Archive for June 2006
Darfur: A treaty that could work.
Does the solution to Darfur lie not in peace treaties but in food, medicine and bringing the countries into the twenty first century?
I have been an advocate for Darfur and preventing further/stopping the genocide since long before any of my friends even knew that Darfur was a region in a country, in Africa, known as Sudan.
I am a great believer in humanitarian aid.
It has often been pointed out to me that humanitarian aid is all well and good but…. in the case of Sudan their history – the colonialism, the overt and ongoing corruptions, the inability or refusal of leaders to learn from past mistakes, and even the “oil gods”, (which National Geographic called “monsters which can crush you” back in their September 2005 Africa special Issue), make the obstacles to real peace insurmountable. Humanitarianism then becomes simply a band aid we will never take off.
Of course all that is a significant part of the story and it seems easy to disregard humanitarian aid as something necessary and nice, but not something that is going to really change the state of a continent or even a country.
I hear, and agree to a point, but with a twist that until the government of Sudan takes action to protect their people, and show a willingness to prosecute those that pose a threat to their people, what we do there is really going to amount to nil.
In my twisted opinon it is quite possible that humanitarian aid alone, if really given in much stronger doses than it is now, will be the only thing that in the end can save
Darfur.
Huge UN funded humanitarian aid.
If we are not going to bulldoze them over with our military finesse, and if we are going to pussyfoot around playing delicately with the leaders, who quite frankly need a lot more than a peace agreements – as we've seen time and time again – to entice them to save their own people, then humanitarian aid is all we got.
In Darfur – where the “corporate sentiment of oneness” is smaller than the existing civil state, or nonexistent; where there appears to be nothing to ignite that one significant allegiance to the state, nothing to transcend the racial, tribal, linguistic, political and religious differences within the state and give rise to some sentiment of oneness – humanitarianism may be the only way to solve the problems long term.
What we must do is feed the hungry, and treat the diseased. We must do it well and we must do it with greater veracity, organization, with significantly increased expediency and on a much larger scale than we are doing now.
Humanitarianism with a specific goal and with an end in sight, finite, tactical, goal oriented, UN funded and initiated, large scale humanitarianism !
In the end that would be better than to call what is happening genocide and then continue to do what has not worked in the past.
When poverty is imminent and constant, when disease is prevalent, when no real access to the modern world seems possible and when there is no other solution……….shit happens. It's happening in Darfur. We can fix that.
In the end maybe a health and nutrition treaty would be a better idea.
This post is cross posted at Blog Critics.
Rape as an act of war- still and always.
It remains the same.
Originally released in, 2004..
Amnesty International's, Lives Blown Apart Women's lives and bodies — unrecognized casualties of war
It can only be reinterated a hundred times. Almost two years later and rape is is being called a growing problem of war.
Rape is a constant , not a growing problem, of this war. Two years worth of writing about it has not changed a thing.
Rape in war 'a growing problem'
From the systematic rape of women in Bosnia, to an estimated 200,000 women raped during the battle for Bangladeshi independence in 1971, to Japanese rapes during the 1937 occupation of Nanking – the past century offers too many examples. So what motivates armed forces, whether state-backed troops or irregular militia, to attack civilian women and children? Gita Sahgal, of Amnesty International, told the BBC News website it was a mistake to think such assaults were primarily about the age-old "spoils of war", or sexual gratification. Rape is often used in ethnic conflicts as a way for attackers to perpetuate their social control and redraw ethnic boundaries, she said. "Women are seen as the reproducers and carers of the community," she said. Women were raped so they could give birth to a Serbian baby Medecins Sans Frontieres report "Therefore if one group wants to control another they often do it by impregnating women of the other community because they see it as a way of destroying the opposing community."
UN calls for global effort to tackle sexual violence in war zones
An international conference in Brussels involving participants from more than 30 countries heard horrific reports of sexual abuses in war zones worldwide.
Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, told the meeting most proposals to address the issue continued to go unfunded by donors.
Rape and sexual violence in conflict appear to be worsening and very little is being done to tackle the problem, a major UN conference has heard.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5105102.stm “The responses so far have been grossly inadequate compared to the scale of the problem,” she said. “We need political will and leadership and certainly sustained action.”
A UN report for the meeting said Bosnia and Herzegovina documented 40,000 cases of war-related rape until 1993 and up to 45,600 Kosovar Albanian women suffered similarly from 1998-99.
In Sierra Leone’s protracted conflict up to 64,000 women may have been sexually victimised and one in five of 1,500 Burundian women surveyed by the UN in 2004 reported being raped and many knew of or had witnessed rape of minors. “The stories are heartbreaking,” said Obaid. “ We must scale up the responses so women do not feel their cries for support are cries in the wilderness.”
Among incidents highlighted were a woman in Congo who found paramilitary soldiers raping her 10-month-old baby, a young woman raped by six Arab men in front of her family in Darfur, and a young ethnic minority girl repeatedly raped then burned alive by an army major in Myanmar’s Shan State.
The three-day Brussels conference, sponsored by the European Commission and Belgium, is the first ever international meeting to address the issue of sexual violence in war zones and plans to conclude with a global call to action. Obaid said the tragedy of rape was compounded when women were infected in the process with HIV.
Khartoum – Conundrum
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) –Sudan won't allow U.N. force in Darfur
President Omar al-Bashir vowed on Tuesday that he will never allow U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur, his strongest rejection yet of the United Nations' plan to try to halt violence in the war-torn region.,/blockquote>
Top diplomacy official Zoellick quits for Wall St
WASHINGTON: US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick announced his resignation yesterday to join investment house Goldman Sachs, after focusing on China and Sudan in the No. 2 job at the department. Zoellick had been tipped as a candidate for treasury secretary but he was passed over for the job which went to Goldman Sachs chairman Henry “Hank” Paulson. With Zoellick at her side, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid tribute to her outgoing deputy as a strategist and an intellectual leader. She did not announce a replacement for Zoellick when he leaves next month, and State Department officials said it was undecided whether his successor would be the point person on China and Sudan.
Need for expediency in Darfur
SLM’s Minawi threatens to quit Darfur peace deal.
The only rebel leader to have endorsed the Darfur Peace Agreement threatened to pull out of the deal geared at ending three years of war if the international community does not move to support him fast. Minni Minawi Minni Minawi, who heads the Sudan Liberation Movement, was the only one of three rebellion leaders to sign the peace deal last month with the Sudanese government. "The responsibility for the peace cannot remain on my sole shoulders," Minawi said in an Associated Press interview late Friday. He warned that the peace agreement could "collapse soon" if the international community failed to send a United Nations peacekeeping force to this remote region of western Sudan. "If I don’t see support from the international community, I will return to the bush and the fighting will continue," Minawi said. He declined to specify when this could occur.
There is no doubt that with all the talk and all the extracurricular activity that has cropped up over the last few months in regard to Darfur one thing has not changed….the timeline,and that is inexusable. The poor excuse for a United Nations is just that in regard to Darfar. The lip service paid to Darfur over the last few months was just that as it appears for all intents and purposes that. While the International Criminal Courts gets the paperwork in order, ( always such a time cosuming thing to do you know), and it only substantiates things with things we already know -and have known for a very long time.
The Chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court says it has documented the massacre and rape of thousands of civilians in Darfur. Investigators found evidence of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in the war-torn Sudanese province, Luis Moreno Ocampo said in a report submitted to the U.N. Security Council. Singled out According to witnesses, three ethnic groups — the relatively dark-skinned Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa — have been singled out by forces loyal to the Khartoum Government. The report said: “In most of the incidents … there are eyewitness accounts that the perpetrators made statements reinforcing the targeted nature of the attacks, such as `We will kill all the black' and `We will drive you out of this land'.'' Tribes in the western province rebelled in 2003, provoking a crackdown by the Sudanese military and a pro-government Arab militia known as the Janjaweed. Two million persons have been displaced and more than 180,000 killed.
Time is wasting, children are dying, starving and women continue to be victimed by rape as an act of war. The time for action is long past due.
If you are in NY.
RWANDA: AFTER DARFUR: NOW Photographs by Michal Ronnen Safdie May 24–October 1 Milken Gallery $8 General, $6 Seniors, Free to Members and Children under 12 Free to full-time students on weekdays with valid ID.
Includes admission to all exhibitions
This exhibition presents nearly 40 color and black-and-white photographs taken during Michal Ronnen Safdie's travels to the Central African countries of Rwanda and Chad. In 2002, she focused on the pilot phase of Rwanda's gacaca tribunals, an emotionally-charged public confessional process meant to resolve the fates of lower-level genocide suspects and help victims learn precisely how their loved ones were murdered.
In 2004, she documented the hardships of the refugees displaced from Sudan's Darfur region living in Bahai, a makeshift camp on the Chadian border; two-thirds of the camps 18,000 refugees were women and children, still in shock from the genocide carried out against their families and communities.
The exhibition challenges us to look at the aftermath and consequences of cruelty and violence perpetrated by individuals against their neighbors and by governments against their citizens. The images are intended to inspire public awareness and action to aid those who have been overwhelmed by such horrific events.
Born in Jerusalem, Safdie is author of The Western Wall (1997), a book of photographs with an introduction by Yehuda Amichai, which also took the form of an international traveling exhibition. Her work has been exhibited at Salander-O'Reilly Galleries in New York, Robert Klein Gallery in Boston, and Tel Aviv University Art Gallery. Her photographs are included in museum and private collections, including George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and The Jewish Museum in New York.
