October 29th, 2008 - Nikki Serapio  Permalink   View & Add Comments

ACTION: Help Doctors Without Borders and Darfur

In the words of Sudan analyst Eric Reeves, humanitarian efforts in Darfur are facing an “escalating war” by the ruling Khartoum regime.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) recently warned the international community that the Sudanese government has threatened to shut down MSF’s lifesaving activities in South Darfur. By all acounts, Omar al-Bashir remains absolutely confident that he can continue without punishment his brutal war of attrition against millions of internally displaced Darfuris.

Here’s what an MSF official said about the recent Sudanese government threats:

“We don’t understand why they are now trying to prevent us from providing medical aid to the population. It’s incredibly frustrating, when there are clearly still serious needs in Darfur.”

Read MSF’s full statement/warning here.

Over the last four years, Doctors Without Borders’ clinics and hospitals have treated hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur. At this urgent moment, MSF definitely needs all the help it can get from the advocacy and donor communities. Among other small but concrete actions, you can click here to help MSF win much needed funds from a TripAdvisor-sponsored contest.

Ultimately, though, donations and contests and vigilant humanitarianism aren’t enough. And that’s because they aren’t an effective answer to the source of all of these problems. The Sudanese government continues to get away with genocide. They are the executors of genocide. In this critical time, only a strict set of punitive measures — starting with (but no limited to) the imposition of targeted multilateral sanctions — can stop Khartoum’s now six-year-old campaign of slaughter.

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