STATEMENT ON DARFUR

Posted 12/3/04

The Save Darfur Coalition has identified December 10-12, 2004 as Weekend of Conscience on Darfur.  For the Conservative Movement, we are marking Shabbat Hanukkah as our opportunity to raise public awareness about the horrific situation in Darfur and to demand that the international community take immediate and decision action to stop the killing, rape and destruction of villages. We want to ensure that humanitarian relief reaches all those in need.

Background on the Crisis in Darfur

As you know, the emergency in Sudan’s northwestern region of Darfur presents the starkest challenge to the world since the Rwanda genocide in 1994. Government-backed militias, known as the Janjaweed, have been engaging in campaigns to displace and wipe out entire communities of African tribal farmers. Villages have been razed, women and girls are systematically raped and branded, men and boys murdered, and food and water supplies specifically targeted and destroyed. Government aerial bombardments support the Janjaweed by hurling explosives as well as other destructive items from planes to crush people and property. Tens of thousands have died. Well over a million have been driven from their homes.

The situation has become especially volatile in the past month with Government forces encircling camps set up for those internally displaced by the conflict and denying access to UN aid agencies and other humanitarian groups. The Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, recently predicted that Darfur could "enter a state of anarchy; a total collapse of law and order" as a result of the deteriorating security situation in the region.

On November 10, the Government of Sudan and rebel forces signed two accords. These accords, to ease the delivery of humanitarian aid and to accept a no-fly zone over the Darfur region, represent important preliminary steps in the right direction. However, both sides have violated previous agreements. The international community must ensure that both the Government and the rebels honor these new accords.

For the first time in its history, the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has declared a "genocide emergency" in the Sudan, indicating that genocide is imminent or is actually happening in the Darfur region. If aid is denied or unavailable, as many as a million people could perish. Lives are hanging in the balance on a massive scale. Ten years ago, the international community failed to respond to what was happening in Rwanda. It is our duty to make every effort to see history does not repeat itself.

Resources

1. You may wish to connect some aspect of Hanukkah to this Shabbat of Conscience.  For example, our commitment to freedom, our willingness to stand up and be counted in a time of crisis, our dedication to the values that we hold to be eternal.

2. Ask students to write members of Congress and urge them to be more vigilant on this issue (both the House and Senate voted unanimously to condemn the "genocide" in Darfur); Send letters to the ambassadors to the UN or Security Council member states urging them to insist on prompt action that will ensure effective implementation of demands set out in earlier Security Council resolutions.  These threaten Sudan's leaders with penalties if conditions in Darfur do not improve (all member states of the Security Council can be found at http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/unsc_members.html);

3. Create a Hanukkah tzedakah project to help in the relief efforts by supporting organizations giving aid, such as JDC: Jewish Coalition for Sudan Relief, Box 321, 847A Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017; AJWS, American Jewish World Service or on-line at: http://www.jdc.org/jcdr_donate_form.html; or ajws@ajws.org.

4. Visit the ‘Crisis in Sudan’ section on the JCPA website at www.jewishpublicaffairs.org. This site contains editorials and op-ed pieces that were published in the general and Jewish newspapers; analysis items; statements and programs undertaken by various agencies; photographs; sample texts; and past communications from the JCPA office.

5. You are also encouraged to visit the Save Darfur Coalition website at www.savedarfur.org for additional information and materials.