Genocide in Darfur
Posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 and is filed under Political & General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Darfur translates, “home of the Fur,” a mountainous region nestled in the western part of Sudan in North Africa. The blistering sun swallows up most of the humidity, while the stale wind seeps between the leaves of the Acacia nilotica trees. Scattered alongside the sandstones, boreholes, creepy-crawlies and leftover ammunition shells take up its fair share of the terrain.
Civil war has divided Sudan almost endlessly since its independence from Britain in 1956, said Philip Wood, from the International Rescue Committee (IRC). The IRC has responded to regional and post-conflict reconstruction in the area since 1981. “The brutal tactics of warlords on both sides have left an estimated 300,000 people dead and prompted more than 2.4 million people to flee their homes,” said Wood.
The Janjaweed, “devils on horseback,” targeted Fur, Massaleit and the Zaghawa groups in Darfur with the approval of the Sudan government. Villages were destroyed, women raped and many children became orphans. “Farmers needed more area for their food and the herders needed more space for their livestock,” stated a local villager, speculating as to the cause of the conflict in the documentary film “Darfur Diaries,” which was released in 2006 by Cinema Libre Studio. The Janjaweed rivals accused the government of oppression. The Sudan administration blamed the Sudan Liberation Army for the escalating conflict and vice versa. And even though both parties admitted to killings, they couldn’t agree on the number of fatalities.
Dr. Mojúbà olú Olúfúnké Okome, professor of political science and women’s studies coordinator at Brooklyn College, stated that the political climate might cause and intensify civil unrest in a country where opposing inhabitants struggle for access to material resources. “The control of the state is deeply contested, but securing it is crucial to also controlling the economy,” said Dr. Okome. “Under such circumstances, leaders could manipulate ethnic, racial, class and religious divisions in order to foment crises that ensure their control over their country’s political economy. Historical divisions also cause or deepen animosities that erupt in conflict and this can escalate when there is no desire to compromise.”
A peace agreement was signed between the two groups in May 2006, but any good-faith gestures have largely been ignored. The killings continue. Relief workers and humanitarian vehicles have also been targeted, said Margareta Wahlström, United Nations (UN) acting, emergency relief coordinator in a press release.
The secretary general of the UN is not prepared to call the situation in Darfur genocide because “the intent is missing.” The parties involved, on either side, are Muslim. Albeit, the office acknowledged a violation of human rights, said Fred Eckhard, spokesperson for the secretary general of the UN, in a briefing. Eckhard also stated that the Genocide Convention would have to decide whether genocide had been taking place in Darfur.
According to the Genocide Convention Resolution 260 (III) A, Article II, genocide is defined as “any of a number of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Many political organizations, including the U.S., and scholars dispute the hesitation of the UN to call the Darfur crisis genocide. “I disagree [with the UN] and find this a problematic approach that puts little value on the lives of the people of Darfur,” said Dr. Okome. “The most significant difference between this and other conflicts is the genocidal policies of the current government of Sudan.”
Actress Mia Farrow has recently gone on a hunger strike to bring awareness to the situation in Darfur. She urges Americans to call President Obama to ask that the United States get involved. On day 11 of Farrow’s hunger strike, she wrote on her blog, “I’m really struggling today.”
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