The TranslatorDaoud Hari

Presented by: R. Conner and Christian Lester

What is the Darfur Genocide?The Darfur Genocide refers to the mass

slaughter and rape of the men, women, and children of the Darfur which is located in Sudan which is between Chad and Egypt.

When and Why?

The Darfur genocide began in 2003 and continues today. It is the first genocide of the 21st century.

The conflict mainly deals with the competition for scarce resources especially oil which was discovered in the 1980s.

It all began with several civil wars which ended in 2005, but the Darfur was left unprotected from the Sudanese government.

When and Why?The first civil war ended in 1972 but broke out

again in 1983. The second war was more initiated around

famine-related effects resulted in more than 4 million people being displaced and, according to rebel estimates, more than 2 million deaths over a period of two decades.

As the civil war between the North and the South reached its peak in the 1990’s, the government ignored reports of rising violence in Darfur.

When and Why?While the Comprehensive Peace Agreement

ended the North-South War in 2005, granting additional political power to South Sudan, it failed to take into account the effects of the war on Darfur. Which left Darfur underdeveloped and marginalized at the federal level.

When and Why?On March 4, 2009, the International Criminal

Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Bashir for crimes against humanity and, in July 2010, a warrant for arrest on charges of genocide.

The government of Sudan, however, has yet to turn him over, and since the issuance of the warrants, the country has seen major protests and increased violence. The government has also forcefully expelled aid agencies from the country that has further jeopardized the conditions for thousands of displaced and marginalized civilians.

How?Attacks on Darfuri villages commonly begin

with Sudanese Air Force bombings. Air campaigns are often followed by Janjaweed militia raids. All remaining village men, women, and children are either murdered or forced to flee. Looting, burning food stocks, enslaving and raping women and children, and stealing livestock are common. Dead bodies are tossed in wells to contaminate water supplies and entire villages are burned to the ground.

Response?The on-going conflict in Darfur, Sudan was declared “genocide” by

United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on September 9, 2004 in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On February 18, 2006, President George W. Bush called for the number of international troops in Darfur to be doubled.

On September 17, 2006, British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote an open letter to the members of the European Union calling for a unified response to the crisis. In supporting the United Nations Security Council Resolution in 2007 to authorize the deployment of up to 26,000 peacekeepers to try to stop the violence in Darfur, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Darfur crisis was “the greatest humanitarian disaster the world faces today.”  The British government also endorsed the International Criminal Court’s ruling regarding Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and has urged the Sudanese government to co-operate.

Janjaweed Much of the violence in Sudan, which has created over 1 million

refugees, has been attributed to militias known as the Janjaweed. The word, an Arabic colloquialism, means "a man with a gun on a horse.“

The primary source of the Janjaweed militiamen are of nomadic Arab tribes. "Janjaweed" has for years been synonymous with bandit, as these horse- or camel-borne fighters were known to swoop in on non-Arab farms to steal cattle.

The Janjaweed started to become much more aggressive in 2003, after two non-Arab groups, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, took up arms against the Sudanese government, alleging mistreatment by the Arab regime in Khartoum.

In response to the uprising, the Janjaweed militias began pillaging towns and villages inhabited by members of the African tribes from which the rebel armies draw their strength—the Zaghawa, Masalit, and Fur tribes.

Bibliography Genocide: http://worldwithoutgenocide.org/genocides-and-conflicts/darfur-genocide

Janjaweed: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2004/07/who_are_the_janjaweed.html