Professor Saint-Yves
English 22369
March 22, 2007
The Crisis Occurring in Darfur Described as a Genocide
The worldwide known slogan “Never Again”, from the Rwanda Genocide, does not prevent human being from armed conflicts, or make international community help rapidly. Nothing seems to have been learned from past genocides (Holocaust, Yugoslavia and Rwanda) and, nowadays, hours are spent deciding what name should the crisis be given. According to this, I will examine and analyse the characteristics of a genocide based on scholarly articles, the UN Genocide Convention and the Public International Law in order to demonstrate that the Darfur crisis is indeed a genocide and I will also make suggestions as what can be done to help.
Gabriel Meyer, journalist and author of “War and Faith in Sudan”, approached, in his article entitled “Stories from Sudan: Understanding the Region”, the conflict differently by linking it with the Nuba Mountains, an indigenous tribe of northern Sudan living in central mountains, who had been the target of a genocide a few years earlier (638-42). Like Scott Strauss, “Darfur and the Genocide Debate,” and Henri Boulad “Triple Genocide in Sudan”, Gabriel Meyer (640) described the reasons of the crisis in Darfur according to the Sudaneses ethnicity, that is Arab versus African. However, Strauss (125-6) and Boulad (21-2) explained the reasons of the crisis in Darfur through three genocides that already took place in Sudan. The first one is the forced deportation of southern populations settled in Khartoum, the second one concerns a religious and ethnic cleansing by Muslims and the third one is about the famine in Juba. With the explanation of these three genocides, the present situation in Sudan is more understandable because we can clearly understand why people are still fighting nowadays, which is related to past events. Briefly, Strauss and Boulad’s articles give a great context and explanations of the crisis occurring in Darfur, Sudan.
Concerning the life conditions in Sudan, there are several articles about the subject. Most of them are describing the situation in general, like the articles “Africa’s Inferno” written by Brian Brivati and “Chad/Sudan: End Government Support to Militias” written by Human Rights Watch. This last article is giving a certain number of statistics of dead, wounded, sick, and displaced people. In his article entitled “Beyond Humanitarian Bandages – Confronting Genocide in Sudan”, Jerry Fowler discussed the main reasons why people are dying in refugees’ camps (2574-5) but it is in the report produced by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs with UN agencies and partner NGOs that every disease and problem in refugees’ camps are deeply explained. Indeed, the article talked about, more specifically, cholera, avian flu and meningitis and about food and water distribution problems (4-5). The article is also describing the problems NGOs and humanitarian organizations have in Sudan because SLA (a group of militias in Sudan) is terrifying the organizations, refusing them the access to many camps and forcing them to suspend their operations. In a similar article written by Tony Carnes (50-3), the life conditions in Darfur are also explained and analysed but the author puts his interest on the international aid, mostly given by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), on medical assistance. The writer stated that the international aid is not shared honestly and that is why people are dying in refugees camps. By contrasting this article with the one by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UNOCHA article gives a lot more relevant information because it specifies the diseases and gives concrete examples. Nonetheless, at the end of his article, Tony Carnes gave an example of a child living in a refugees’ camp who does not speak anymore because of the trauma she had (50-1). Unfortunately, this subject is not enough elaborated but it gives, nevertheless, a great idea of life conditions in Darfur.
In the same way, a number of scholars such as Scott Strauss, Jerry Fowler, Zachary Elsea and Jerome A. Singh wrote about the crisis in Sudan and most of them are wondering if the crisis can be called a genocide or not, if it answers to the criteria of the Genocide Convention or not. In their pieces of writing, these writers demonstrated that according to some circumstances, such as the proof of willingness to kill and the exact number of death, the crisis in Sudan can only be seen as an “ethnic cleansing” or a “humanitarian crisis” instead of a genocide. Precisely, Scott Straus (123) demonstrated that there are two approaches of the genocide definition. He gave, as an example, the position of Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist who thinks that a genocide is occurring in Darfur. In the same way, Colin Powell, MoveOn.org, the Congressional Black Caucus, African-American civil rights groups and some international human rights organizations are trying to tell the world that what is happening in Darfur is a genocide and that international aid is needed. On the contrary, organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and even the United Nations are not recognising the crisis as a genocide but more as an “ethnic cleansing” (125). They said that, according to Scott Straus, “Darfur involved the forced removal of an ethnic group, not its deliberate extermination, and that genocide is hard to prove in the midst of a crisis” (125).
Similarly, Zachary Elsea wrote in his article “Facing Genocide,” the definition of a genocide accepted by the United Nations, as did Fowler (218), and it is, “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” He then concluded that the situation in Darfur encounters this definition. Elsea’s colleague, Jerome A. Singh, related, in his article a very similar definition of the situation in Darfur according to the Genocide Convention (231). Singh thinks that the international community has spent enough time trying to find the good designation of the situation in Darfur and that measures should be taken now. Regarding the labelling of Darfur crisis whether it is a genocide or not, David Luban declared in his article that maybe the word genocide is a false friend and that it should be analysed under legal, political and journalistic terms (304). Then, Luban discussed about the points of view of the Genocide Convention, the Nuremberg Charter, the Criminal Tribunal, the UN Commission and the UN Darfur Report concerning the crisis in Darfur. The writer explained his point of view in a clear way and he wrote a lot of significant information about how the term genocide can be used and the consequences of using that word, such as the imposed international response.
Another way of examining the term and the usage of the word genocide is according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In fact, the ICRC does not have the same definition as the Genocide Convention because its international humanitarian law is divided into two categories: international armed conflicts and non-international armed conflicts. There is a distinction between international humanitarian law and human rights law too (2). The crisis occurring in Darfur is a non-international armed conflict and needs to be judged with the international humanitarian law because it involves a single state, armed groups fighting each other and it is not occurring in time of peace. In the ICRC’s article the laws are well explained and it is easy to use them with the crisis in Darfur. Moreover, the international humanitarian law is really useful in order to understand different points of view concerning how to condemned a crisis or a genocide. In addition to the international laws condemning genocide, there are laws concerning children under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (1-6). These laws are not closely related with those of a genocide but they are also condemning crimes committed under armed conflicts, especially by or against children. In fact, those laws are accusing the presence of children under the age of 18 in states armies during armed conflict. Even if this source contains well-explained articles and because article 8 seems realistic and easily achievable, there are not enough examples on how to apply the law.
Finally, Thomas K. Grose (83) illustrated in his article that the best way to help people in Darfur is by sending letters to Sudan government asking to stop the violence, organizing local groups or sending money to main international organizations such as CARE, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Doctors Without Borders. Even if Thomas K. Grose states measures that can be taken in a clear way, his article is a little bit too short and could have been more developed by explaining how each organizations help in Darfur.
The researchers have different points of view and do not seem to agree concerning if the crisis in Darfur is a genocide or if it is an ethnic cleansing or a humanitarian crisis. However, even with all the readings and different positions, the crisis in Darfur still looks like a genocide and international communities must react soon.
Works Cited
A. Singh, Jerome. “Genocide: Burden of Proof and Inaction is Costing Lives in Sudan.” The Lancet. 364(9430) (2004): 230-1.
Boulad, Henri. “Triple Genocide in Sudan.” Migration World Magazine. 23(4) (1995): 20.
Brivati, Brian. “Africa's Inferno. (Cover story).” New Statesman. 136.4825 (2007): 30-2.
Carnes, Tony. “Does Darfur Have a Prayer?” Christianity Today. 50.12 (2006): 50-3.
Elsea, Zachary. “Facing Genocide.” Harvard International Review. 26(3) (2004): 11-2.
Fowler, Jerry. “Beyond Humanitarian Bandages - Confronting Genocide in Sudan.” The New England Journal of Medicine. 351(25) (2004): 2574-6.
Fowler, Jerry. “Diplomacy and the G-Word’”. Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law. 35.2 (2003): 213-8.
Grose, Thomas K. “Do Something About Darfur.” U.S. News & World Report 141 (2006): 83.
Human Rights Watch. “Chad/Sudan: End Government Support to Militias”. Human Rights Watch. New York. 2007. 4 Feb. 2007.
International Committee of the Red Cross. “What is International Humanitarian Law?” Advisory Service on International Humanitarian Law. International Committee of the Red Cross. Feb. 2007. ICRC.
Luban, David. “Calling Genocide by its Rightful Name: Lemkin's Word, Darfur, and the UN Report.” Chicago Journal of International Law. 7.1 (2006): 303-320.
Meyer, Gabriel. “War and Faith in Sudan” in “Stories from Sudan: Understanding the Region.” Vital Speeches of the Day. 72 (2006): 638-44.
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. “Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict.” UNHCHR. United Nations. Feb. 2007. UN. 14 Feb. 2007.
Quayle, Peter. “Unimaginable Evil: The Legislative Limitations of the Genocide Convention.” International Criminal Law Review. 5.3 (2005): 363-71.
Strauss, Scott. “Darfur and the Genocide Debate.” Foreign Affairs. 84(1) (2005): 123-7.
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “Darfur.” Sudan Humanitarian Overview. UN OCHA. May 2006. UN. 4 Feb. 2007.
