Disintegration in Darfur

The situation on the ground, as a variety of official and private firsthand witnesses indicates, shows a horrific violation of human rights: killing of children, sexual abuse and rape of girls and women, forced uprooting of population, burning of villages, attacks on Internally Displaced People camps, targeting of unarmed civilians. . . The urgent task is stopping the violence, the destruction, the impunity. The victims are not just statistics; they are real people.

These words were spoken by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican ’s permanent observer to the United Nations, in an address to the Human Rights Council on December 13, 2006 .

Even as the U.N. and the rest of the world is preoccupied by the swearing in of the new secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, what to do about the war in Iraq, and getting to the bottom of the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, the situation in Darfur is continuing to disintegrate.

Only three months after a peace agreement was signed between the Sudanese government and one faction of rebels, the UN's top humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, reported that the situation in Darfur is "going from real bad to catastrophic.” The latest count is 2.5 million people in Darfur displaced from their homes and at least 400,000 thousand killed and there have recently been reports of increases in violence, rape, and murder.

The conflict in Darfur has now begun to destabilize the entire region.  The violence has followed the fleeing people of Darfur into Eastern Chad , and Human Rights Watch reports that hundreds of Chadian civilians have now been killed and at least 10,000 displaced by recent militia attacks on approximately 60 Chadian villages. (At least 70,000 Chadian civilians have been displaced since 2003.) The Chadian militias are suspected of being supported by the Sudanese government, which has an interest in destabilizing Chadian ruling powers, who have supported Sudanese rebels fighting against the Sudanese government.

Inhabitants of villages in southeast Chad are now falling victim to the same types of atrocities that have been seen in Darfur . A UNHCR worker in the region recently told of “a young father with his eyes gouged out, elderly women with third-degree burns on their backs and arms caused by collapsed thatched huts set aflame, miles and miles of brushland torched. Communities that had long lived in harmony have turned on each other."

63,000 people now fall into the “internally displaced” category in eastern Chad, in addition to the 218,000 refugees from Darfur in 12 camps in that region. The UNHCR website now refers to the crisis as the “Chad/Darfur Emergency” and on December 4, UN agencies announced the decision to withdraw their personnel from 6 of the camps in that region.

The long-term consequences of such disintegration could be catastrophic. In his address, Tomasi referred not only to regional destabilization, but also “[t]he disruption of agriculture” which will affect the production of food, exacerbating the struggle for resources that was fodder for the conflict in the first place. In addition, the prolongation of the conflict will affect long-term “intergroup relations” and will continue to cause grave psychological problems for “traumatized refugees.”

The continuation of the conflict is inexcusable. Each day the conflict continues, refugees continue to face starvation, disease, and rape. Those who remain in their villages in Darfur—and now increasingly in Chad as well—face violent attack, death, torture, and rape. The inability of the international community to effectively intervene becomes even more inexcusable as one considers the “political arrangements and commercial interests” that Tomasi accuses the international community of allowing to stand in the way of the UN Security Council of taking real and effective action.

It is true that finding a feasible solution must be approached carefully. Skilled diplomacy is needed to convince certain Security Council members to unite for action, and even more care must be taken to convince the Sudanese government, which is worried about maintaining power and control of resources, that international action is not disguising a racist plot to unseat the Arab rulers.

But these difficulties are no excuse for an absence of action. And there is no shortage of respectable groups offering good advice. For example, the group Africa Action recently released "Leveraging New International Action on Darfur," a plan for how the U.S. can vastly increase its use of diplomacy with key actors to jolt the international community from immobility and build consensus on deployment of a U.N. force. Likewise, hundreds of religious leaders around the country recently sent a letter to U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Andrew Natsios to demand a strengthening of U.S. efforts to secure an international peacekeeping force in Darfur .

It is a matter of biblical justice. “Behold,” the book of Ezekiel warns, “this was the guilt of your sister Sodom : she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy” ( 16:49 ). If we continue to ignore the cries of the people of Darfur , we risk not only countless more deaths of the innocent, but also a further unraveling of our relationship to one another as a human family and the degradation of our moral existence.

Posted by Jill Rauh, Program Associate for the Education for Justice Project.

Comments

[MinorRipper]

Great post, thanks. Don't know if you've seen these three short videos from Iraq yet or not, but both show the US Military engaging in some very dubious actions. I have them up on my site at www.minor-ripper.blogspot.com

[Kristin Shewfelt]

Your post is so disturbing but so important, so I thank you for keeping a caring community informed.

I am but little informed on the genocidal conflict in Chad/Darfur. Where can I go for more reliable information? Where is the leadership in the moderate Arab community to condemn what is happening? What are the entrenched vested interests that most likely benefit from the ongoing violence? How can private citizens most make a difference?

Best,

Kristin Shewfelt

[Jill]

Kristin,
Those are some really super comments and great questions. I think you are right on about the obligation of the social justice community to keep informed of the situation and to assert ongoing pressure so that the atrocities can be ended. I want to pass on a few websites where you can find reliable information on what is currently happening with the conflict:
* International Crisis Group (http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3060&l=1)
* Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=africa)
* International Refugee Committee (http://www.theirc.org/)

[Jill]

Also, I think you might be interested in links to some statements condemning the violence in Darfur which includes Arab signatories. (See: http://www.hrinfo.net/en/reports/2006/pr0917.shtml) as well as http://www.bahrainrights.org/node/465 and http://www.hrea.org/lists/hr-headlines/markup/msg03030.html)
I know that the Arab League has come under criticism for not outright condemning the situation in Darfur. Instead, the group has tried to play a mediating role (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/08/AR2006100800668.html). It would be good for this and some other groups to take a stronger stance on Darfur, but at the same time, the non-Arab international community really does need to put forth better diplomatic efforts to show Arab countries that Western disapproval of what is happening in Darfur is not a guise under which we are really trying to uproot the Arab government of Sudan. This is a common perception among some Arab groups and a lot more diplomatic effort could be put forth by the community to convince them that this is not the western world's intention.