The Darfur Problem Lecture: My Response as an American & a Global Citizen

Just as a beginning note, this has the potential to be controversial....

Sitting in this lecture, I had an interesting perspective. I think a long time ago I overcame the view that American does no wrong. Listening to how the American government’s unfounded reports were the cause of so much of the Darfur hysteria in the US wasn’t shocking as a fact that it happened. It did frustrate me that supposedly educated people, the Senate, would vote on an issue and label a conflict with a word as serious as genocide before they had many, if any, facts. Only after the senate voted on this issue, was a study commissioned. Then that study was basically called hogwash by the audit office. How much different could the international response had been if the information in the WHO report was more publicized than the term genocide.(The WHO listed the causes of the majority of the casualties as lack of public health facilities and systems – sanitation and clean water namely.) There could have been a more humanitarian response that addressed the issued of the mass of people. Those issues are still a problem today and are still taking lives. Yes there was a civil conflict and probably some indirect death due to the conflict, though I still see evidence that there was a better way to handle it.

I left not offended or frustrated as others did. I wish some of that information could be repeated to my peers at home in a way that would click for them. I want to see not a continued fundraising response for advocacy groups or a call for government and military involvement. I want to see these areas and nations who are closer to the conflict empowered to do something practical about it. Practicality is not only a shipment of weapons and barbed wire, but also shovels and pipes to put in latrines and a well.

I felt a little foolish after this lecture because I have given financial support to the Save Darfur Coalition. If I had known then what I know now, they wouldn’t have gotten my money. I’ve checked out some of the sources the speaker cited and I see that he interpreted them accurately. The entire Darfur issue gives people a chance to do something that makes them feel good because they don’t see themselves as having a direct responsibility to those people for causing their situation unlike the conflict in Iraq. I probably take a different stance on the Iraq War than the presenter did. People are more hesitant to give to causes that directly benefit the Iraqi citizens because in a round about way, I think they are seen as a threat and by giving to them, we have to acknowledge our role in their current situation. This is something that is far too complicated to continue writing about as I have strong opinions all of the way around for numerous reasons.