Voices of Hope Concert for Darfur – What now?

In 1933 when the Nazis came to power in Germany, nobody would have thought that twelve years later Europe would be in ruins, that 50 million people would be dead as a result of another world war and that a name would be given to a crime that had been occurring for centuries and that name was genocide. Of the 50 million deaths, 6 million were attributed to the wanton destruction of a people based on their religious beliefs. The population of European Jews was decimated due to the desire of the Nazis to rid Europe and the world of Jews.

Genocide, as defined by the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal, set up by the allies in 1945 to try the Nazis and their co-conspirators for crimes against humanity, includes the following actions:

• Incitement to ethnic hatred
• Demonization of the target group
• Radicalization along ethnic or religious lines
• Distribution of weapons to extremist groups
• Preparation of lists of those to be exterminated

The debate amongst the international community pertains to whether genocide has occurred in Darfur. While that and many other subjects, centered round Darfur continue, one thing that can not be denied is the fact that Darfur is in chaos. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children will soon die in this hell due to global inaction.

The Tripoli Peace Talks, scheduled to start on Saturday, October 27th, were placed, this week, in great jeopardy of accomplishing their primary objective – an end to the nightmare of death, rape and the destruction of the entire population of the native black African Darfuri people.

This past week we have witnessed the murder of a number of UN staff members. It is amazing that while the UN tries to talk with the Sudanese government in regards to stopping the horrors in Darfur, some of the people that are working to alleviate the pain and suffering in Darfur are being murdered.
The UN staff members that were murdered were contract drivers for the World Food Program (WFP). Not only were they butchered to death, but their cargos were looted. The cargo consisted of food and medical aid.

The increased barbarity towards NGOs has resulted in numerous NGOs closing down their operations in Darfur and in turn this has resulted in a great number of Darfuri people being placed in greater danger of death.

While the UN Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon has been trying to maintain a level of hope pertaining to the Tripoli talks, some senior level diplomats associated with these talks have highlighted the general consensus that the talks will fail, due to the recent events in Darfur that pertain to the killings of the UN staffers and the murders of the 10 African Union troops last week.
What is exacerbating the situation is the total distrust of the various parties that are due to participate in the talks. With close to twenty four rebel groups, all vying to have their grievances addressed in Tripoli, confusion is mounting about who should actually attend the talks. Because the Southern Sudanese parties have withdrawn from the national government in Khartoum, some observers have stated that President Bashir does not represent or speak for the national government and therefore has no right to attend the talks as the national leader.

Due to the recent events in Darfur, it is looking less likely that there will be an early deployment of the yet to be established UN-AU hybrid force. Mr. Ban recently criticized President Bashir because his government has not yet provided a comprehensive response to a list of nations that have offered to supply troops to this force. Because of the Sudanese government’s major attacks on villages in Darfur this week, many nations who had proposed supplying troops to the hybrid force, are now rethinking their desire to do so. The hybrid force is a peacekeeping force, but as the world can see, there is no peace to keep in Darfur. Unless there is a willingness on behalf of the entire international community to find a solution to the conflict in Darfur, nothing will change for the innocent civilians of this region of Sudan who have experienced so much pain and suffering.

On Tuesday, October 16th, my colleague and I attended a conference at the UN regarding the use of rape as a government strategy in conflict. During the conference, it was highlighted that the war in the Balkans was the first time that rape, used by the Serbian forces against the innocent Bosnian civilian population, was identified by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN as a war crime.

Listening to the testimony of the Darfuri delegation at the conference, pertaining to the evidence of sexual exploitation in Darfur, was horrifying. Women and children are raped on a consistent basis. The fact that this crime is happening and the international community just talks about finding a solution is wrong. The act of rape, committed as part of a government’s strategy to annihilate an ethnic group during a time of war, is a key ingredient of genocide. Those responsible for authorizing the rape of women and children are therefore guilty of war crimes.

During the UN conference that I attended, I was shocked to the point of despair when hearing what the consequences of rape and the sexual exploitation of women and children are. As a father of a five year old girl, knowing that children, some as young as four years of age, are being raped on a daily basis makes me very angry.

During the conference, the members of the delegation who addressed the audience spoke about the need for greater involvement by the international community to find a solution to Darfur. The question I had was, “How can one expect the international community to work harder to find a solution to the conflict in Darfur, when key members of that community are highly complicit in the situation in Darfur because of their continued support of the Sudanese government?” Multinational companies are also complicit in the situation in Darfur because of their continued investment in the Sudanese economy. As we have witnessed, on Thursday, October 19th, Mr. Warren Buffett sold his shares in the Chinese oil company, Petrochina because of the share price. It is estimated that he made $3.5 billion from offloading of his shares. Some news reports stated that the reason why he sold these shares was due to pressure from numerous international human rights organizations, but Buffett highlighted that the reason why he sold his shares was because of the price they were at. I tend to believe the reason that Buffett gave.

With key members of the international community continuing to do business with the Sudanese government and with private individuals still prepared to make billions of dollars in blood money from Sudan, it is very obvious that it is going to take something extraordinary for these states and individuals to change their strategy in relation to Sudan.

During the weekend of October 12th, at a conference in Monteral, Canada, titled Can the World Stop Genocide?, the famed French writer, Gerard Prunier, stated that Genocide can also be stop by those directly involved. He also stated that we should all be prepared to “Give War a Chance.”

As Prunier stated, "When you see a dictatorial regime heating up, everyone starts talking, talking, talking ... and by the time the talking stops, either matters have quietened down or they have happened."

According to Prunier, that is the crux of the problem, it is difficult for politicians or the military to intervene in a situation that has not yet evolved into a crisis.

Prunier’s solution upset a number of world renowned thought leaders and diplomats when he stated that "Genocides can only be stopped by the people directly involved - and usually that means people involved in the war that accompanies most mass killings. And if it is the government committing the genocide, the solution is to arm the rebels. It won't be clean. It will be messy but it is more likely to stop the mass killing than international intervention."

To support his argument, Prunier highlighted that the Holocaust only ended when the allies destroyed Hitler's regime, that the killing fields of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge were only stopped when the Vietnamese army moved in and that the genocide in Rwanda only ended when the Tutsi rebels overthrew the extremist Hutu regime.

Mr. Prunier’s ideas may be viewed as extremist, but when you look at the current state of affairs in Darfur, diplomacy has not worked, talking has not worked. Sanctions and other embargos have not worked. This is all due to the fact that certain countries and certain industries continue to support the Sudanese regime.

The International Alliance For Human Rights, together with Hope for Human believes that the conflict in Darfur can end if there is a mobilization of the grassroots global family to call for a complete cessation of the mass human rights abuses. The Voices of Hope Concert for Darfur will accomplish this goal as well raising much needed funds for NGOs that working under extremely harsh conditions in the refugee camps, both in Darfur and in the neighboring countries of Chad and the Central African Republic.

What must also be achieved is the indictment, by the International Criminal Court of those nations, multinational corporations and individuals that have continuously made billions of dollars in blood money from their support of the Sudanese regime.

We also believe that all current and future conflicts in Africa can end if a percentage of the billons of dollars spend on the extraction of oil and gas can be redirected to the development of renewable energy sources.

If we continue to do nothing or say nothing about the continuing conflict in Darfur, future generations will look back on us in shame. Shame because we knew what was going on and we did nothing about it.

The International Alliance For Human Rights together with Hope for Humanity will not be shamed, we will not stay silent and we will not let the innocent men, women and children in Darfur go on suffering.

On behalf of the IAFHR and Hope for Humanity, I solemnly ask that you support the Voices of Hope Concert for Darfur. For more information on this global concert event and other related events, please contact me at 212.695.7022, ext. 315 or send me an email to dnolan@iafhr.org.

With your support, we can ensure that never again, means never again.