More than 1 million Sudanese are facing starvation and death by Robert Glasser The Age 9:16am 24th May, 2004   May 24, 2004    Philosophers pose the question: if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear, does it make a sound? The question might be asked about the humanitarian disaster currently unfolding in Darfur, Sudan.    More than 1 million Sudanese are facing starvation and death after having been forced from their homes by ethnic fighting. With few Western journalists or international aid workers there to witness and report on this immense human tragedy, it has barely registered internationally.    Why hasn't there been greater press coverage of this crisis? A recent study sponsored by the Fritz Institute and the Reuters Foundation provides some answers.    Journalists interviewed for the study observed that disasters are more likely to receive press coverage if they involve a high death toll, affect large numbers of children, provide compelling visuals or eyewitness accounts, and have broad foreign policy implications.    The Darfur crisis meets some, but not all, of these criteria. Thousands have already died and without rapid humanitarian relief many tens of thousands more will die with the onset of the wet season in a few weeks. Women and children comprise 80 per cent of the displaced population in many locations in Darfur.    However, the crisis in Sudan does not have significant foreign policy implications for Australia or other Western countries.    Furthermore, it is unfolding along Sudan's long, remote and inaccessible border with Chad and is simply beyond the reach of most media. With the refugees distributed over such a vast area, the crisis has thus far not produced the compelling photo opportunities that have existed in some other crises.    In addition, it is possible that the media's lack of interest reflects a growing fatigue among the public about bad news from Africa. People may simply have become inured to depressing images from African countries, which seem forever trapped in a cycle of war and poverty.    Three things need to happen to make it more likely that humanitarian disasters like the one in Darfur receive the international attention they so urgently require.    First, if the findings of the Fritz Report are correct, a quantum shift is required. Media coverage provides the capacity to mobilise public opinion and influence donor funding, thereby enabling the aid community to respond to emerging crises. The media must not wait until there is a massive death toll and vivid pictures before a story is told, or the hidden deaths and disasters of the like of Darfur will persist and we will all be diminished by it.    Second, humanitarian relief organisations must improve their capacity to engage with the media and to communicate to the general public the extent of the emergencies they are witnessing. The Fitz Report highlighted that non-government organisations are not strong in this area and may be, in fact, the cause of lack of interest and confusion in some instances.    Third, the public must realise that not all African states are basket cases. The country with the fastest growth in the world in income per person over the past 35 years was not one of the Asian "Tigers" or the United States. It was Botswana.    Botswana was desperately poor at independence in 1966, but through good management it has prospered. Success is possible in Africa.    For other African states, breaking the vicious cycle of poverty and war will require leadership from within, including a commitment to good governance, and also support from wealthy nations such as Australia.    But one thing is certain: the development prospects of these countries will be set back decades without an energetic international humanitarian response to emergencies on the scale of Rwanda and Darfur.    We have the ability and a moral obligation to alleviate tremendous human suffering. The challenge is to actually do so.    (Dr Robert Glasser is chief executive of CARE Australia).    May 18, 2004 (Published by UN Wire)    Sudan's Darfur Crisis has hurt more than 2 Million People.    Over 2 million people have been caught up in the humanitarian crisis plaguing Sudan's western Darfur region, where government-backed Arab militia have carried out a campaign of violence against black Africans, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said yesterday.    That number is nearly double the estimate of 1.1 million in OCHA's April profile.  More than 430,000 people are thought to be displaced in West Darfur, 320,000 in North Darfur and 230,000 in South Darfur, while the others are refugees in neighboring Chad. OCHA also warned that its ability to respond to the humanitarian crisis has been hampered by the Janjawid militia and perhaps by other groups.    A senior OCHA humanitarian worker was recently deported from South Darfur by an unidentified group, the U.N. agency said, while Janjawid attacked a World Food Program vehicle along with the government trucks in its convoy.  The WFP truck was looted and its driver was robbed and beaten, OCHA said.    Despite the continued instability in the region, the Sudanese government was insisting that the displaced return to their homes and was coercing local leaders into cooperating, according to the agency (U.N. release, May 17).    The United States accused the government yesterday of interfering with humanitarian efforts, saying that Khartoum had deliberately prevented U.S. aid workers from traveling to Darfur. The government approved visas for 11 aid workers only under significant pressure, said deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli, and the permits were inadequate because they required holders to give three days' notice before traveling.    "There are people suffering in Darfur," Ereli said.  "It's urgent that humanitarian workers be allowed to go there." "It's Orwellian," a senior State Department official said (BBC Online, May 18).    The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees warned that time and money are running out for Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad as the agency struggles to place 120,000 refugees further inland ahead of seasonal rains expected in coming weeks — after having received only $13 million of the $21 million required to do the job. "An urgent injection of new funds is crucial to keep our programs running and meet the looming deadline of the onset of heavy rains that will block roads and cut access to the refugees," UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said Friday. "We are also revising our budgets upwards in the face of continued refugee arrivals and the need to prepare additional camps," he added.    To date, more than 68,000 refugees have moved from the insecure Chad-Sudan border to camps closer to the country's center, but hundreds of people continue to arrive each week and more camps are needed, UNHCR said.     The agency continues to airlift relief supplies to eastern Chad and has flown in 3,500 family tents in the last two weeks.  UNHCR is planning another airlift of items including blankets, plastic sheeting, prefabricated warehouses and other items (UNHCR release, May 14).    Sudan's government, meanwhile, announced Sunday that it would monitor nongovernmental organizations which it accused of aiding rebels in Darfur, Agence France-Presse reports. Some of the hundreds of NGOs in Darfur "used humanitarian operations as a cover for carrying out a hidden agenda and proved to have supported the rebellion in the past period," Humanitarian Affairs Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid told reporters.  For this reason, he said, "the authorities will be careful in permitting such NGOs to operate in Darfur."    The press conference was called to announce deployment of a new police unit to Darfur, according to AFP. Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Hussein, who appeared alongside Hamid, said the force was equipped with modern weapons and 130 vehicles. "The police force is going there to enforce law and order and to protect the people of Darfur and their property," he said.    Khartoum has been accused of assisting the Janjawid in its atrocities against the local population, including bombing and burning villages, conducting mass rapes and killing civilians.  The government has in turn charged that the rebel groups have continued fighting despite a cease-fire signed in April (AFP, May 17).    Darfur Rebels Demand Inclusion In Nairobi Peace Process    The leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement, the main rebel group in Darfur, threatened to expand resistance to more parts of the country unless the government includes it in peace talks this week in Kenya with southern rebels. "Any agreement leaving out the SLM will not lead to real peace," said Abdel Wahed Mohammad Ahmad Nour, warning he would open up military operations in Kordofan, Khartoum and the east if excluded from talks. Nour also repeated allegations that Khartoum was bombing civilians in Darfur and conducting a campaign of "ethnic cleansing."    The Darfur rebel movements do not want to be cut out of a power-sharing deal that could be reached between southern rebel groups and Khartoum (AFP/News24.com, May 17).    The International Crisis Group is urging the U.N. to consider Military Force in Darfur    The International Crisis Group, an influential think tank, urged the United Nations yesterday to deal more firmly with Khartoum, saying the international organization should threaten military force if the government continues targeting civilians. The ICG called on the Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Khartoum for violating international law and urged Secretary General Kofi Annan to present the council with a further report on Darfur. "And it should be made clear beyond doubt that in the event this report indicates a continuing humanitarian crisis in Darfur, ongoing indiscriminate targeting of civilians and obstruction of humanitarian assistance by the government, the Security Council will authorize the application of military force on 'responsibility to protect' principles," the group added. It also recommended that the council impose an arms embargo on the government should it breach the cease-fire.
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