In response to last weekend’s National Student Leadership Conference, “A Call to Action for Darfur,” Wesleyan attendees will launch a new student group called WESTAND (Wesleyan Students Take Action Now: Darfur). Hosted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s, the conference drew hundreds of students from across the country and received national press coverage. Its goal: to unite students in a nation-wide campaign to promote awareness and inspire action on campuses, with the ultimate intent of stopping the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.
First we declare that the recent rejection of genocide allegations against Sudan by the UN-sponsored International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur is unacceptable. Although the evidence cited in the Commission’s report substantiates the genocide allegations, the conclusion that genocide did not, and is not occurring in Darfur, is a product of gross political manipulation. The Commission’s finding that “International offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide,” undermines the very existence of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which is the product of the Nazi Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews and countless others. The purpose of that convention was to single out “Genocide” as the world’s most heinous crime and to provide the means to prevent its recurrence.
According to the Convention, nations must either stop genocide, or if unable to do so, must “call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action…for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide.” Since a finding of “genocide” necessitates action, and since Western nations have little interest in preventing genocide in Sudan, the Commission members, under the watchful eye of Western diplomats seeking to absolve their respective nations from obligations to act in Sudan, abandoned Darfur, knowing full well the implications of their failure to label the situation by its real name.
Meanwhile, the United States, which labeled the situation “genocide” nearly six months ago, says it cannot stop the genocide in Darfur, because all of its time, men and money are going to Iraq. And since it long ago pushed for sanctions against Sudan in the UN (which this country has had in place for many years, and would thus put no burden on us), it argues that it has fulfilled its Genocide Convention obligations.
But in reality, the United States has not fulfilled its obligations any more than Britain, France, China, Russia or Germany. And it probably would not take much to force the United States to do something: it cannot be expected to commit its own troops, and it would cost only a tiny fraction of what the US is spending in Iraq to adequately fund the failing African Union mission or a more effective UN mission. Nor would it be a huge burden to step up the pressure, both on the UN and on the Sudanese government.
But the US will not act unless it is perceived to be in its national interest to do so. And as students, we find ourselves in a position comparable to that of the students who fought for civil rights and for US withdrawal from Vietnam: We can affect the national interest. Gayle Smith, a Clinton-era White House official and current Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, told students at last weekend’s conference that “what’s ultimately going to make the difference, is when the political advisors can no longer say to the president or to a member of the cabinet, ‘nobody out there really cares about this [the genocide in Darfur].’” Once the government senses widespread public outrage, genocide prevention will be in our nation’s national interest. We are running out of time to affect the situation in Darfur. Contrary to the death toll of 70,000 reported consistently since October, separate mortality studies by Jan Coebergh and Eric Reeves estimate that at least 250,000 have died and possibly over 400,000. Within the last week, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe have all acknowledged the credibility of those reports.
It is difficult to convey the urgency with which we must now work to remedy the current situation in Darfur if we hope to save lives. But in spite of that difficulty, we should remember that there are thousands of students at hundreds of other schools in this country who are taking a stand. It is not yet too late to stop the genocide. Let’s not wait until the perpetrators are punished in the genocide’s aftermath and listen to the world claim that “justice has been done,” as it did in the aftermath of Rwanda.
(WESTAND meets Mondays at 10 PM in Campus Center meeting room 2)
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