Genocide in Darfur

Jan Pronk, the special UN envoy to Sudan, said on Tuesday arms were flooding into the troubled western region, violence was spreading beyond camps for the homeless, banditry was increasing and rebel groups were launching attacks in the area of oil facilities.

The renewed fighting comes just days after Khartoum signed a peace deal with rebels in the south.

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Darfur has been caught up in an armed conflict since 2003, resulting in the death of some 70,000 people. About 1.7 million people have also been driven from their homes.

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The horror that is Darfur, where ruthless and heinous attacks by government supported marauders (ah, death squads) to smash a popular uprising, isn't nearly as exciting as a tsunami. I imagine the people living there might be wishing for a natural disaster, devoid of politics, to capture the attention of aid donors worldwide. Too bad for them.

The WHO's top crisis envoy, David Nabarro, estimated that 70,000 people in Darfur had died since March from disease or malnutrition.

"We still are not able to get the resources we need collectively to mount the response that is required to bring death rates down to the level that is acceptable," Nabarro told journalists Friday.

Aid agencies had only received half of the 300 million dollars needed to cope with disease, malnutrition, poor shelter and sanitation for the 1.4 million displaced in the region and another 200,000 refugees in neighbouring Chad Chad.

"When you are dealing with an issue where you can sense the suffering, the despair and hopelessness of so many people, and you perceive that there is a potentially receptive international community, it's amazing that we still can't seem to get the money that is required," Nabarro said.

"It's covered well in French newspapers, in Japanese newspapers and other countries in Europe and the United States," he added, pointing to the high degree of political attention.

"But the conversion of information reaching the politicians into resources that come to us isn't adequate, and the price is measured in death."

Although the mortality rate had fallen back to the levels recorded in June, up to 10,000 people were still dying a month in Darfur, an excessively high death rate even for a humanitarian crisis, according to the WHO.

Health article

Ten thousand per month.

The British charity Save the Children says it will evacuate all staff from Sudan’s Darfur region. Two of the charity’s workers were killed by a land mine in October and two others were killed in a road ambush this month.

Save the Children, which had been serving some 250-thousand children in the area, said the risks to aid workers in Darfur had become unacceptable. Government-backed militias have been fighting a rebel insurgency in Darfur for nearly two years. The Sudanese government denies that it is backing the militias.

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The United States says the violence in Darfur amounts to genocide. Nearly two million people have been displaced by the unrest and scores of villages have been burned to the ground.

VOA article

But, sorry, you're on your own. If only Sudan's leader had threatened to kill George's daddy, maybe we could help you.

Human Rights Watch: Ethnic Cleansing in Darfur



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