Panel Debates Sudan Genocide

A panel of human rights and foreign policy experts debated the causes of and possible solutions to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur at a packed event at the Institute of Politics’ John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum last night, urging students to speak out against the international community’s inaction.

The struggle between black farmers and the government-sponsored Arab militiamen has displaced 1.4 million people from the Darfur region of western Sudan.

The United Nations estimates that 70,000 have been killed in the conflict, which President George W. Bush has called a genocide.

“This is not happening on Mars—this is happening in your world,” said Carr Professor of the Practice of Human Rights Michael Ignatieff, who moderated the panel.

All four panelists spread blame for the crisis across nations but disagreed both on who should take the lead in restoring peace and on what form that effort should take. “We need the Secretary-General to take the lead on this and be very clear on what our objectives are in Sudan,” said John Prendergast, special adviser to the president of the International Crisis Group.

“I don’t know if anyone can recount to you what our objectives are in Sudan.”

Retired Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian who commanded the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda in 1994, said that smaller countries have the responsibility to act as well.

“The weak link in the whole U.N. option is not the U.S. but in fact the middle powers who are standing on the sidelines and doing nothing,” Dallaire said.

According to Dallaire, ountries such as Germany, Japan, Canada, and the Netherlands “have got to step up and start providing assistance to [U.N. Secretary-General] Kofi Annan.”

One of the few points of agreement among the panelists was that the international community had to live up to its condemnation of the genocide.

“We need to put our guns where are our mouth is,” said Omar Ismail, director of Darfur Peace and Development, a multi-national non-profit organization that advocates for peace in Darfur. “Our government needs to do far more than it’s doing; all it’s done for all this yammering and ‘g-word’-using is sanction the rebels,” said Lecturer in Public Policy Samantha Power. Dallaire said the American media is partly to blame.

“Generally speaking the media are not putting the heat on the government to do something about it,” he said. “They’ve said it’s a genocide without forcing the government to take action in line with the genocide.”

After the formal presentation, a broad range of audience members addressed the panelists. Questioners included Harvard students, a representative of the International Rescue Committee in Boston, a member of the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts and a visitor from the United Kingdom.

Also attending was Brother Malisaba Straton, a visiting headmaster from a Rwandan high school.

He said the panel failed to address the political situation within Africa. “The failure is not only international and can’t be put on the shoulders of America,” he said in an interview afterwards.

“[The Darfur crisis is also the fault of] African leaders who don’t know how to lead and don’t understand what politics is.”