Darfur
I havn't blogged about the ongoing genocide in Darfur for a while. Even with horrific world events such as the tsumani however their is no excuse for forgeting man-made catastrophes. This Christian Science Monitor op-ed is a good reinder of what is happening there:
Forced evacuations and mass rapes; brutal ethnic killings and rampaging militias; oil profits and arms sales. The deadly mix of politics, economics, and insecurity has displaced 1.6 million people and killed tens of thousands in the Darfur region of western Sudan since early 2003. The United Nations recently described Darfur as the 'world's worst humanitarian crisis.' This is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a war. Humanitarian assistance, in the absence of political and military engagement, can actually exacerbate the conflict. The label "humanitarian crisis" conveniently absolves the rest of the world from taking political and military action in Darfur. By providing generous humanitarian assistance, governments and the UN claim to take meaningful action. But genocide cannot be resolved by donating blankets and food to the potential victims.Read the whole thing.
posted by Dave Justus | 1/03/2005 12:17:00 PM
2 Comments:
Dave, I agree with the sentiment of both the link and your comment.
One point that MUST be made -
The sad fact is that there some very important people in this world who take far more interest from using this genocide as just another reason to castigate the UN.
That in my mind is a travesty on both matters.
First and most important is because STILL NOTHING GETS DONE BY ANYONE about the genocide.
Second because the UN is not the cause or the fault. One of the basic precepts in the UN CHarter is the proscrition against interfering in the internal affairs of a nation. The UN at present can ONLY TAKE ACTION when the actions of one nation impact upon another. It is an unfortunate fact that Kofi Annan has always been one of the strongest supporters of this view, a failing that was most apparent in the Rwanda genocide.
I agree with you completely.
I hold the U.N. guilty and I hold my own government guilty as well.
The only place in which criticism of the U.N. in particular warrented in regards to genocide as is a counter to the claim that the U.N. has a special moral legitimacy.
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