Lecture 4

War in Darfur

Standard

• 10.10.2– Describe the recent

history of the regions, including political divisions and systems, key leaders, religious issues, natural features, resources, and population patterns.

– Essential Question: Where is Genocide happening? What is the cause?

• Organized, intentional destruction of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group

EQ: Where is genocide happening, and what is the cause?EQ: Where is genocide happening, and what is the cause?

• After WWII, the Genocide Convention decided that genocide can be any of these things:

• Killing members of a group;

• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

• Deliberately inflicting living conditions on the group in order to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

EQ: Where is genocide happening, and what is the cause?EQ: Where is genocide happening, and what is the cause?

Brief History of the Region

• Darfur region of Sudan• Ethnic rather than

religious• Sudanese Government

– Accused of supporting the Janjaweed

• Conflict began in 2003• 450,000 dead and 2.7

million displaced• U.S. listed Sudan as a

supporter of terrorism

Those Involved

Sudanese Military

Janjaweed (Native Guerillas)

Natives (Non-Arab)Sudan Liberation Army

Justice and Equality Movement

Causes

• Drought, Desertification, Overpopulation

• Nomads who need grazing land for animals causes land conflicts– North VS. South

• Sudanese government has been accused of tampering with evidence and killing witnesses

• Censorship used

Omar al-Bashir• Current president of Sudan• Came to power in 1989• Ended the Second Sudanese

Civil War by giving southern Sudan limited Autonomy

• Since then conflict in the Darfur region has escalated

• International Criminal Court Charged al-Bashir with 10 counts of war crimes

• The ICC's prosecutors have claimed that al-Bashir masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity.

Timeline• 2003

– Rebellion against Arab dominated Sudanese government– Accused government of favoring Arabs over non-Arabs

• 2004– Southern Rebels signed peace agreement with Sudan’s government– Southern rebels agreed to stop fighting– Ethnic conflict moved to the West (Ethnic Cleansing)

• Sudan• 2005

– United Nations withdraws staff• 2006

– World Food Program cuts Darfur rations in half• 2007

– Bush announces U.S. will not be able to supply weapons to Sudan• 2008

– Al-Bashir charged with Genocide crimes

• Armed militias in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region are continuing to rape women and girls with impunity, an expert from the United Nations children’s agency said today on her return from a mission to the region. Pamela Shifman, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) adviser on violence and sexual exploitation, said she heard dozens of harrowing accounts of sexual assaults – including numerous reports of gang rapes – when she visited internally displaced persons (IDPs) at one camp and another settlement in North Darfur last week. “Rape is used as a weapon to terrorize individual women and girls, and also to terrorize their families and to terrorize entire communities,” she said in an interview with the UN News Service. "No woman or girl is safe."

Not so Fun Facts• Over the past five years, over 400,000 Darfurian civilians have been killed. • 150,000 people have died directly from acts of violence in Darfur. • 90% of the villages of Darfur’s targeted ethnic groups have been destroyed. • 97% of these killings have been against innocent civilians and executed by

militia groups instructed by the government. • 80 infants die each day in Darfur due to a lack of proper nutrition • 80% of those displaced are women and young girls who are consistently the

victims of sexual violence and abducted into sexual slavery • Humanitarian refugee camps in Chad and Sudan are overcrowded, disease

infested, and prone to attacks. • 2.8 million people have been displaced within Sudan. • 250,000 people have fled Darfur, mainly to Chad where they are facing further

violence. • Despite an abundance of oil and other natural resources, the vast majority of

Sudan’s people live in poverty, and its Government has been described as ‘the most repressive regime in the world’.

• On September 9th 2004, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell said the Darfur conflict was genocide, and called it the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. This is the first time the Untied States has ever declared genocide while the genocide was still happening.