Spotlight on Darfur
Just to follow on from yesterday’s post about the Rwandan genocide, and the need to raise our awareness and hopefully see consequent action to address and prevent these sort of problems.
ob1 makes a valid point about the lack of international attention being due to lack of economic resources, specifically oil, in these countries (but although oil gets attention, is that always a good thing? just look at Iraq…) And perhaps this is a reason why our governments don’t seem to give crises like Rwanda and Darfur top billing, however it doesn’t negate our responsibility as individuals to make ourselves aware and take what action we can (no matter how little it may seem) to help, or to put pressure on our governments. And this is what Bob at Crosswords does in in his post – taking President Bush to task for ignoring Darfur (which means a lot coming from a conservative right wing American blog like his 
and calling on us to do what we can to ease this situation and raise it’s profile. He links to the Save Darfur Coalition where there is more information about the crisis and what can be done about it.
To turn the spotlight on Darfur in a more literal sense, Google have teamed up with the US Holocaust museum to create high resolution images of the troubled areas in Darfur and Chad. Flames in Google Earth mark villages that have been affected by this conflict. If you look from a high view, it seems like the whole of western Sudan is in flames. Zooming in closer you can see up close these scorched villages and the camps to which millions of people have fled. If you have Google Earth just zoom in to the area and you can see what I mean. Also see the US Holocaust Museum site for more information.
Finally, going back to Rwanda, I ended up finishing that book Left to Tell in one sitting last night. As I said, it’s simply written, just telling one woman’s story without going into much depth about the history and politics of the situation. Yet it was one of the most powerful books I have read in some time. I don’t know if I can remember another example of a book that brought tears to my eyes, but this one surely did. Definitely one that I would recommend to everyone.
Categories : Africa, Personal | 2 Comments
