Madam, – Genocide is a word which usually grabs the ears of the world when it is raised, but not in the context of Darfur. Recently more than 60 people were killed in north Darfur but the latest carnage didn’t make the headlines. As the fighting intensifies the UN warns: “Urgent humanitarian aid, particularly food, water, medical supplies and tents, is needed to help civilians.”
Tragically the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s response to the recent wave of killing has been as dismal as that of the rest of the international community. He said he is “gravely concerned” by the fighting, and urged both sides to seek a “negotiated settlement”.
It is cruel to leave a desperate people clinging onto shreds of shattered hope. How long can the West maintain the pretence of caring while doing nothing? Global inaction, dissembling, and feigned interest have simply served to perpetuate the conflict. Since Darfur’s nightmare began six years ago, Khartoum estimates 10,000 people have died; but the UN’s own undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs John Holmes, puts the actual figure at 300,000.
Melanne Verveer, America’s state ambassador at large, recently claimed “thousands of women girls and babies” are being raped in Darfur, where the crime is regarded as a legitimate “weapon of war”.
The New York Timescarried an account on the region recently by Nicholas Kristof in which he wrote: "In Sudan, the government has turned all of Darfur into a rape camp. The first person to alert me to this was a woman named Zahra Abdelkarim, who had been kidnapped, gang-raped, mutilated – slashed with a sword on her leg – and left naked and bleeding to wander back to her Zaghawa tribe. In effect, she had become a message to her people: Flee, or else." And millions have indeed fled; the UN says that 2.7 million people have had to leave their homes to escape the terror and now live in overcrowded camps and are totally dependent on aid. Aid workers say that practice of "marking" the Darfur rape victims has become widespread: women are scarred or branded, and occasionally even have their ears cut off to turn them into living totems of terror to strike fear into their communities.
Time and again the UN has pledged to act but the personnel desperately needed for protection are still as far away as ever from being provided. The moment has come to either deliver or else end the delusion that permits world governments to create all the trappings of caring while blithely reneging on all vital commitments. – Yours, etc,