Save Darfur
This group is all Darfur, all the time.
For activists, supporters, sympathizers, and anyone who's interested in learning more.
Resources:
STAND, a group of concerned students working to stop the genocide. Chapters set up nationwide. They're doing GREAT work at TONS of campuses. If there's not one at yours, you should start one.
Save Darfur, probably the biggest Darfur aid organization out there and one of the most amazing NGOs in the world right now. Great info available here, plus organizing resources. Their front page is a petition, you should stop by and sign it if you haven't already.
Wikipedia article explains background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict
Here's the 400,000 Faces Facebook group. The project is done already, but I'm posting this link anyway just because it's a good reminder that anyone can make a difference if they try.
Darfur roundup
The New York Times reported yesterday that the Sudanese government is revisiting the tactics they used in the early stages of the conflict.
Such brutal, three-pronged attacks of this scale — involving close coordination of air power, army troops and Arab militias in areas where rebel troops have been — have rarely been seen in the past few years, when the violence became more episodic and fractured. But they resemble the kinds of campaigns that first captured the world’s attention and prompted the Bush administration to call the violence in Darfur genocide.
Aid workers, diplomats and analysts say the return of such attacks is an ominous sign that the fighting in Darfur, which has grown more complex and confusing as it has stretched on for five years, is entering a new and deadly phase — one in which the government is planning a scorched-earth campaign against the rebel groups fighting here as efforts to find a negotiated peace founder.
More below...
"Malnutrition in Darfur reaching emergency levels"
Just when you thought it was getting better.
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Malnutrition is on the rise in Darfur as a surge in violence prevents aid workers from reaching more people in need, a senior U.N. official said.
Eighteen spot surveys by U.N. agencies and independent humanitarian groups in three Darfur provinces indicated the emergency threshold of 15 per cent of the population suffering from malnutrition had increased to more than 17 percent in some areas, the U.N. deputy emergency relief coordinator, Margareta Wahlstrom, said on Friday.
Re: Generation Gap -- jakethorn's Offspring post
Okay, so I've been struggling with these things for a long time. The generation gap of the 60's, the generation gap today, activism, etc. My parents used to be major hippies, and whereas I feel my mother has kind of lost touch (yay mercedes! marble bathrooms for all!) my pop is really still in tune with it, and understands my frustration with the current 'way of the world.' I spoke to him at length about the 60's. The few things that hit me (and that I wrote down) went as follows:
Why did we fail in Darfur and Rwanda?
Most, if not all, humans agree that genocide is wrong. If any given person off the street had the chance to stop one, they probably would. So why didn't we stop them in Rwanda and Darfur?
I dont mean to pose this as a question about Bush or Clinton, or military intervention, or some narrow discussion of tactics and what we should have said and done on what date, with what equipment, etc. I'm more curious about why we as human beings have a political system that seems to allow things that are extremely heinous, things we all agree shouldn't happen, to happen.
800,000 dead in Rwanda, 1994. 400,000 dead in Darfur, 2003-07.
Why?
Petition China about Darfur
I don't know if it is too late to sign this. The deadline I think is today.
The road to peace in Darfur goes through China.
China is Sudan's chief diplomatic sponsor and its largest foreign investor and trade partner. As a result, China can use its significant influence over the Sudanese government to determine Darfur's future.
This month China holds the presidency of the UN Security Council. China will also host the Summer Olympics in 2008, offering this powerful nation an unprecedented opportunity to shine on the world stage. But that will not happen if it continues to remain silent in the face of genocide.
France begins airlift for Chadian, Sudanese refugees
French military planes on Sunday began airlifting tonnes of relief supplies and food aid to refugee camps in eastern Chad in one of the first overseas humanitarian initiatives ordered by President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The operation followed a visit this month to the camps near the border with Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region by Sarkozy's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).
{..I can't think of a better background for a foreign minister to have than MSF...}
Write to Congress
Here guys: a little letter to Congress urging them to pass a resolution to talk to China about Darfur, and how it can help to stop the Genocide. China is a great and powerful nation, but the world would look up to it more if it did this...
Save Darfur Panel
Come to the panel event on Darfur.
The two guests speakers will be Karen Hirschfeld and Sabina Carlson. Karen Hirschfeld is the Sudan Coordinator for Physicians for Human Rights. Sabina Carlson is a student at Tufts University. She is a long time activist who helped organize the Chain2China protest in New York City.
Come learn about the genocide happing right now in Darfur. 450,000 people have died in this government supported genocide. Something needs to be done now. Come and support this important cause!
MONDAY April 23, 2007 Martin Auditorium
Stonehill College,
320 Wasthinton Street
North Easton, MA
Refugees in Israel: Welcome?
Recently the situation faced by Sudanese refugees in Israel has gotten a lot of media attention, especially since it has come to light that most Sudanese refugees who enter Israel are jailed for several months or even years for entering the country illegally. They are not aided in refugee camps or given asylum, sent to the nearest UN office to plea for their lives or even allowed to struggle on their own as illegal residents in the streets of Israel. They are imprisoned, and upon their release from jail they are confined in farm work-camps for the remainder of their stay. Israel has taken flack because it is a nation of genocide survivors, created after World War II as a sanctuary for Jewish people who had been forced to endure the horrible genocide of the Nazi Holocaust. Crit
Emmanuel Jal
This is a real quick post, but check out Emmanuel Jal's music. He is an escaped child soldier from Sudan who fled into Chad as a refugee. He now works with the U.N. trying to help end the use of child soldiers, and tours and records. His latest album, "Ceasefire", was recorded with Abdel Gadir Salim. It was considered to be pretty revolutionary, since Emmanuel is Christian, and was a rebel soldier in southern Sudan, and Abdel is Islamic and from northern Sudan. It's rap music, but unlike any you've ever heard. Peace!
Darfur Petition
Hey guys,
i recently recieved this letter from Amnesty International with a link to an easy way to send a letter (all you do is sign your name) to try to help people displaced in Chad and Darfur. Below is the letter I recieved with the link at the bottom
~Delia
Darfur
I want to make a difference in the world and change the way that we allow ourselves to be bystanders in life. What if 20 college campuses around the country have protest concerts on the genocide in Darfur, all at the same time? Is it possible in this way to stop this genocide? Or at least make the world realize that doing nothing isn’t okay anymore? And being that we are almost in an election year, maybe this is the perfect time to do something. Lets make stopping the genocide in Darfur (and other countries around the world), our generations mission. If the politicians for this next presidential election want our votes, than they will have to DO something toward helping us to stop genocide.
food for thought
you know, in all of the current debate about the situation in Darfur (and the whole situation, in the rest of the Sudan and now in Chad as well) and what the United States' responsibilities are to help, I really don't hear enough about what we did to cause the problem in the first place. The problem was essentially CAUSED by U.S.
cool post
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/20/102129/242
a blog full of Darfur links, news and resources.
Conflict spreading into eastern Chad
Violence is spilling over into Chad (again).
ABECHE, Chad: Attacks on civilians and aid groups have intensified sharply along the Chad-Sudan border in the last two weeks, as the violence in Darfur continues to spill over into its African neighbor.
The violence is leading the United Nations to consider a new option: Stymied by a lack of progress on a proposal to put peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region, it now is weighing trying to put more than 10,000 peacekeepers in Chad along its border with Sudan.
Of Darfur interest
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