Children of Dafur – Take Action
From Africa Action:
Recent reports coming out of Darfur indicate that the security situation is deteriorating rapidly. There have been fresh assaults on villages and the Janjaweed, with Sudanese government air support, have attacked a camp for internally displaced people, who had already lost their homes in previous attacks. In the past month, the United Nations evacuated all but essential personnel. Some aid agencies are no longer able to reach the camps in some areas of Darfur because insecurity has made the roads impassable, cutting off access to tens of thousands of people.
It is now estimated that 80-90% of all African villages in Darfur have been destroyed and 6000 people are dying every month in camps where there are overcrowded conditions and shortages of food, clean water, sanitation, shelter and medical supplies.
Despite the desperate situation on the ground, recent remarks by Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Zoellick indicate that the U.S. continues to shy away from referring to the crisis in Darfur as genocide and to avoid the moral responsibility to respond to this unique crime against humanity.
Children are the youngest survivors of this genocide, and their drawings depict the atrocities that they face.
Dr. Jerry Erlich, a pediatrician from New Jersey, collected drawings from children in Darfur and smuggled them to the U.S. in pages of a Sunday edition of the New York Times. Africa Action has converted these drawings into an exhibit to help remind people of the on-going genocide in Darfur. With that exhibit we have produced postcards with a child’s artwork and a message to George Bush.
“I have just seen drawings by children in a camp for displaced people in Darfur, Sudan, some of the youngest witnesses to a crisis that you acknowledge is genocide. Will you still refuse to take action to protect the most vulnerable victims of the worst crimes against humanity? I urge you to introduce a resolution at the United Nations Security Council for a multinational humanitarian intervention in Darfur to protect civilians. Don’t abandon the children of Darfur.”
Sign the postcard and add your own message. Help give a voice to the silent testimony of the children to the genocide in Darfur.
No one pays more for war than the children.