Essay on Conflicts in Sudan: Genocide in Darfur

‘The war in Darfur” is an armed conflict in the Sudan Darfur region that began in 2003 and is still ongoing, and in 2005 it was later declared as a civil war against Chad and Central African Republic.

The citizens of Darfur were doing nothing wrong, they were minding their own business. The government begs to differ. The government wanted to use the land for oil exploration. They didn’t ask the Darfuri people to use their land, they just took over. Men, women and children were slaughtered and raped because they didn’t give up the land. The government “undertake to prevent and punish” (Raphael Lemkin pg1) which is the people of Darfur was a where of what was going on. They didn’t move their stuff they just stayed and fought in what they believed in. I believe many people would have just grabbed their valuables and taken their family and went somewhere else, but they didn’t want to do that because their neighbors were not leaving.

The Darfur Genocide is the current mass slaughter and rape of civilians from South Sudan killing women and children in Sudan. The Genocide began in 2003 but the outbreak around the world in early 2004 and still continues today which is known as the first genocide in the 21 Century. There have been many responses toward the genocide such as United Nations and China but the conflict continues to be unresolved. This had caught attention from many countries around the world, including our country, the united Nation and China had different perspectives referring to Sudan conflict, however their initiatives had worsen the situation.

According to Amnesty International (2012), “throughout Sudan, the government routinely represses human rights defenders, political opponents, and ordinary civilians subjecting many to torture and other forms of ill-treatment.” Since the Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003, systematic human rights abuses have occurred. These abuses include killing, torture, rape, looting and destroying property. All parties have been involved, but these abuses have mostly been committed by the Sudanese government and government-backed Janjawid militia. These attacks have led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur, with an estimated two million internally displaced people and another 250,000 refugees

The Darfur crisis was a horrific event because of the savage treatment of civilians that led to an immense number of civilian casualties. As of today, over four hundred and eighty thousand people have been killed, and over two point eight million people are displaced. (World Without Genocide, Worldwithoutgenocide.org). Women and children were forced to endure a systematic program of sexual assault, torture, and murder. The central government of Sudan, working largely through nomadic Arab militias, humiliates women, and tears apart families and shreds the social fabric of communities through rape. (Smart Library on Globalization, clg.portalxm.com). It is clear from these sources that the innocent civilian deaths tore apart families. After villages are attacked parents and children have had to run away from the

The UN and the US government are accredited for deploring conflict situations as well as contributing humanitarian aid, and this is what these two organizations did in Rwanda and Darfur. However, the UN did not do anything to punish or prevent the genocides that took place in these two countries. The US government promised to support the peace talk’s agreement in Darfur and hold the perpetrators accountable for their acts. It never kept that promise since nothing has been done. So far, the UN’s Security Council has also failed in its peace keeping mission effeorts, and is instead pressuring Sudan with words only. No solid steps have been made to bring the wrong doers into justice (Shapiro).

Darfur is the western region of the African country of Sudan. Currently, the people of Darfur have been continually attacked by the Sudanese army and by proxy-militia controlled by the Sudanese government. Families are being uprooted and starved, children tormented and murdered by the thousands and women raped without punishment. Innocent civilians in Darfur continue to be victims of unthinkable brutality. Many people have become homeless and seek protection in refugee camps in Chad. Yet despite its outward appearance, Darfur has a vast ethnic diversity and a complex, ancient system of resolving conflict. Genocide has occurred in several places around the world, but in Darfur there are certain reasons why it

In recent times, the media has highlighted the genocide that has been occurring in Darfur, Sudan. Darfur, Sudan is a country roughly the size of the state of Texas (Darfur Scores, n.d.). Genocide is the systematic killing of an entire ethnic group of people from a national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do away with them all (Darfur Scores, n.d.). Beginning around 2003, according to Darfur Scores (n.d.), “the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia have used rape, displacement, organized starvation, threats against aid workers and mass murder. Violence, disease, and displacement continue to kill thousands of innocent Darfurians every month.”

The Darfur Genocide is considered one of the most gruesome and gory genocides to take place in recent years. Darfur is a western civilization roughly the size of Spain located in the country of Sudan which is situated in Africa. Sudan has had a rough history over the past fifty years. In fact violence has become more of a norm in the area.

After these two genocides, one may look at the past and ask, how could this death and destruction possibly happen again? The bad part is that it is happening again in the Darfur region of Sudan. This region is “about the size of Texas” (DarfurScores, par. 1) and “five thousand die every month”

Particularly, Darfur, a genocide beginning in 2003 and carrying on into present day. Darfur is a small region located in Western Sudan housing 6 million people and is approximately the size of Spain. This genocide is driven by the major conflict between Arab grazers and non-Arab farmers. Competition for resources is what played a hefty role in these conflicts arising. In Western Sudan, oil was discovered and the land in Darfur became increasingly known. Thousands of refugees have fled into neighboring republics. The Sudanese Air Force and Janjaweed, a government-supported Arab tribesman, raided and bombed non-Arab villages in Darfur bringing them to a burn as well as terrorizing and slaughtering the civilians with the goal of creating a Pan-Arab state. Women and children left in these villages were raped, and men were enslaved. Much like the Bosnian genocide, slaughtered bodies were thrown into wells to drain out their blood in an attempt to contaminate the drinking water. The government has forcefully expelled aid agencies jeopardizing the conditions of displaced civilians. Unlike Cambodia, the United States has not fell quiet about the Darfur genocide. In 2006, President Bush sent for a number of international troops in Darfur to be doubled. As a result, British Prime Minister called the European Union to team up with the United States as a unified response to the crisis at hand. Two years later, the United Nations issued a United Nations-African Union mission to maintain peace. Immediately following, 26,000 troops were ordered to protect civilians. According to the United Nations, 2.7 million people are internally displaced, 600,000 have been killed in 13 years, and more than 350,000 refugees have currently fled to neighboring cities. The Sudanese government trains and provides arms to Arab militias to continuously kill, terrorize, and destroy non-Arabs in Darfur

Genocide is defined as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. “The ‘Darfur Genocide’ refers to the current mass slaughter and rape of men, women, and children in Western Sudan” (Mitchell Hamline School of Law). Not only are these atrocities happening, but the Darfurians are being force from their land and into refugee camps, mainly in the country Chad, but also other countries like Ethiopia or Kenya. Darfur genocide causes can be found both culturally and politically. The cultural and political causes come from the same source of that being an underdeveloped country with no effective government protecting the rights of the Darfurians. Darfurians were violently pushed around, physically and mentally, with the western world not stepping in to assist. Although eventually, both Britain and the United Nations came to the same conclusion that the atrocities occurring in Darfur were genocide and “one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises” (Thomson Reuters). Genocide occurred in Sudan in the Darfur region starting in 2003 and continues today. The long-standing divide between Arab herding tribes and the African farming tribes and the political opportunism arising from the environmental calamity led to the genocide in Sudan.

While still struggling to achieve peace with Sudan since its independence in 2011, South Sudan is now rife with inner-conflict. Rebel forces led by the former Vice-President Riek Machar want to overthrow the South Sudanese government, led by President Salva Kiir.

The government of Sudan, a country in Northeast Africa, is committing a horrendous crime against humanity. Genocide is raging on in Western Sudan against poor, helpless, innocent people. It is actually the ten year “anniversary” since the beginning of the Darfur conflict and the genocide still continues on. There are over 1.4 million people who still do not have homes to come back to, and the numbers stack higher every day. Bombings have not stopped, as there was one as recent as February 2013. The Darfur conflict in the beginning was just a brewing disaster and it eventually led to the horrendous genocides in the early 2000s due to early settlement disputes, climate change, and radical Islamic

The origin of the war between these two regions goes back to the 1950s when the country, which was previously two separate nations, was made one after World War II by the west. Shortly after this union, Sudan was emancipated from England. 1983 marks the beginning of the violent relations between the North and South Sudan. The initiation of this conflict was brought forth by the Islamic Sudanese of the North, invading with military force the Southern Sudanese Christians . From 1983, it is estimated that at least two million people have been killed in the violent duration of this genocide, most of whom are of the Christian faith and lead non-violent civilian lives. Attention on human trafficking was brought into the international community’s scope with close proximity to the beginning of the violence as two professors from the University of Khartoum shed light on the subject. Ushari Ahmad Mahumud and Suleyman Ali Baldo learned about the genocide and enslavement being practiced on the Dinka people, a tribal group in the southern Sudan, and upon this discovery they dicided to investigate it further. What they found was that raiders from the north were killing the Southern Christian men and kidnapping the women and children to be sold into slavery. The most disturbing part of this discovery was the newfound knowledge that this had been going on for over two years. Professors Mahumud and Baldo