...ABSTRACT For over two decades, civil war has raged in Sudan. The government of Sudan which consists of a majority of Muslims has focused the war on the Africans of Darfur region of Sudan. These Africans have had the control of some of the most fertile grazing lands and oil reserves in all of Sudan. Unfortunately over the past two decades, persistent droughts have forced the Arabs to migrate to more arable land, though having strained their relations with the Africans[1]. When the Arabs and the Africans started coexisting, fights broke out between them over lands and the Arabs became violent. Massacres and rebellions were a commonplace scenario between both the sides. The situation worsened when Sudan government sided with the Arabs and the government and military groups of Janjaweed(“devils on horsebacks”) began fighting the insurgents and the citizens of Darfur. It dint take very long for this to turn into genocide, also known as ethnic cleansing. The cleansing stopped focusing just on citizens and insurgents and started targeting certain ethnicities such as the Africans and the Christians. INTRODUCTION On the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, another human catastrophe is rapidly accelerating despite full knowledge of the United Nations and Western democracies. In April, a U.N. team investigating human rights abuses in the far western Darfur region of Sudan found “disturbing patterns of massive human rights violations in Darfur, many of which...
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...The conflict in the Darfur Region of Sudan began in February of 2003. At least 400,000 people have been murdered and more than 2.5 million civilians have been displaced. These citizens now live in displaced-persons camps in Sudan or in refugee camps in neighboring country known as Chad. More than 3.5 million men, women, and children are completely reliant on international aid for survival, some of which isn’t able to reach areas in Darfur. Women are raped and tortured and innocent civilians lack the most basic protections. The Sudanese armed forces and Sudanese government-backed militia known as “Janjaweed” have been fighting two rebel groups in Darfur, the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The stated political aim of the rebels has been to force the government of Sudan to address underdevelopment and the political marginalization of the region. In response, the Sudanese government’s regular armed forces and the Janjaweed have targeted civilian populations and ethnic group from which the rebels primarily draw their support which would include the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. The Darfur Peace Agreement also known as the Abuja Agreement, is a peace agreement signed in May 2006 by the largest rebel group the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Mini Menawi and the Sudanese Government was an effort to achieve peace in Darfur. The agreement addressed the long-standing banishment of Darfur and was intended to chart...
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...Genocide Name: Course: Tutor: Date: Introduction The term genocide refers to the mass murder of a specific race or tribe or group of people with the sole intention of eliminating the said group. As the world came to realize with the discrimination of Jews by the Nazi forces, genocide does not sit on the same bench as other crimes such as burglary. The spirited effort towards the elimination of a single race or tribe is the driving force of this heinous crime. It is said “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. At the centre of genocide, power and resources are usually the propagators of this vice. In a state in which the availability and distribution of resources is anything short of equal, negative ethnic traits such as tribalism, nepotism and even clanism, in other cases, can easily result in the onset of genocide. Greed is also a consistent feature of many genocide-stricken states. The more worrying issue, apart from the killing of millions of innocent civilians, is the prejudice with which many of the leaders of these factions plan and coordinate these atrocities. The notion that leaders are well above the law is characteristic of states that have felt the iron grip of genocide. The case of Darfur is one of the most disheartening. Darfur has been embroiled in the throes of genocide for the better part of the 21st Century. Having been the first genocide of the 21st Century, the mention of Darfur does not resonate well on the global landscape. Upon...
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...Darfur, Sudan was declared “genocide” by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell”("Darfur Genocide « World Without Genocide - Working to Create a World Without Genocide."). The Darfur Genocide specifically refers to the wiping out of the Darfur race of people in Western Sudan. Starting in 2003 and still happening today, it is the first genocide of the 21st century and could potentially be the worst. By way of recent recognition, the United Nations calls it the greatest crisis in the world; and the United States now calls it genocide. But the damage done to the people of Darfur may already be beyond repair. What’s happening is taking place in Sudan, the largest country in Africa. Where almost 480,000 people...
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...paraphrase the famous quip during the 1992 US Presidential debates, when an unknown William Jefferson Clinton told then-President George Herbert Walker Bush, “It’s the economy, stupid,” the present concern of the current Washington Administration over Darfur in southern Sudan is not, if we were to look closely, genuine concern over genocide against the peoples in that poorest of poor part of a forsaken section of Africa.No. “It’s the oil, stupid.” Hereby hangs a tale of cynical dimension appropriate to a Washington Administration that has shown no regard for its own genocide in Iraq, when its control over major oil reserves is involved. What’s at stake in the battle for Darfur? Control over oil, lots and lots of oil. The case of Darfur, a forbidding piece of sun-parched real estate in the southern part of Sudan, illustrates the new Cold War over oil, where the dramatic rise in China’s oil demand to fuel its booming growth has led Beijing to embark on an aggressive policy of—ironically-- dollar diplomacy. With its more than $1.3 trillion in mainly US dollar reserves at the Peoples’ National Bank of China, Beijing is engaging in active petroleum geopolitics. Africa is a major focus, and in Africa, the central region between Sudan and Chad is priority. This is defining a major new front in what, since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, is a new Cold War between Washington and Beijing over control of major oil sources. So far Beijing has played its cards a bit more cleverly than Washington....
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...least 300,000 Sudanese killed between 2003 and 2005. During that period, around two million more were displaced from their homes and forced to seek refuge. The conflict is still ongoing. After the relative success of International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), a draft statute was adopted to establish an international criminal tribunal that had jurisdiction over crimes of war crimes, crimes against humanity, aggression, and genocide. The result was the Rome Statute, which was drafted in 1998 and that required the approval of 60 states in order to come into force, which it did on July, 1st 2002. Sudan signed the Rome Statue in September of 2000 while Omar al-Bashir was President, but did not ratify it, thus not accepting the jurisdiction of the Court. In addition, per Article 13, the Security Council has the power to refer cases to the Court that would traditionally be outside its jurisdiction, such as Sudan, in the spirit of Chapter VII of the United Nations charter. Of the seven situations that the ICC is now investigating; Uganda, the Ivory Coast, Darfur, Kenya, the Central African Republic, Libya and the...
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...Since 2003 there has been a mass slaughter and rape of Darfuri men, women and children in western sudan and despite peace efforts it continues to this day. It was the first genocide in the 21st century. The genocide is performed by the Janjaweed which translates to ‘devils on horseback’ a government-armed and funded Arab militia. After getting numerous complaints about the violence going on in Darfur because of the conflicting tribes, instead of helping the conflicted tribes unite or separate they armed and funded the Janjaweed to create the genocide. After this the janjaweed have gained a few rival rebel groups some including The Sudanese Liberation Movement, and The Justice and Equality Movement. From 2003 till now there has been over 480,000 people killed, and over 2.8 million people are displaced. Sudan is located in northeastern Africa, borders the Red Sea and is between Egypt, Chat, Uganda, and six other countries. The genocide occurring in Sudan affect neighboring countries such as chad and Central African Republic creating tension due to the hundreds of thousands of refugees who stream over both countries’ borders to flee the violence. Although the genocide started in 2003 its origin can be traced following Independence from Britain in 1956, its independence and lead to an unstable country suffering from conflict such as northern economic, political, and social domination of largely non-Muslims, non-Arab southern Sudanese.The first civil war ended in 1972 and broke out...
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...The instances of genocide in the late 20th century stand as a testament to how unreliable the nation state can be when inalienable and human rights are concerned. As is shown in the case of Rwanda, non-state actors have taken steps to trample on these rights even when the victim technically has citizenship in a country. Additionally, the nation-state can reinforce the actions of the non-state actors through either sponsorship, or even inaction in the face of genocide. Civil society actors have taken steps to act where the nation-state has failed to do so out of what Ayers identifies as labeling the conflict as internal or a civil war. Ultimately, both Ayers and Power agree that labeling genocide as what it is, and taking other steps outside of raw military force can go a long way in preventing the atrocities of the 20th century. More specifically, since the nation-state alone cannot be trusted to handle these situations, civil society must take steps to better the diplomacy of the nation-state, along with creating an international community that can work together to remedy the problems of human and inalienable rights violations. In her article “Raising the Cost of Genocide,” Samantha Power examines the historical response to genocide by discussing the ways in which western powers have avoided responsibility for 20th century atrocities. She begins her article by explaining the invention of the word genocide as a word meant to “send shudders down the spines of those who heard it...
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...Crisis in Darfur: An Educational Simulation July 10, 2009 U.S. Diplomacy Center Department of State PARTICIPANT BACKGROUND GUIDE INTRODUCTION: “CRISIS IN DARFUR” Whether the murder, rape, pillage, and displacement of tens of thousands in the Darfur region of Sudan is labeled a tragedy, or civil war, or ethnic cleansing, or genocide “in slow motion” 1, the world can’t ignore what is going on in western Sudan. According to the UN, over 2.1 million people are believed to have left their homes, and up to 70,000 have been killed. Other estimates put the death toll higher, up to 400,000. International media has only limited access due to the remoteness and instability in this vast region the size of France. So we don’t see all the day to day details of suffering as we did, for example, in late 1998 in Kosovo. Those images and reports helped trigger UN ultimatums and eventual NATO intervention in 1999. After the Holocaust, the world said “never again” should we stand by and watch while millions are slaughtered. After the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s, after the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and after the mass killings in Srebrenica in Bosnia in 1995, the world also stood by, and then said “never again.” And now we have Darfur. Thus Darfur can be seen as a profound test of the credibility of the international community: the United Nations, the international NGO community, the African Union, and citizens and governments around the world. Is there the will to act in Darfur or will we stand...
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...In early 2003, a horrific event started; genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Genocide is the intentional killing of a mass quantity of people, usually of people of a particular ethnic group. In the following, you will see how this gruesome act was put into action. Darfur, Sudan is located in northeast Africa. Surrounding Sudan is Egypt to the north, Ethiopia and Eritrea to the east, South Sudan to the south, and Chad to the west. The Sudanese government committed the genocide. The government orchestrated the genocide because they wanted to stop the rebel groups from their up rise against the government. In February of 2003 the Darfur Liberation Front (later the Sudan Liberation Army) attacked Gulu, the capital of the district of Jebel Marra. Their second attack was on April 25, 2003. In Darfur, Sudan, two rebellious groups, the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, attacked the El Fasher airport....
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...Genocide in the World Today Genocide has been a very large problem for many countries for a while, and it is still going on today. For example, The War of Darfur in Sudan from 2003 to 2010 and Persecution of Yazidis by Deash in Iraq. The War in Darfur began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) created a war among the Government of Sudan. The true amount of people killed is unknown. However, the Government of Sudan claims roughly 10,000 people, but many others say up to roughly 400,000 people. The crisis in Darfur cannot be saved in solitude from other conflicts in the area. There is violence in the Central African Republic and in Chad. The diplomats must agree to make peace and...
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...Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. One of the most commonly referred to and widely known genocide is the Holocaust, but this is not the only genocide. There are many different genocides that have gone on throughout the course of history, all of which could have been prevented. One of these is a 21st century genocide going on in the Sudanese region to this day. This paper will describe the genocide in Darfur, compare it to the Holocaust and discuss not only how it can be ended but how future genocides can be prevented. 6 million citizens reside in Darfur is a region in western Sudan that was created in 1956 (“Darfur Genocide”). There has been distrust between...
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...Sudanese Armed Forces. The Janjaweed help in the massacre, slaughtering hundreds like pigs. Bodies strewn about, lying in ditches as their family cries over them. Hundreds of men covered in soot and soil, coughing and sputtering, climbing out of oil holes and caves for little to no pay. This is Sudan (About Sudan). Over the years Sudan has steadily gone down the drain. Lead by the twice indicted president Omar al-Bashir, it has been plagued by genocide and war. Around 1955 the people of Sudan became fed up with the government and demanded...
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...oppressing the black Africans in favor of the Arabs in the region. Also the Janjaweed have been going through that part of Sudan performing the ethnic cleansing of black Africans. Refugees from Darfur say that after air raids by the Sudan government the Janjaweed would ride into the villages on horsebacks and camels. And would proceed to slaughter the men, rape the women and steal whatever they could find. Many women have complained about being kidnapped and held as sex slaves for more than a week and then were released. In light of this; millions of citizens have fled their destroyed villages to camps that are near Darfur’s main towns. But still the Janjaweed still patrol outside the town waiting for any man or woman to wander to far and then will kill the man and rape the woman. Also some of the citizens have fled to the neighboring country of Chad. In total researchers believe that nearly 200,000 people have been killed, but UN officials believe that the number is about 300,000 now. The governments reaction to these claims has been mixed. The Sudan government has admitted to mobilizing self defence militias following the attacks. The government also denies any link to the ethnic cleansing of the Janjaweed. Recently a UN investigation team sent to the region found that war crimes were being committed, but there was no sign of genocide or the attempt of genocide....
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...Chapter 3: The International Criminal Court By: Robel Tesfai History: The International Criminal Court and Darfur On July 1st 2002, the International Criminal Court was created by the implementation of a Roman Statute. As of May 2013, the ICC had 122 state parties to the Statute of the Court. This large number of states included all of South America, most of Oceania, about 50% of Africa, and almost all of Europe. A paper published by the Political Science Department of Columbia University describes the statute as having the following obligations and limitations: “The statute empowers the Court to exercise jurisdiction with respect to these crimes under three conditions: 1) where a State Party refers a situation to the Prosecutor, 2) where the Prosecutor initiates an investigation proprio motu, and 3) where the UN Security Council refers a situation to the Court. Under the first two conditions, the Court may exercise. 25 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Part 2. Jurisdiction only over nationals of a State Party or over crimes alleged to have occurred on the territory of a State Party; however, where the Security Council has referred a situation, the Court may exercise jurisdiction over any individual alleged to have perpetrated a crime within its competence, regardless of the nationality of the person or the location of the crime” (Broache, 11). On March 31, 2005, the UN Security Council passed the referral of the situation to the ICC with a unanimous...
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