An excerpt: “We are convinced that the ICC can be one effective vehicle, alongside national and regional mechanisms, for achieving justice for the gross violations committed by all sides in the conflict in Darfur. The people of Darfur deserve more than negotiating warlords forgiving each other for the violence–including brutal sexual violence–they have perpetrated primarily against women, children and other non-combatants. There can be no real peace without justice and security.”

The letter was released last week. Read it in full on the Save Darfur Coalition’s website.

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We’re grateful for all of your help!

Waiting for adequate protection from the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed militias. Waiting for justice and reconstruction after losing their families and homes. Waiting for a real chance to rebuild their lives.

Congress is marking this solemn five-year anniversary with House Concurrent Resolution 159 [PDF download]. The resolution’s primary use value rests on its emphasis that genocide is continuing right now in Western Sudan. Here, Democrats and Republicans are joining together to state clearly: the worst crime known to humanity continues today in Darfur.

I wonder if the Obama administration shares this sense of moral clarity. As Rebecca Brocato at Enough points out, “U.S. Special Envoy J. Scott Gration has publicly waffled on the genocide issue recently, despite the views of both President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Rice, who both unequivocally deem the situation genocide.”

The relevance of the genocide determination issue as it applies to Darfur has never been a mere issue of language. Genocide has a precise legal definition, which in turn has provided Sudan advocates a revealing benchmark for judging our public officials’ Sudan-related belief systems and policies.

Remember the past. In 1994, the White House publicly tried to distinguish “acts of genocide” from genocide. Such semantic dilution was completely deliberate. As the late Alison des Forges reminded reporters:

“They [the Clinton administration] feared this word [genocide] would generate public opinion which would demand some sort of action and they didn’t want to act. It was a very pragmatic determination.”

And now we have U.S. Sudan envoy Scott Gration calling the situation in Western Sudan the “remnants of genocide.”

Given Gen. Gration’s apparent effort to try another round of soft diplomacy with Khartoum (absent any sticks such as the threat of targeted multilateral sanctions), we have to wonder: Is this political marketing? Gen. Gration seems to believe that Omar al-Bashir — who is undeniably responsible for killing millions of his own citizens through monstrous state violence and forced starvation — can somehow be talked into disarming the Janjaweed, calling off his bombing campaigns, and committing to a sustainable peace process? In other words, the U.S. Sudan envoy believes that words (again, unaccompanied by any sticks) can stop these mass murderers, at a time when they are executing a campaign of forced starvation and disease with complete impunity.

Seriously?

If the U.S. government is committed to going down this beaten, dead path, then obviously it’s more convenient for it to call the whole thing “remnants of genocide.” By doing this, you create the perception that things are approaching an endgame: you get people to believe that the Sudanese government is largely done with its slaughter, in such a way that things like sanctions or a no-fly zone aren’t necessary anymore.

We sincerely hope that we’re mistaken. We hope that Gen. Gration is not wired to such illogic. But we can’t assume anything, and it’s the Sudanese movement’s job to tell this administration that it is turning a blind eye towards genocide.

Please, take action now: Call the White House hotline during business hours at 202.456.1111 and deliver this message: “President Obama, I urge you to end genocide and promote peace in Sudan immediately. Among other things, please impose targeted multilateral sanctions on the Sudanese government’s senior leaders.”

ON RECORD: “As president, Obama will take immediate steps to end the genocide in Darfur by increasing pressure on the Sudanese and pressure the government to halt the killing and stop impeding the deployment of a robust international force.” - Online statement from Obama for America, 2008.

We hope you like our new design. We’ll be adding things here and there over the next few days, and we’ll make sure to restore over two years’ worth of blog posts as soon as we can. More soon.

Sudan Special Envoy Scott Gration’s recent characterization of genocide in Darfur as “the remnants of genocide” is at deep odds with both President Obama and Susan Rice’s recent affirmations that genocide is indeed ongoing in Western Sudan.

This is simply not a matter of words. This lack of public coordination reveals a substantial level of policy disorganization that’s simultaneously disturbing and bewildering — how can the Obama administration present such a weak and inconsistent public face to the Sudanese government and the people of Darfur?

On a related note, Mark Leon Goldberg over at UN Dispatch has this to say:

“I noted yesterday that the President’s Special Envoy for Sudan Scott Gration seemed to speak off a different set of talking points than UN Ambassador Susan Rice when it came to addressing the “genocide” question. Well, John Norris notes that this was not the only miscue from Gration during his first press availability:”

The second linguistic thicket into which Gration wandered was the expulsion of humanitarian aid groups. Gration noted that we have “three new aid groups returning to Sudan” – something of an oxymoron. Are they new aid groups, or are they returning aid groups? As has always been clear, Khartoum was willing to let three of the 13 groups return to work if they were rehatted under new names, a charade the international community apparently was willing to accept. Now Khartoum is expecting credit for its willingness to partially address a humanitarian crisis which it manufactured itself. Gration also insisted that aid capacity in Darfur was back up to nearly 100 percent of what it had been before Khartoum put so many lives at risk through its callous decision to expel aid groups. Lots of analysts, including the humanitarian chief at the U.N., have suggested that we are still well short of restoring previous aid capacity, and most aid groups still face a maze of restrictions that allow Khartoum to turn aid on and off at will.

On the campaign trail, candidate Obama promised “unstinting resolve” to end mass violence and suffering in Sudan. Needless to say, the response so far has not shown resolve. It’s been pure dithering. What’s more — we’ve been waiting more than four months now for the Obama administration to complete its promised comprehensive Sudan policy review. No word yet, and there’s been no indication that President Obama is ready to push for the sticks that are necessary to stop genocide and stop Khartoum, including the imposition of targeted multilateral sanctions against Kharotum’s senior leaders.

Today I’m at the operations center for an amazing live event. This morning, the i-ACT team is broadcasting LIVE from Camp Djabal in Chad for World Refugee Day Live, a day-long video event that’s connecting many refugee camps and UNHCR offices around the world. I encourage everyone to join at RefugeeDayLive.org.

When i-ACT first started in 2005, it was a challenge to even have streaming video on the web. 4 years on, the state of technology has progressed enough that it’s possible to stream live from Chad, one of the most isolated places in the world! Humanity is connected even closer together, and it truly underscores just how much we all share the same aspirations and dreams, and share the same basic needs for food, education, and security.

Today’s Action:

Today is World Refugee Day. i-ACT is providing live video feed from refugee camps in Chad and there are events all around the world to honor the lives and the daily struggles of refugees. Each moment you spend getting to know a Darfuri brings you closer to the reality of today’s theme: Real People, Real Needs.

Today we invite you to go deeper by joining Darfur Fast for Life. For at least one day, 24 hours, fast on water-only or refugee rations in solidarity with the people of Darfur. Today, even as we honor them, they have few choices compared to ours.

Please watch today’s video on StopGenocideNow.org, and watch the live feed at RefugeeDayLive.org.

Peace,
Carolyn, on behalf of the i-ACT team

“Beginning on June 15th (today), i-ACT (interactive activism) will connect you with Darfur refugees through the web for ten consecutive days. Each day delve deeper into the lives of this community by watching videos, viewing photos, reading and commenting on blog posts and taking action to bring peace and justice to Darfur. Being part of i-ACT allows you to develop a personal relationship with Darfuris and inspires us all to continue acting for each individual who has survived the horrors of Darfur. i-ACT will bring you innovative and interactive live programming for World Refugee Day on Thursday June 18th and June 20th. Join us, be i-ACT.”

“…it is crucial for the international community to understand Sudan’s interlocking crises as symptoms of one major problem: a predatory central government that is very skilled at creating and managing multiple assaults on its peripheral populations and then creating other distractions in order to confound the international community; the expulsion of aid agencies and the subsequent havoc that move wreaked is a perfect example.”

Exactly.

This year, of the top 20 web searches (via Google, etc.) that generated clickthroughs to OurPledge.org, there are three especially eye-catching ones:

- 4th most popular search term: “darfur genocide 2009″
- 12th most popular: “genocide in darfur 2009″
- 17th most popular: “darfur 2009″

I can’t be 100% sure of this, but the above metrics seem to indicate that people still care about what’s happening right now in Western Sudan, whether from an informational or an activist perspective. 2009 marks the seventh year of the Darfur genocide, but by all accounts “compassion fatigue” hasn’t become a blocker for the Sudan movement’s continuing fight.

For sure, a good number of these searches are being done by new “leads” (as opposed to the movement’s existing constituency). But this should count as good news: growing the movement’s base of supporters and enthusiasts is vital to achieving some big advocacy wins (e.g., getting multilateral sanctions imposed on the Sudanese government’s senior leaders, etc.). We’re crossing our fingers that people keep on searching and acting.

In part, it’s an insider’s tale of the consequential dithering and trademark ineptitude that have defined the Sudan policymaking world. Here’s one particularly damning anecdote from Lindberg’s account:

“We knew that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had given a couple of speeches urging NATO to assist the African Union’s Darfur efforts. One ambassador at NATO told us he thought this represented an opening. The Europeans who were reluctant to involve NATO would not change their minds based merely on a speech by Annan, but if the [UN] Secretary-General actually sent a formal letter to NATO asking for alliance help, that might change the debate. It would be one thing to say NATO shouldn’t insert itself into Africa, quite another to decline a UN request for help.”

“Does this sound ridiculous? Hundreds of thousands of lives potentially at stake over whether the contents of a speech are transferred to a letter? It does, and this is an indication of just how ill-equipped the “international community” as a whole was to deal with an emergency on the scale of Darfur.”

To think that a tremendous number of lives would have (by all accounts) been saved in Darfur if only Kofi Annan had sent one letter to NATO. And to recall that he failed to do this when given the chance in 2004. When genocide is the problem at hand, such a moral breakdown is beyond comparison. This is the kind of sin that can’t be forgiven.

Despite deconstructing this and other tragic flashpoints (ultimately, Lindberg writes that “the response to Darfur has to be judged a failure”), this article is still a hopeful one. Lindberg describes the work of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, which is playing a necessary and important role in institutionalizing the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. And more importantly, regarding the present — regarding today’s Darfur genocide, and the millions of displaced Sudanese who need help today — Lindberg reminds us that, in confronting the worst of crimes, we at least have the consolation of our moral certainty. And our certainty is this: given what it is, we know that we must do everything that we can to stop the genocide in Sudan. Period.

You might think that this is an insane and sterile claim. Because: So what? What can we possibly do as ordinary citizens for the people of Sudan? How do we speak truth to power when the power that we have to deal with is thick with every imaginable kind of bureaucracy?

Good questions. In response, we must only say: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. (And remember those who’ve succeeded! “Memo to slavery: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Memo to apartheid: Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Etc.)

It’s time to ramp up our efforts for the people of Sudan.

Sudanese Rally for Darfur Tomorrow in DC

Tomorrow, Friday, May 22, Darfuris and Sudanese from across the country will host a rally outside the White House to pressure the government to take a more active role in providing humanitarian aid to Darfur. The rally will be followed by a briefing on the current situation on the ground at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Niemat Ahmadi, the Darfuri Liaison Officer for the Save Darfur Coalition, believes that the time is ripe for urgent action considering the steadily worsening conditions in Darfur, where, as Ahmadi notes, “water is scarce, food supplies are low, and the potential spread of diseases puts the lives of many in peril.” These problems are compounded by the fact that in March the Sudanese government expelled 13 NGOs providing aid to the region, and by the fact that the onset of the rainy season makes it more difficult for the aid organizations remaining in the country to get access to the people they are trying to help.

All are encouraged to attend this rally; to RSVP please visit http://www.savedarfur.org/page/event/detail/rally/4vx87.

Since Obama is a pragmatist — and pragmatism is, by definition, what works — we should judge his policies in this area by a single standard: Are they accomplishing the goal of ending Darfur’s suffering? We are sad to say that the initial signs have not been encouraging. In fact, as Obama supporters, we are extraordinarily disappointed.

“Call the White House hotline at 202.456.1111 and deliver this message: “President Obama, please do all you can to impose targeted multilateral sanctions on the Sudanese government’s senior leaders.”

Please — make the call now. Thank you! Email us at info[at]ourpledge.org if you have any questions.

But “Mandate Darfur” is no more. Last week the organizers were forced to cancel the conference. Why? Well, here’s the official word from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation itself:

“After many months of working with Darfurian civil society to build a mandate for peace, we regret to acknowledge that the Sudanese government is obstructing the safe passage of Darfurian delegates from Sudan [to the meeting site in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia], forcing us to cancel the conference.”

We already know that the Sudanese government’s tactical and strategic impunity knows no bounds. In March, it kicked out vital humanitarian aid organizations from Darfur, and the United States responded with…words of concern.

Every injustice done to the people of Darfur demands our moral outrage and action. Right now, the Sudan advocacy movement needs to raise hell. And right now, the people of Darfur need the Obama administration to match strength with strength. Diplomatic rebuke can’t stop genocide. Only military and economic pressure can.

Take action now: Call the White House hotline at 202.456.1111 and deliver this message: “President Obama, please do all you can to impose targeted multilateral sanctions on the Sudanese government’s senior leaders.”

If you do just one thing here, please: Visit and bookmark our new “Take Action” page right now. We’ll be posting new Sudan action alerts on this page regularly.

Members of Congress, Darfur Activist Leaders Protest Deteriorating Humanitarian Situation
Participants arrested for civil disobedience at Sudanese Embassy

WASHINGTON – Members of Congress – including Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA), John Lewis (D-GA), Donna Edwards (D-MD), Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) – and Darfur activist leaders were today arrested for civil disobedience outside of the Sudanese Embassy while protesting the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Participants called on the international community to impose clear costs on the Sudanese government if it continues its use of starvation as a weapon of war. Additionally, advocates urged President Obama to be firm in responding to the impending humanitarian crisis, promoting international justice and working toward a viable long-term peace that includes Darfur and a reinvigorated Comprehensive Peace Agreement for the south.

”President Bashir has a choice,” stated Rep. Jim McGovern. “He can choose to let the humanitarian groups return; he can choose to end the violence and the killing; and he can choose serious negotiations for a just and lasting peace. Or he can continue to commit crimes against humanity – crimes with which he is already charged – and charges that will one day catch up with him and bring him down.”

After speaking on the steps of the embassy to a group of local activists and Darfuris, members of Congress and activist leaders were asked by police to leave the scene. When the protest continued, officers arrested Representatives McGovern, Lewis, Edwards, Ellison and Woolsey along with Save Darfur Coalition president Jerry Fowler, Enough Project co-founder John Prendergast and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

“We know President Obama and members of his administration care passionately about ending the Darfur crisis and promoting peace in Sudan,” said coalition president Jerry Fowler. “As President Obama nears his 100th day in office this week, he can demonstrate that Sudan is a strategic priority for the United States by committing to build a multilateral coalition for peace and investing in the diplomacy necessary to achieve an equitable and lasting solution for Darfuris and all Sudanese.”

Throughout the month of April, survivors from Darfur and five previous genocides have joined anti-genocide advocates and people of conscience around the world to observe Genocide Prevention Month. The tragedies of Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, the Holocaust and Armenia all have major anniversaries throughout the month. The Sudanese government’s recent decision to expel 13 international aid agencies – which will soon leave approximately 1.1 million civilians without food aid, 1.5 million without health care and more than one million without potable water – underscores the need for urgent U.S. action to address Darfur’s deteriorating humanitarian crisis.

“It is vital that any and all peace talks include the women of Sudan, who are already building a path to peace through their efforts to create dialogue and a consultation process. When women are not part of the peace process, their access to justice, reparations and the full range of their rights is jeopardized.”

Catch the webcast here.

- “…the Secretary-General describes as an extremely negative development the Sudanese Government decision to expel or dissolve 16 humanitarian and human rights non-governmental organizations, and cautioned that the removal of such a large amount of humanitarian capacity puts well over 1 million people at life-threatening risk.”

- “He notes that the rainy season starting next month is likely to make the situation significantly worse, and urges the government to reconsider its decision.”

- “The Secretary-General also expressed his extreme concern about the impact of this action on the work of UNAMID, complicating its ability to perform its protection mandate.”

- “The Secretary-General reiterates his appeal to Member States provide mission-critical capabilities, in particular military helicopter assets.”