DARFUR: All Life Is Sacred


IPhotos by Michael Wadleigh, gritty.org

The Darfur region in the East African state of Sudan is roughly the size of Texas. About 2.6 million people living there are living in refugee camps. The vast majority are women and children who escaped the violence. Most of these women and children have been separated from their family (husbands, fathers, sisters, cousins) and even their ancestral community. Thousands of children have also been separated from their immediate and extended family. Psychologically and emotionally cut off from their natural caregivers these children are also forced to live in inhumane, substandard conditions. With severely limited access to clean water, food and shelter these children are suffering from malnutrition, dysentery, measles and all of the other diseases that come from not having their basic sustenance needs met.

Watch a short video

Take Action NOW!

  1. Sign the Petition to send in Peace keepers through Amnesty International— includes a short video.

  2. Help organize a UN Peace Envoy
    — also a neat video attached

  3. Divest from Sudan
    Historically, the Khartoum government has been responsive to divestment, in fact the only strategy which has worked. Illinois, Maine, Oregon and New Jersey have divested along with the Harvard University, Stanford, Brown and the UC system. Many church organizations, Methodists and Presbyterians have divested from Darfur. Find out what your state is doing. Contact your state legislators and ask them to sponsor or support legislation to divest all state money from Sudan.

    Personally divest from Sudan. There is now an online screening tool that allows you to screen your US-based mutual funds for exposure to companies that invest in Sudan. You can do it yourself or have your money manager screen your portfolio.Once you have divested, please take the step of writing to the President of the Mutual Fund and tell them why you are redeeming your shares. Experience shows that companies respond to shareholder social activism.

  4. Call President Bush
    Short video for inspiration:
    How will history judge us video

    Call President Bush, 202-456-1111, or send him email, comments@whitehouse.gov, and ask him to:

    - Condemn the Government of Sudan's (GOS) recent military build-up and intensification of attacks on civilians in northern Darfur.

    - Call on the international community—including the Arab League, the African Union and the European Union-to mount intensive diplomatic efforts, beginning at the opening of the new session of the United Nations General Assembly, to halt the GOS offensive.

    - Urge other nations to join the US and France in pressing the United Nations to prepare to deploy the UN peacekeeping force authorized on August 31 by the Security Council, regardless of the acquiescence of the Sudanese Government.

  5. Genocide is news:
    Tell the media to cover Sudan
    Send a letter to all the major news organization
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Key Facts—Genocide in Darfur

  • In response to conflict with Darfurian rebel groups in February 2003, the Sudanese government, working with Arab militias called 'Janjaweed', began sponsoring wholesale ethnic cleansing of non-Arab Darfurians, almost all of whom were civilians and had NO direct affiliation with the rebel groups.
  • Since February of 2003, over 400,000 Darfurian civilians have been perished.
  • 2.5 million others have been displaced due to violence, nearly 4 million are now reliant on humanitarian aid, and 90% of Darfur's villages have been looted or destroyed.
  • On July 23, 2004, the. U.S. Senate and House of Representatives unanimously adopted a joint resolution declaring the atrocities in Darfur to be genocide.
  • On September 9, 2004, then-Secretary of State Collin Powell, said, "...we concluded, I concluded, that genocide has been committed in Darfur."
  • President Bush has repeatedly referred to the situation in Darfur as genocide.
  • Reports by the UN, human rights groups, and US State Department officialsI affirm that atrocities continue to be committed, more than three years after the genocide began.
  • As of October 2006, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Africa, declared that 50% of formerly accessible Internally Dispaced Persons camps are no longer accessible due to insecurity.
  • In July 1008, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, requested an arrest warrant for President Omer Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir. The request charged Al-Bashir with 10 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Court's judges have yet to issue a decision on the arrest warrant

Key facts compiled from sudandivestment.org

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