In 1998, four years after the Rwandan genocide took the lives of
nearly 1 million men, women and children, former President Clinton
delivered a speech before a group of survivors and government
officials, asserting, “Genocide can occur anywhere. It is not
an African phenomenon. We must have global vigilance. And never
again must we be shy in the face of the evidence.” In the
middle of these 100 Days of Action for Darfur, we’d like to
present the evidence for an ongoing case of human crisis in which
we have the opportunity to play a major role in dispensing justice
and saving innocent lives.
Today the death toll in Darfur, the western region of Sudan, is
estimated to be close to 400,000 people, coupled with the
displacement of approximately 2 million. Generally speaking, these
numbers are difficult for us to fathom, but a short mental exercise
might make them more tangible: Imagine walking through the UCLA
campus and seeing the entire registered student population (35,807)
lying dead in its quads, halls, classrooms and walkways; now,
multiply that image by 10.
To conceptualize the number of displaced, we might envision a
walk through the L.A. streets where the city’s entire
population of either men or women ““ both groups comprising
approximately 1.8 million of the city’s 3.5 million residents
““ was suddenly vagrant, without food, water or shelter. In
fact, imagine them without any prospect apart from the imminent
threat of famine, disease and the various forms of militia violence
““ including systematic rape, torture and mass murder ““
catapulting the level of destruction in this region to a degree
that no analogy or mental exercise can sufficiently illustrate.
There’s an ongoing catastrophe in Darfur; it is brutal,
and it requires our immediate attention. As of now, our country has
declared the atrocities in Darfur to be “genocide,”
making it the first “official” declaration of genocide,
while it is still occurring, since the inception of the U.N.
Genocide Convention of 1948.
Currently, the U.S. government must mitigate between several
pressures: the specter of its post-Iraq invasion image; the energy
enticement of an oil-rich part of the globe; increased global focus
on the AIDS-ravaged African continent; the rhetoric of
democratization, Christian principles and “Never
Again;” and the impending precedent of responding to the
first genocide of the 21st century, a situation Kofi Annan calls
“little short of hell on earth.” Approximately 15,000
people die each month in Darfur; 500 die each day. We might ask
ourselves how many die even as we’re browsing this very
newspaper.
While addressing survivors of the Rwandan genocide, Clinton
apologized for his administration’s sluggishness in
responding to a conflict that resulted in the death of nearly a
million people. Let’s not set ourselves up to deliver another
apology for failing to take action. At this moment, comprehensive
Darfur Accountability legislation is on the floor of the House and
Senate.
As Harvard Professor Samantha Power has stated, “American
leaders have a circular and deliberate relationship to public
opinion. It is circular because public opinion is rarely, if ever,
aroused by foreign crises, even genocidal ones, in the absence of
political leadership. Yet, American leaders continually cite the
absence of public support as grounds for inaction.”
It’s our responsibility to make sure this legislation
doesn’t remain on the floor as the death and displacement
continue, and the onset of the rainy season threatens to further
hamper already-inadequate aid efforts and darken an already-bleak
picture for the men, women and children of Darfur. Every day, these
human beings face a form of unimaginable and unconscionable, but
preventable, terror.
What can we do? We can break the vicious “circular”
relationship between public interest and U.S. leadership by
determining, in no uncertain terms, what we, on a human level, are
not willing to tolerate. The Genocide Intervention Fund, a
Swarthmore College student initiative, is raising $1 million to
fund African Union Peacekeepers, who provide security to the people
of Darfur, during the current 100 Days of Action for Darfur.
If our government is unwilling to fulfill its responsibility to
take action, we as citizens must rise to the occasion. On campus,
besides fund-raising for the Genocide Intervention Fund, the Darfur
Action Committee of UCLA is coordinating campaigns for letter
writing and UC divestment, as well as programming various other
events and projects. True leadership does not gather unto itself
only the fortunate. In this evolving global community, we are only
as safe as the least secure among us.
Sterling is a fourth-year African American studies and
political science student. Jackson is an alumnus of New York
University. The Darfur Action Committee can be contacted at
[email protected].