There are a lot of horrible things going on in the world, but the one we're focusing on this week is the crisis in Darfur-Sudan. In 2003 two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), joined forces and attacked. They claimed that the Sudanese government farvors Arabs over black Africans. This isn't just a recent issue as this conflict began as early as the 1930's and resurfaced in the 1980's. A major group fighting back against the rebel groups is a militia called the Janjaweed.
In 1989 when the NIF, National Islamic Front, took over, they began taking away weapons from the non-Arabs that they had been using for their attacks and armed the Arabs with more. I think that was a very poor decision, but some people think that this may be an attempt at a major ethnic cleansing, which should be considered genocide, so the UN should be doing something about it. This all has led up to the current crisis.Right now in Darfur-Sudan, there is a major lack of resources. This has led to even further disputes. Some of the results of the fighting and everything is thousands upon thousands of deaths and millions of people being displaced. The death toll is a subjective thing at this point. The Sudanese government is saying there are roughly 20,000 deaths. Others claim there are as many as 400,000. Another enormous problem is rape of women and girls. They think that it happens when they are out to retrieve firewood. The women asked in this area have either been raped or know of someone close to them that has been. The treatment of people here is just ridiculous, and I don't think that just because they're not Arab they should be discriminated against.
There was a peace treaty signed in 2006, but it was only between the government and just one of the armed groups. So I guess it's not real effective yet, but I'm hoping for everyone's sake that maybe it will eventually be signed by everyone so they can have peace again.The US is considering this a genocide with almost 400,000 people dead, unofficially. The UN is not, so there is no action taking place. They're helping out with the refugee camps, but still I think there's a lot more that they should be doing.
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