Water water nowhere

This semester I took geology in order to get my physical science requirement out of the way. I'm not a fan of any science class, and looking at rocks is about as dull as it gets, but the class has made me look at the world in an entirely different way. I've always loved nature but I had never before realized how intertwined humans are with their environment. I know that you've heard before, in an earlier post by me and one by my fellow blogger Ana Halper, that the genocide in Darfur is rooted in a conflict over resources. One of the most important resources is water, for the simple reason that it keeps us alive. Water is hard to come by in Darfur. The Sahara desert is expanding, thanks to global warming, and causing prolonged droughts in Darfur, as well as in West Africa and the Horn of Africa. Water scarcity is also one of the many hardships facing the displaced people and refugees in Darfur and Chad. But we can help them. The American Refugees Committee (ARC), a humanitarian aid organization based in Minneapolis, has a program to build water pumps in Darfur. Next semester, when the University of Minnesota chapter of STAND begins to focus on fundraising, we'll send the money we raise to the ARC to help them build water pumps. By doing this we will help the people of Darfur, but this is an action that should be taken in other places as well. Providing easier access to water is one way we can alleviate conflict today and prevent it in the future.

On Our Toes

Sudan's green light for only part of the peacekeeping force is too little, too late, and is aimed only at defusing international pressure and heading off sanctions. Governments should keep the focus on the full international force, which could really help to protect civilians in Darfur.
--Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch

Just a few weeks ago we celebrated Sudan’s decision to allow part of the international peacekeeping force to operate within its borders. We also have heard that China has made diplomatic efforts to influence the Sudanese government on behalf of the people of Darfur.

However, our history with the Bashir government should keep us on our toes. The international community’s relationship with Sudan has followed a three steps back, one step forward model.

Bashir makes a lukewarm promise, then reneges on his promise, and we beg him to reconsider, and meanwhile people die.

We need to stay vigilant, and continue to advocate for a full international peacekeeping force. As the global days for Darfur continue, let’s keep our activist minds sharp on behalf of our Darfurian brothers and sisters!

Displace Me

Water and saltines will be collected upon entry and redistributed. Because you have to depend on foreign aid for food in displacement camp.

Tonight, in 14 cities throughout the US, more than 65,000 people will travel to displace themselves.

A few college guys traveled to Uganda in 2003, finding children in the midst of war who commute nightly for a safe night's sleep. They walk for hours and sleep in unimaginably horrible conditions. Child soldiers are recruited by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). In response, three men not much older than me started the Invisible Children campaign. Their goal? To help Ugandan children. More on this in a future blog - because the campaign is genius.

So Americans will displace themselves for a night, sending a message to the US and Ugandan governments that peace talks must be resumed, the war must end, and children and civilians must be protected.

Sign up for displacement camp at a city near you.

Rally for Darfur this Sunday!

If you're in the DC area (or a reasonable train/bus/driving distance) show up at Lafayette Park this Sunday to rally for Darfur!

Global Days for Darfur Rally at the White House
Sunday, April 29th 2:00-4:00pm
Lafayette Park
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, DC

There are also events going on across the country - and the world. Find an event near you!

It's time we show President Bush that if he wants a positive human rights legacy he must do more for Darfur - now! What should he do? Some thoughts are here and here.

(image from Hillel.org)

What I’m Reading IV

A single event can characterize an entire era: think of D-Day in the Second World War, or Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream…” speech during the American civil rights movement. The same goes for how a single massacre can represent a whole genocide.

Just as Auschwitz instantly leaps to mind for most people thinking of the Holocaust, the Srebrenica massacre was the culmination of the Bosnian War in many ways. One of the best books that I’ve run across about Europe’s largest post-WWII massacre is “Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime” by Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both.

Honig and Both outline the events which resulted in the deaths of 7 000 unarmed Bosnian Muslim men in mid-July 1995 at the hand of Serb “soldiers.” Although it was written just a year after the massacre and so lacks much of the hindsight of more recent publications, “Srebrenica” is still an excellent resource that glaringly highlights both the ineptitude of the United Nations for providing global security and the weaknesses of the obsolete concept of peacekeeping that allow countless innocents to be butchered before the eyes of the world.

The Happy Faces of Genocide

Father David Bohnsack, a Comboni missionary who spent more than 10 years in Darfur, spoke about his experience in Sudan at Lake Forest College in Chicago. He shared photographs taken of smiling people, kids playing games and climbing trees, people dancing.
I can relate to these photos. I'm just like these kids.

Father David reminded us that, in spite of genocide, Darfuris are strong, and they still find ways to dance and smile.

Human nature leads us to look at the top photo of the dying girl and think "that child has been condemned to death. She has no chance. (and thank God MY child doesn't look like that)." But tell an American the smiling girl below might be raped and shot by the Janjaweed, and see how they react differently.

So how do we convey the urgency and ugliness of the conflict while still preserving the dignity of Darfuris?

(by the way: I don't have the answer. It's why I'm asking. So you should share your comments)

I just spent the two days at Campus Camp Wellstone, an awesome student activist training camp that teaches the grassroots organizing strategies of Paul Wellstone (the coolest senator ever) and I am pumped to start using what I learned! The camp is geared toward political activists tackling a range of issues from Electoral College reform to the Obama campaign to fair trade to Darfur and focuses on running an effective campaign and effective community organizing. We spent a lot of time talking about the message of a campaign. The message is essentially what we want our audience to know. How do we build an effective message? How do we convey it to our voters or audience? I told one of the trainers afterward that I had found what we had learned helpful, but I still wasn't sure how to apply it to my work with STAND. I said that I do not think that "End genocide" or "Save Darfur" are good messages--although they are useful slogans for conveying our larger, long-term goal--because they are too vague and, let's face it, ending genocide sounds pretty unattainable.
"Well, what is it that you want students to get out of your message?" he asked.
"I guess we want them to see that yes, this is a huge issue, and very complex, but they really can make a difference," I answered, thinking out loud.
"Exactly," he said. "Action is your message. Tell them that by writing this letter or signing this postcard, they can have a tangible impact on ending the genocide."
The message that students can have an impact on state government and foreign policy is central to increasing the level of student advocacy to save Darfur, which Elizabeth blogged about a few weeks ago.

So, how am I going to use this newly-created message? On Thursday, the University of Minnesota STAND will table, but we'll do it differently than we've ever done before. We'll stand in front of the table instead of just sitting behind it, so we better actively engage in our unsuspecting advocates, and tell them they can make a difference, they can end genocide, by writing to their representatives in the Minnesota legislature, who need a little encouragement before they vote to divest Sudan.

Imagine

Imagine this-violence happening in our own country. This violence is huge-it happened at a place of education, something our country stands for and provides for its citizens. What happened at Virginia Tech is outrageous, emotional, scary, unbelievable. What happens in Darfur, what happens in North Korea, what happens in Chechnya, what happens in Congo-it's all terrible. But what is more terrifying to me is the lack of faith in a peaceful world. I held a peace program at my school last semester, and not a lot of people came, which is usual but I heard from some people that they did not attend because they do not believe in peace. WELL of course, peace doesn't seem reasonable when it is viewed as idealistic. What we need, and take this as a personal challenge, is a little faith in a peaceful world. That faith will lead to advocacy, action, and hopefully and eventually, SUPPORT for the global society that we live in today.

Are you frustrated? Because I am!

Today I was reading an article in The New York Times about how the Sudenese government has been painting its own planes to look like UN and African Union planes, thus breaching U.N. Security Council resolutions. At last I thought someone will take action! How could the UN sit by and do nothing after this gross disregard for international law? Instead the UN is in essense saying "Silly Bashir, UN planes are for the UN. Next time use your own."

This evening I looked at the online New York Times and saw how President Bush had made a speech today at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum about the genocide in Darfur. Yes! He finally refered to Plan B. Yes! He threatened Sudan with real sanctions. BUT HE TOOK NO REAL ACTION!

President Bush bowed to pressure from the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to give the UN more time for political discourse. This happened even after the facts revealed about the Sudanese use of "fake" UN planes. Thankfully, President Bush spoke strongly. But giving Bashir "a short while" has been said before. How many "short whiles" will it take for someone to stand firm and demand results?

The time for action is now. Within the next few weeks, we'll see how far Ki-moon's negotions will go. The United States needs to take action.

What I’m Reading III

It seems to be about all that I manage to write about lately, but here’s my latest book recommendation. Maybe I should spend a bit less time reading and more time blogging…

Genocide prevention types are always fascinated by survivor testimonies and without a doubt their stories are the most important resource for understanding the impact of genocide on its victims. Projects such as the film “Shoah” and the survivor testimony archive The Shoah Project are priceless sources for the stories of people who lived through hell.

The perspective of genocide perpetrators does not get nearly as much attention, though. Maybe people find it distasteful to give a voice to the criminals of all criminals, but they are actually priceless sources of information for understanding why and how people come to commit genocide. French authour Jean Hatzfeld gives us just such a resource in “Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak.” (A follow-up to his book “Into the Quick of Life: The Rwandan Genocide - The Survivors Speak”)

The most shocking thing about Hatzfeld’s book is the sympathy that one feels reading what the small group of interviewees (now prisoners in Rwanda’s Rilima penitentiary) has to say about how the genocide affected their lives, though the book by no means absolves them for what they did or casts them as victims. Be careful to keep their crimes in mind the whole time you read this book. Aside from that, the book gives a glimpse into the minds and blurred motivations of some otherwise ordinary men who became enthusiastic monsters for a time. Their lessons are not restricted to Rwanda, but are universal.

Breaking Good News

On an otherwise tragic day we have a small bright spot of good news from the BBC:

More than 3,000 United Nations troops will be allowed into Darfur, according to Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol. The apparent change of heart comes after months of international pressure, but there is no UN confirmation so far.

This is particularly important because the violence continues:

"This is the greatest concentration of human suffering in the world and an outrage that affronts the world's moral values," Penny Lawrence, Oxfam's international director said after a tour of Darfur...

For more info and analysis see Coalition for Darfur or my blog, Lives in the Balance.

Remember

Today is Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It is also the first day of the start of the week-long, Congressionally-declared Days of Remembrance (April 15-22). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum offers resources for hosting your own remembrance ceremony, which includes information on the current genocide in Darfur. For those in the DC area there will also be a Days of Remembrance Names Reading Ceremony on Wednesday, April 19th.

Remembrance and future action must be inextricably linked. Advocates for Darfur of all backgrounds must take a moment this week to remember the victims of the most lethal and systematic of genocides, the Holocaust. And as we remember the Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust we must be sure that no remembrance is complete when we allow genocide to continue without protest.

Why "genocide" is like peanut butter

Suffice it to say, I'm a little brain-dead this week. What with rehearsal 4 hours a night almost every night and homework and exams fast approaching I'm definitely feeling the end-of-semester-crunch. Given that and since there's not much news coming out of Burundi I was at a little bit of a loss as to what to write about this week.

Of course, like every college student I have survival food in my room for those late night, oh-my-God-will-I-ever-finish-this-paper kind of moments; and the cornerstone to college survival (besides Ramen noodles): PEANUT BUTTER, a jar of which is right beside my laptop so it's extra-handy.

So, I thought, "Huh, peanut butter is kind of like 'genocide'(the word, not the act)." Genocide is a word you hear from activists a lot to describe the situation in Darfur but something you rarely hear from politicians and supranational actors. Why is this? The answer: fear, or, more politely, apprehension. You see, "genocide" is a very politicized word, much like many other things this day and age. For "genocide" carries with it certain responsibilities, like the responsibility to act to prevent genocide. Luckily, the conflict in Darfur has been labelled a genocide by certain institutions including the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Committee on Conscience of the USHMM, and the US Congress. However, the UN has resisted calling it genocide and so has the AU.

As I mentioned a few posts back I don't care what you call the situation in Darfur so long as you agree that what is going on there is going from bad to worse and that the international community has the obligation to do something about it.

So, why is "genocide" like peanut butter? Because it's a word that sometimes gets stuck in your mouth. For student activists likes us "genocide" is like peanut butter in that in that it's often in our mouths at least once a week. For politicians, on the other hand, "genocide" is like peanut butter in that, for them, it gets stuck to the roof of their mouths and just stays there.

Stand up and educate!

Activists are beginning to look beyond Darfur and realize that education may be our most powerful mechanism for developing permanent genocide prevention. The Genocide Education Task Force, a STAND initiative, calls for state legislation to mandate genocide education. Props to STAND for recognizing that education is the key. Now it's time to get more educators on board at the grassroots level - this is where students come in.

I wholeheartedly support genocide education. Something makes me nervous, however. Meet the worksheet.

Here's what some teachers might to do teach genocide.
Question 1: Who were the main actors in the genocide?
Question 2: Darfur is a ________ of Sudan. (Are you confused at what to insert in the blank? Yes, these worksheets are vague and confusing. I'm not giving you the answer).
Question 3: _______ civilians have been killed.
Question 4: _______ have been displaced.
Question 5: Another genocide in Africa happened ten years earlier in the country of:______

Are you bored yet? I am. Perhaps the greatest success in the Darfur student movement is the passion with which students approach genocide prevention. I don't want busy teachers sucking the relevance out of genocide with dry worksheets in order to fulfill state mandated curriculum requirements. I want these teachers to care.

A student at Lake Forest College started a group called Students Educating Students. The idea is this: students use their unique experiences to provide authentic education for other students about issues that are important to them.

It's time for students to take education into their own hands at the grassroots level. It's time for educators to create lessons on genocide that motivate passion, action, and academic integrity.

Irony Abounds

Yesterday I sat in the packed Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium in the United Nations for a screening of the film "Beyond the Gates." The day already started off with a very disappointing clear absence of the Genocide Memorial exhibit. If you haven't heard of the film, it was formerly called "Shooting Dogs" and I can not tell you how powerful it was. Perhaps it was a sense of collective sadness within the auditorium, but several times, I was just overwhelmed with emotion. Tears flowed as I watched a movie INSIDE the United Nations, about the FAILURE of the United Nations to save lives.
I couldn't help but think how many times we have said "Never Again" and how every day that nothing is done, more lives are lost in Darfur. One of the reoccurring themes mentioned in the film is the United Nations mandate not to intervene in Rwanda. Again, we are faced with these political language that all comes down to one meaning: we won't do anything. The one thing that continues to give me hope is the people around me, people like my fellow members of the student board who believe wholeheartedly in promoting change, and not giving up.

Things Fall Apart

Jerry Fowler of the Committee on Conscience interviewed Ken Bacon of Refugees International on the Voices on Genocide Prevention podcast this week. Violence in Darfur is increasing and humanitarian organizations access to the region is decreasing and Sudan still refuses to approve a hybrid African Union/United Nations peacekeeping force.

This news is sad and discouraging. We have worked so hard for the past three years that it sometimes feels as if we have accomplished nothing and that the situation in Darfur is twisting out of control. We can at least be encouraged by Bacon's observation that President Omar al-Bashir is angry about the Save Darfur movement.

Music and Awareness-A Good Mix

I am really excited to share this with you as I just found out about this: a compilation cd that brings well known artists together for awareness of the genocide in Darfur.

Check it out at:

http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/070312/0225316.html

Google Earth + USHMM =

Crisis in Darfur, a new and innovative project launched yesterday. It's really worth exploring for yourself and kind of hard to explain with words, but the launch has gained a lot of attention, both in the blog-o-sphere and conventional media.

As Jerry at VOGP said, "Check it out."

The UN's commemorations

Yesterday, April 9th, marked the 13th anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide. The UN marked this in two notable, and ignoble, ways.

Secretary General Ban Ki Moon issued a statement calling for "a global partnership against genocide," declaring that the position of UN Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide will now be a full-time position, and the UN Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention will be "boosted". As Jerry Fowler at Voices on Genocide Prevention noted, there was "No reference to preventing genocide in any particular place, of course, and especially no reference to the whatchamacallit in Darfur," and the upgrading of the Special Adviser position was "his one example of fulfilling the stated imperative to do 'more, much more'".

The UN also had planned an exhibit commemorating the Rwandan genocide. It's been stalled, though, because Turkey objected to being blamed for the "murder" of "1 million Armenians". Rightly so, I believe - the exhibit should say what actually happened, that the murders occured in the Ottoman Empire. This stalling all points to some dangerous habits in the UN - Turkey objects to anything that says that 1 million Armenians were killed (even if the name of their modern-day country isn't mentioned) and the UN staff and member countries focus more time and energy remembering their past failures than they do stopping current and future ones.

For more of my analysis check out my 2 most recent posts at www.livesinthebalance.com. Hat tip to Exploring International Law for the NY Times/Reuters article on the Exhibit.

China for change?

The BBC reported today that China is beginning to change its tune in regard to Darfur. China buys over 60% of its oil from Sudan, is working on building roads and bridges there, and sells military equipment to Sudan. The BBC article, though vague in describing China's actions, reported that China did begin to pressure President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan to end the violence in Darfur and encouraged him to allow a hybrid peacekeeping force of United Nations and African Union soldiers into Darfur to protect civilians. Bashir has refused to let such a force into Sudan. Because of China's important economic relations with Sudan, China could possibly use that as leverage to encourage the government in Khartoum to put an end to the Darfur genocide. China could also continue to ignore the violence in Darfur in order to maintain its alliance with Sudan.

The article left me feeling hopeful until I read the following quote from one BBC correspondent, saying, "Thanks to its close ties with Beijing, Khartoum no longer has to worry about what the Western world has to say about the conflict in Darfur."

North Korea

A few weeks ago, I met Suzanne Scholte, the Chairman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, and I learned about the travesties that occur in North Korea which are so rarely discussed in the United States. Over two million people have died in the past ten years, mainly from a famine as the government withholds food to the majority of its population. Kim Jong Il completely isolates the country, citizens cannot travel (even from town to town), nor can they communicate with people from other countries, and the only media they have access to is propaganda made by the government. Kim Jong Il also instituted political prison camps, families are defined as friendly to the government, wavering, or hostile. Hostile families are rounded up and shipped away to the camps. Anyone who dares complain about the government is sent away immediately. The government also controls food and material goods, those who are loyal have access to these goods, while the majority face horrific conditions. Forty-two percent of children in North Korea suffer from chronic malnutrition.

Meanwhile, those North Koreans who escape into China (roughly 300,000 reside there today) continue to suffer enormously. China refuses to recognize these North Koreans as refugees and instead views them as economic migrants. Chinese citizens are fined or arrested for helping North Koreans. Humanitarian aid workers from the United States and other nations who attempt to assist North Koreans are oftentimes arrested and imprisoned by Chinese officials. Seventy to ninety percent of North Korean women who cross into China are trafficked.

I was horrified by the situation in North Korea, the response of China, and how few people are speaking out against the atrocities. Suzanne Scholte mentioned the difficulty of mobilizing Americans about North Korea. There are virtually no pictures of what is occurring there. No one can visit, unlike Darfur where Americans have been to refugee camps and can return with pictures and stories to reach the American public. This situation demonstrates the power of isolating a country so thoroughly that raising awareness in America is exponentially more difficult. North Koreans are struggling for survival and we must raise awareness, pressure the Chinese government, and attempt to make a difference.

Coming to the Table

It was reported yesterday that talks would begin anew between the government of Burundi and the nation's last Hutu rebel movement under the supervision of South African officials. FNL, the Forces for National Liberation, seeks to have addressed new issues of importance after having just quit "a joint ceasefire monitoring team." President Pierre Nkurunziza has shown good faith in that he will seek to honor the requests of the FNL to be an integral part of Burundi's army, per the allowances of the constitution, as reported in the article.


News that the two parties are willing to return to the table for talks is certainly good news. However, each side must be willing to give and take, as the author notes.

What I’m Reading II

I have to apologize to everyone for not writing in so long, but I’ve been a little short on both time and ideas lately. To continue on with the theme of my last post though, I’d like to make another book recommendation. (For anyone wondering what the answer to the title of my last pick - “Will Genocide Ever End?” is, it basically boils down to ‘yes - with a lot of hard work.’)

The book I’m onto now is one I picked up at the Holocaust Museum’s shop during the Advanced Leadership Summit last month. “Darfur: A Short History of a Long War” by Julie Flint and Alex De Waal is a little book packed with lots of information. Published in 2005, the book obviously lacks recent developments in the Darfur Genocide and war but makes up for it by being a great resource for the political history of Sudan and Darfur specifically, the origins of the Janjaweed, and the history of racial discrimination that led the rebels to rise up against the Khartoum government in 2003.

Although it’s a little daunting at first thanks to the wall-to-wall dates and hard-to-remember Arabic names, “Darfur” is definitely worth the effort and should be required reading for anyone who wants to know anything about Darfur.

Scholarship as Advocacy and Activism

We don't usually think of the Ivory Tower as a catalyst for change. One rarely hopes to effect action through doctoral theses and journal articles. But a session at last month's Genocide Prevention Advanced Leadership Summit at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum got me thinking. Entitled "Scholarship as Activism," and led by Scott Strauss, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the session emphasized the easily overlooked role academics play in genocide and human rights advocacy. It is safe to say, for example, that Professor Strauss's 2005 article on Darfur in the journal Foreign Affairs reaches far more policymakers than my blog entries. Furthermore, the big take-away from the session was that human rights and genocide studies will remain "fuzzy subjects" only so long as talented, dedicated people ignore them. So my thought for the day/week is this: academic work can never replace phone-ins or rallies, letter-writing or meeting with Congressmen. But getting a Ph.D. and writing in journals doesn't mean you can't make a big difference in advancing the genocide prevention and human rights agenda among policymakers, intellectuals, and the public at large. A few programs in this area, if anyone's interested (they're on my Bookmarked list):

Yale University Genocide Studies Center
University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies
Harvard University Carr Center for Human Rights Policy

A modern Exodus?

The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles has a heart-wrenching story of a Darfuri couple, Ahmed and Fatima, searching for safety in Israel. There are a number of Darfuris seeking asylum there (most currently in prision), but this story, coming out in the middle of Passover, is particularly poignant and raises important questions of responsibility to shelter victims of genocide.

Saddest part:
Even as he sits in an Israeli prison, Ahmed's fate and the fate of his fellow refugees could still be determined by Egypt. Both the government of Israel and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would prefer to see the deportation of the refugees in Israel back to Egypt, if they were guaranteed not be to be deported back to Sudan.

Given Egypt's record with Sudanese refugees (the Mustafa Mahmoud Park incident of 30 Dec. 2005 in which at least 27 innocent refugees were killed, many more beaten) it is really upsetting that both Israel and UNHCR would rather have Ahmed and Fatima on their own there than safely in Israel. There are obvious security concerns - Sudan is officially an enemy state of Israel - but Ahmed and Fatima are also enemies of their own government! They have been victimized and tortured by the Government of Sudan, and deserve a safe place to rebuild their lives.

Fleeing for safety to Darfur

A New York Times article today featured the "neglected nation" of Central African Republic. The story is nothing new: no food, and fighting is driving people to flee across the border to Chad and even into Darfur.

John Holmes, the newly appointed United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, just returned from a trip to the region, including a visit to the CAR. He says the problems CAR faces are more urgent than the international community acknowledges, warning that the crisis "is bigger than we are aware of."

Yet Tony Lanza, UN humanitarian chief in the CAR, makes a distinction between that country and its large, complex neighbors. The difference between Chad/Sudan and the CAR? The international community is welcome in the CAR, Lanza says.

Meanwhile, CAR receives significantly less funding. Trendy activism and the use of the "g" word isn't going to provide regional stability. We should extend our attention span and commit to genocide prevention wherever we have the opportunity rather than anti-genocide rhetoric. If Lanza is correct in saying the international community has the power to make a difference in CAR, why aren't we directing our efforts where we can effectively implement - or try to implement - security?

"no more blood for oil"

This article from today's New York Times got me thinking. It reported that the world's poorest nations-- closest to the equator-- would bear the brunt of climate change, even though the world's richest nations have caused it.

Before I go into more depth, here's Gore's cutesy primer on global warming, in case you're still a bit lost on the basics of climate change, (as I think many of us are).



The NYT went into a bit more depth than Suzy. But although it discussed the inevitability of starvation and drought in the developing world, the article did not mention that in the driest regions of Africa, climate change would also cause brutal wars over dwindling water-- one of which is already taking place in Darfur. The genocide is partly a conflict over water, one that heated up as the Sahara moved farther south. The truth is that the Darfur genocide might not be taking place if not for global warming. About two weeks ago, my fellow blogger, Hannah Baldwin provided a concise and moving overview of this issue.


This connection is crucial. Yet both Africa activists and environmentalists overlook it. In reality, the immediate effects of global warming are less like the doomsday scenarios in The Day After Tomorrow, and more like the crises already taking place across the continent of Africa. Yet even those chanting "no more blood for oil" don't always know about the blood being spilled in Darfur.

But in today's political climate, that could easily change. In the minds of voters, Al Gore and Democratic victory in the Mid-terms have already turned global warming into the non-partisan, non-controversial reality it's always been. Although the NYT is famously liberal, it's noteworthy that today's article included no "fair and balanced" quotes from oil company "scientists", and no rhetoric from the Bush administration-- perhaps because even Bush is starting to believe.

As a nation, we have begun to move forward from accepting global warming as truth, to coping with its consequences. As we work to smooth our own transition into a warmer world, we must not do what we usually do about genocide: cope instead of prevent, as we forgot about Africa.

Since Dave Gethings interns with the UN, and is planning their conference on Global Warming, I'm very interested in what he knows and feels about this issue. Maybe if we're lucky, he'll make a post in response. :)