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    Introduction

    IN the month of July 2003, a crisis broke out in Sudan. In the Darfur region a conflictwas started between the Janjaweed militia and the Non-Baggava people. Although the

    Sudanese government denies it, they have participated in the Janjaweed operations.The

    fighting is ongiong and the opposing sides are armed. The fighting has been distressingand displaced nearly 2.5 million people. The public in their American response has

    labeled certain members of Congress on their efforts to stop Sudan. So, apparently it's

    more important for Sam Brownback, a Kansas republican, to become first in the votingcommunity, then the people of Darfur to be healthy and stable.

    Introduction

    The government of Sudan is responsible for ethnic cleansing and crimes against

    humanity in the context of an internal conflict in Darfur, one of the worlds poorest and

    most inaccessible regions, on Sudans western border with Chad. Since 2003, theSudanese government and the ethnic Janjaweed militias it arms and supports have

    committed numerous attacks on the civilian populations of the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa andother ethnic groups perceived to support the rebel insurgency. Government forces

    oversaw and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians

    including women and childrenburnings of towns and villages, and the forcible

    depopulation of wide swathes of land long inhabited by the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa.The Janjaweed militias, Muslim like the groups they attack, have destroyed mosques,

    killed Muslim religious leaders, and desecrated Qurans belonging to their enemies.

    Countless women and girls have been raped. Hundreds of villages have been bombed and

    burned; water sources and food stocks have been destroyed, property and livestocklooted. Mosques, schools and hospitals have been burnt to the ground.

    The United Nations estimates that more than 2 million people have been left homeless in

    the fighting. There are almost a quarter of a million refugees in neighboring Chad, one ofthe poorest countries in Africa. Abandoned villages have been destroyed. Even when the

    villages are left intact, many refugees are unwilling to return to Darfur unless their

    security is protected. If we return, one refugee told Human Rights Watch, we will be

    killed.

    Estimates of how many people have died as a result of the conflict in Darfur vary widely.

    It is likely that at least 100,000 people have died from violence, disease and otherconditions related to forced displacement and insufficient access to humanitarian

    assistance. The toll of death and displacement continues to rise. Those left homeless are

    still at risk: camps are poorly protected, and women and girls are frequently the targets ofsexual attacks when they venture from the camp to find firewood and food for their

    animals.

    The Drawings

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    Human Rights Watch researchers Dr. Annie Sparrow and Olivier Bercault visited Chad

    in February 2005 to assess the issues of protection and sexual violence in the refugeecamps along the Darfur/Chad border. In her work as a pediatrician, Dr. Sparrow

    habitually asks children to draw while she talks to their parents or guardians. She did the

    same thing in Darfur. While Bercault and Sparrow spoke with parents, teachers, andcamp leaders, the children drew. Without any instruction or guidance, the children drew

    scenes from their experiences of the war in Darfur: the attacks by the Janjaweed, the

    bombings by Sudanese government forces, the shootings, the burning of entire villages,and the flight to Chad.

    As Sparrow and Bercault visited schools in refugee camps in Chad, many children

    between the ages of 8 and 17 shared the drawings they had done in their schoolnotebooks, often alongside their lessons in Arabic or math. Schoolchildren from seven

    refugee camps and the border town of Tine offered Human Rights Watchs researchers

    hundreds of drawings in the hope that the rest of the world would see their stories as

    described in their own unique visual vocabulary of war.

    Genocide in Darfur, Sudan

    About the size of Texas, the Darfur region of Sudan is home to racially mixed tribes ofsettled peasants, who identify as African, and nomadic herders, who identify as Arab.

    The majority of people in both groups are Muslim.

    In the ongoing genocide, African farmers and others in Darfur are being systematically

    displaced and murdered at the hands of the Janjaweed, a government-supported militia

    recruited from local Arab tribes. The genocide in Darfur has claimed 400,000 lives anddisplaced over 2,500,000 people. More than one hundred people continue to die each day;

    five thousand die every month.

    Government neglect has left people throughout Sudan poor and voiceless and has caused

    conflict throughout the country. In February 2003, frustrated by poverty and neglect, two

    Darfurian rebel groups launched an uprising against the Khartoum government.

    The government responded with a scorched-earth campaign, enlisting the help of a militia

    of Arab nomadic tribes in the region against the innocent civilians of Darfur.

    Since February 2003, the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the government-

    sponsored Janjaweed militia have used rape, displacement, organized starvation, threats

    against aid workers and mass murder. Violence, disease, and displacement continue tokill thousands of innocent Darfurians every month.

    Americans have a particularly important role to play in supporting peace in Darfur. The

    US government has been proactive in speaking out in support of the people of Darfur, but

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    there is still much work that needs to be done. The United States and international

    governments have yet to take the actions needed to end this genocide.

    Long-term peace in Darfur requires that the government of Sudan, the Janjaweed militia

    forces and the rebel groups of Darfur find a way to resolve their political and economic

    disputes. The international community managed to broker a peace deal in May 2006, butviolence in Darfur actually increased in the wake of this deal.

    Thousands of innocent civilians continue to die from murder, disease and starvationevery month. Today, millions of displaced civilians living in refugee camps are in dire

    need of international support as the violence continues.

    At this time, human security is the highest priority for the people of Darfur. The worldhas left the responsibility of providing security to the African Union Peacekeeping

    Mission in Darfur. As Sally Chin of Refugees International has noted, the world has

    given the African Union the responsibility to protect, but not the power to protect.

    We must now work to ensure that the world fulfills its responsibility to protect the

    civilians of DarfurHello, this is Senator Barack Obama, and today is Wednesday, February 15, 2006. For

    more than two years now, we have been watching a rolling genocide take place in Darfur,

    western Sudan. Many of you I'm sure are aware of the tragedy that has been unfolding

    there. For those of you who are not, essentially what we have seen is a systematictargeting on the part of the Khartoum government and the Janjaweed Arab militia that

    have systematically uprooted, killed, murdered, pillaged, raped, Africans, driven them

    from their homes into enormous displaced-person camps. Refugee camps, within Sudan.It's estimated that at least 300,000 people have been killed. It's known that at least 2

    million people have been displaced. The administration early on in this tragedy

    acknowledged that this was genocide that was taking place. I think there has been broadrecognition in the international community that the behavior of the Sudanese government

    has been scandalous. The rationale that has provided from the Sudanese government for

    what has been taking place is that there is a battle going on between Sudanesegovernment and rebels that operate within the area. But, the real victims have not been

    rebel sympathizers, or the rebels themselves, they've been innocent men, women and

    children.

    For more than a year now, I've been working with other Senators to see what we can do

    to really push the Administration to take this as seriously as it warrants. To the

    Administration's credit, the United States government has probably paid more attention tothis issue than some of our European allies. We have been a major contributor of aid to

    the region; we have helped to finance the African Union, to provide peace-keeping forces

    in the Darfur area. So, in a lot of ways, the United States government has been muchmore on top of this than Europeans, Canadians, and others, who oftentimes accuse the

    Untied States of being indifferent to the problems of the third world. On the other hand,

    what has been done is not enough. The few thousand African Union troops who have

    been placed in Darfur are primarily providing witness to some of the atrocities that are

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    taking place there, but they don't have clear rules of engagement, they are under-armed,

    under-trained, they don't really provide the sort of protective force that would be needed

    to not only ensure that existing villages aren't ravaged by the Janjaweeds, but moreimportantly, that the 2 million displaced people could actually safely start returning

    home.

    Recent reports indicate that in the past few weeks alone, more than 20,000 people have

    been displaced. There are also indications that the Janjaweed, recognizing that the AU

    forces, the African Union forces, are not particularly effective, have started targetingthem. So there is a sense of deterioration in Darfur, the situation may be getting worse,

    rather than better. And, what's most disturbing is that the United States government

    seems to be backing off a little bit, the commitment that it made to deal with the problem.

    There was a quote from the under-secretary for African Affairs, Secretary Frasier, inwhich she indicated that, maybe this was not a genocide after all. And, if that ends up

    being the United State's attitude, then we could see continuing problems of a scale that

    might eventually reach the same scale in which happened in Rwanda.

    So, here are a couple of things that we think need to happen. Number one: we need a UN

    peace-keeping mission in Darfur. There have been conversations; the UN SecretaryGeneral, Koffee Annan, the AU forces, and the Bush Administration have all

    acknowledged this. There's got to be a sense of urgency in which the US diplomatic

    efforts are focused on getting this UN peace-keeping force up to about 20,000 troops, and

    placing them in Darfur as quickly as possible with a strong protection mandate, ratherthan a monitoring one. In the mean time, it's going to take about year, at best, to get a UN

    peace-keeping force in place. We're going to have to supply and rally, bridging money

    and forces for the AU throughout this year, because, since it's sort of in lame-duck status,the Janjaweed recognize that AU forces are not particularly effective, they may become

    more and more of a target. We're going to have to provide this successor UN force with

    our own lift and logistic assets. We're going to have to provide our military hardware,like transport and attack helicopters, and so forth. And, we're going to have to really force

    other countries like Canada, Australia, some of the European countries that are not

    engaged in peace-keeping in other places, or at least are not immediately involved inmajor activity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, as we are, to deliver the troops that are

    needed.

    So, it is absolutely critical that we start focusing on this now. The situation, as bad as it is,could deteriorate further. This is something that is of interest, I think, to all of us, not just

    for humanitarian reasons, although when you read the accounts of women being raped

    when they are out collecting firewood, when you read just horrendous accounts of entirevillages being decimated and children being murdered, that it just breaks your heart, and

    humanitarian concerns should be sufficient, but we also have a strong national security

    interest. If you start seeing more and more failed states, more and more displacedpersons, more and more refugees, all of that becomes a breeding ground for terrorist

    activity, it becomes a breeding ground for disease, and it creates refugees that put

    pressure on our own borders. In an inner-connected world we can't insulate ourselves

    from these tragedies. So, we're going to, over time, have to develop some strategy as the

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    world's remaining super-power to address these issues, and Darfur is an important test

    case. We've already failed one test in Rwanda, we shouldn't fail another.

    Anyway, if you are interested in the issues related to Darfur, you can always contact my

    office, or get on the website. Your voice is obviously critical in this issue. I appreciate

    you, as always listening in. Thank you for downloading, and I will talk to you next week.Bye bye.

    .

    AU: African Union

    DLF: Darfur Liberation FrontICC: International Criminal Court

    IDP: Internally Displaced Person

    JEM: Justice and Equality Movement

    SLM/A/A: Sudan Liberation Movement/ArmySLM/A: Sudan Liberation Movement

    SPLA: Sudan People's Liberation ArmyUN: United Nations

    UNAMID: United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur

    UNSC: United Nations Security Council

    The Genocide in Darfur - Briefing Paper

    June 2008Introduction

    To download the briefing paper as a pdf, please click here.

    As the conflict in Darfur enters its sixth year, conditions continue to deteriorate for

    civilians. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, even by the most

    conservative estimates. The United Nations puts the death toll at roughly 300,000, whilethe former U.N. undersecretary-general puts the number at no less than 400,000.(1) Up to

    2.5 million Darfuris have fled their homes and continue to live in camps throughout

    Darfur, or in refugee camps in neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic.Based on Sudans behavior over the past five years, it is clear that unless the international

    community imposes additional political costs for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashirs

    intransigence, his government will continue to buy time by accepting initiatives only tobacktrack later or impose new conditions that render them useless.

    Humanitarian assistance in Darfur continues to be at risk of collapse, in part because of

    sustained harassment by the Sudanese government, and in part because of the

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    governments militia allies and common criminals. In September 2006, the United

    Nations estimated that such a collapse would cause up to 100,000 civilian deaths every

    month.(2) Troublesome developments suggest that such a failure is becoming morelikely: the World Food Programs Humanitarian Air Service received no funding in the

    first three months of 2008.(3) Last-minute donations totaling six million dollars funded it

    through the beginning of May. (4)

    In the second half of 2007, the Sudanese governments divide-and-conquer strategy,

    described by Human Rights Watch as chaos by design,(5) caused an increasinglyfrenzied free-for-all in Darfur. Rebel groups fragmented further and criminal activity as

    well as intertribal fighting increased exponentially.(6) Still, the effects of tribal fighting

    should not be overemphasized. Of the eight largest displacements between January and

    November 2007, seven resulted from government or Janjaweed attacks. Only one was theresult of intertribal fighting.(7) In early 2008, deaths and displacements from military

    operations by the government, its allied militias and rebels were even more common

    relative to those caused by tribal conflicts.

    To download the briefing paper as a pdf, please click here.

    1 Edith M. Lederer, UN Says Darfur Conflict Worsening, with Perhaps 300,000 Dead,

    Associated Press 22 April 2008.

    2 United Nations News Service, UN Daily News, 14 September 2006. Issue DH/4732.

    3 Hijackings Cut WFP Food Supplies for Darfur as Funding Shortfalls Threaten

    Humanitarian Air Service, United Nations World Food Programme 10 March 2008.

    4 WFP Sudans Air Operation Gets One-Month Reprieve from Closure, United Nations

    World Food Programme 28 March 2008.

    5 Cf. Human Rights Watchs report entitled Chaos by Design, & ENOUGHs strategy

    briefing entitled Echoes of Genocide in Darfur and Eastern Chad.

    6 The International Committee of the Red Cross. Recurrent Violence Remains the

    Primary Concern for Darfurians. 9 August 2007.

    7 SudanDarfur: Humanitarian ProfileNovember 2007, United Nations Office for

    the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs November 2007.