JO’s Op-Ed

The United Nations said on 22 April 2008 that as many as 300,000 people may have died in Darfur¹. The war in West Sudan started in 2003 and despite the many interventions from the UN, civil society groups and the celebrities, the war in Darfur worsens. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently acknowledged that the situation in Darfur “persists at extreme and unacceptable levels”.²

The international community has been careful in describing the war in Darfur to be genocide, although the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has declared it to be one in 2004. The UN Commission of Inquiry has refused to recognise the conflict as a genocide, saying that it is “crimes no less serious and heinous than genocide”.

Be it a war, humanitarian crisis or genocide, the world regularly reads about the atrocities in the news. The Janjaweed rebels are torching the villages, executing civilians indiscriminately, raping the women to produce “whiter” babies³ and making the women sex slaves. Kudos to the efforts of George Clooney, Mia Farrow and other A-list actors, people are aware of the crimes and they are trying to stop it. Civil society groups are pressuring the Bush Administration to do more, Steven Spielberg withdrew from the Beijing Olympics as artistic adviser to protest against China’s inaction towards Darfur etc.

But the efforts of the bystanders seem futile. The UN is still unable to honour its pledge of sending 26,000 troops to Darfur (there are only 9,000 troops now and they lack the essential resources to stop the crime). The various governments are not getting together to address this issue. The world leaders have agreed on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle in 2005, that the international community has a responsibility to act when governments fail to protect their own peoples. But no country is sticking her neck out to push for this cause.

There is news that the Janjaweed is extending the violence to Southern Sudan. There are also reports from the NGOs that there are genocides right now in Kenya, Chad and Congo. And just yesterday, the church leaders from Zimbabwe warned that organised crime has been unleashed in the country, and the world will see another genocide in Zimbabwe if nothing is done to help them.⁴

The world cannot stop the crimes in Darfur despite UN’s intervention since 2005 and the high-profile public outcry. Is it realistic to further rely on the world to save Kenya, Congo, Chad and Zimbabwe?

My friend has said to me, “be realistic, they’re Africans … nobody cares!” Sadly, it seems to be so.

1. http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/04/22/africa/OUKWD-UK-SUDAN-DARFUR-UN.php
2. http://news.monstersandcritics.com/africa/news/article_1398416.php
3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16001-2004Jun29.html
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/africa/23zimbabwe.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=zimbabwe+genocide&st=nyt&oref=slogin