A discussion from Crimes of War Project, www.crimesofwar.org, by Marguerite Feitlowitz (Spring 2002) 

[Ed. note: For full text of interviews with experts cited (except that of Helen Fein in this issue), go to www.crimesofwar.org/sudan-mag  See also Sudan Update (this issue) and Genocide Warning on Sudan on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Committee of Conscience Website, www.ushmm.org/conscience] 

Experts on the war in Sudan tend to agree that the brutal, systematic massacre of a targeted group is occurring in Sudan. But does this qualify under the definition of genocide? Or should the definition of genocide be enlarged to reflect the terrible atrocities occurring in Sudan? 

• Since it declared independence in 1956, Sudan has been repeatedly torn apart by civil war. The fighting between the largely Moslem, pro-government North and largely non-Moslem rebel South has persisted without respite since 1983, making Sudan's the longest uninterrupted civil war in the world. 
  
• According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees, the death toll in Sudan is higher than the combined fatalities of Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, and Algeria. Over two million Sudanese have died directly because of the war, or from war-related causes.
  
• Sudan has the largest population of displaced persons in the world: more than four million are internally displaced; and approximately 500,000 are refugees.
  
• There have been a series of man-made famines since the 1980s, the most recent in 1998. The Sudan government has routinely obstructed food relief and other types of humanitarian interventions in the South.
  
• The political, civil, and human rights of the Dinka and Nuer populations have been systematically violated by the North. The government's policy of Islamization includes forced conversions, the imposition of Shar'iah on non-Moslems, and removal of children from non-Moslem parents.
  
• The North has carried out aerial bombings against the South-at least 167 from June 2000-June 2001, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees.
  
• The government in the North has colluded to sponsor the enslavement of southerners, particularly Dinka and Nuer. 

Does this mean that the North is perpetrating genocide against a group or groups in the South? Our experts are divided. The key metric is the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, which was ratified on December 9, 1948 and which entered into force on January 12, 1951.

Article II defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group; 

a) Killing members of the group; 
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

According to the Convention, a finding of genocide can only be made if there is proof of "intent", documentation of systematic measures in an overarching plan to eliminate "in whole or in part" a targeted group. 

Robert O. Collins, co-author of the landmark Requiem for Sudan: War, Drought and Disaster Relief on the Nile, has spent decades documenting the country's violent history. Yet he resists a finding of genocide: "Unlike the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry, the Sudanese government does not have a rational, methodical, massive scheme to liquidate a particular group or people...On the contrary: the NIF doesn't want to eliminate the southerners...it wants to dominate, exploit, and enslave them."

Randolph Martin, Senior Director for Operations, International Rescue Committee, emphasized that "it is not the mission of the IRC to make declarations about genocide. Whether scholars call the situation genocide is of course extremely interesting to us, but it does not dictate the way we do our work... What everyone knows is that the war is as intractable as ever, and that starvation, illness, and displacements are more often than not objectives rather than by-products of the war. The aerial bombings of civilian targets in the south are a clear indication of the Khartoum government's clear disregard for its own people.

The Committee on Conscience at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has issued a "Genocide Warning" on Sudan, explains Jerry Fowler, the Committee's Staff Director. "The undertaking to prevent genocide, found in Article 1 of the Convention, by its terms does not depend on a finding that genocide already has occurred. Once there is a clear and obvious threat, as there is in Sudan, the United States and other countries must respond." 

According to Helen Fein, Director of the Institute for the Study of Genocide at John Jay College and the author of two groundbreaking books and numerous articles, the situation in Sudan is one of "genocide by attrition". She defines this as concentration or forced displacement, followed by the "systematic deprivation of food, water, and sanitary or medical facilities, leading to death through disease or starvation." This violates not only the UNCG, but also the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, which explicitly prohibits using hunger as a weapon against civilians and forbids the removal or destruction "of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population". Fein holds that the Dinka, the Nuer and the Nuba have been subjected by the North to genocide by attrition. 

Reflecting current scholarly debates, some of our experts argue for a definition of genocide that expands upon that found in the UN Convention. "In order to analyze genocide in this sort of conflict situation, we need to approach it differently," declares Francis Deng, Distinguished Professor at CUNY and since 1992 the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Internal Displacement. "We must consider not only the vast numbers of individuals that have been killed...but also the communities whose existence as identifiable cultural entities has been destroyed: The Nuer and the Dinka, who are among the best-studied peoples in the world... If you eliminate a cultural community as such, that to me is genocide."

Sondra Hale, Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies at UCLA and co-editor of the forthcoming Perspectives on Genocide in Sudan, agrees with Deng that the prohibition of language, destruction of books, documents, monuments, and religious objects constitutes "cultural genocide." She argues that "the intentional war of attrition against the Nuba has the effect of genocide," and highlights sex crimes and other forms of repression directed at women. All of our experts vehemently agree that Sudan has long been suffering in extremis, and that the international community has the obligation to intervene.