan region of Africa. Also, an April trip to Washington by Sudan’s intelligence chief, in a CIA jet, hints at how the U.S. relies on Sudan in the war on terror. Africa’s largest country, once temporary home to Osama Bin Laden, keeping al Qaeda, and other global terrorists out of the horn of Africa region is an essential, if relatively unknown portion of our foreign policy.
With the genocide continuing, despite the recent developments, Africa Action is running another petition drive, and has gathered 400,000 signatures so far for a message to President Bush, demanding urgent action to stop the genocide in Darfur. The petition demands the president to take every step necessary to achieve a multinational humanitarian intervention in Darfur in support of the African Union troops with a mandate to protect civilians. Africa Action will present the petition in a major event outside the White House on Sept. 9, 2005, the one-year anniversary of the Bush Administration’s recognition of the genocide in Darfur.
The genocide in the Darfur region is a tragedy for everyone, not simply Africans. As John Donne would say, one death shakes the whole of humanity. The death of hundreds of thousands must not seem to be too hard to grasp. Rwanda’s genocide took with it 800,000 souls; and the world bears the guilt of standing by. Will we stand by as the equivalent of the population of the city of San Francisco dies? The choice lies before us.