Feinisgnews#36edit.doc

May0706

EDITORIAL: DARFUR TURNING TOWARD PEACE?

Helen Fein

We have some hope (with much scepticism) as this is being written (May 7) that the truce between a faction of the rebels in Darfur and the government of Sudan (GOS) (May 6) will preface a turn toward peace, stopping the genocide and enabling the return of the refugees and internally displaced people from Darfur. The United States pressure on the parties, shown by the participation of US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, was in part attributable to political pressure in the US. Credit should go to the Save Darfur coalition (of which the ISG is a member) for organizing a mass rally on the Washington Mall on April 30 which attracted 50,000 people, according to Rep. Jim McGovern. Rep. McGovern, along with four other members of Congress, faith leaders and anti-genocide activists, was briefly imprisoned in a DC jail after chaining themselves to a fence outside the Sudanese embassy. The Genocide Intervention Network, a student-led group which the ISG has supported, brought over 800 students to Washington to lobby Congress before the rally as well as attend the rally.

There are few individuals as singularly involved in keeping the genocide in Darfur on the public agenda as Eric Reeves, whom Nicholas Kristof today hailed in the New York Times as a hero. Reeves‰¥ús persistence in documenting the genocide and calling for humanitarian intervention for years, without any organizational backing, is that of a ‰¥þhero for our century‰¥ÿ (see Hirsch article in this issue).

This is not the end of the genocide yet. There is work which we must do to make sure that the US keeps up the pressure, that the United Nations Security Council passes a Ch. 7 resolution to support intervention in Darfur and authorizes a UN security force there, that NATO votes to send troops and resources, that money is allocated for the World Food Program to provide full rations to Darfur (recently cut by half) and that the aid is received there without impediments by the GOS. For up-to-date information on what you can do, see our website, www.isg-iags.org and that of the Save Darfur coalition, www.savedarfur.org