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A bi-weekly audio series and podcast service, hosted by Committee on Conscience Project Director Bridget Conley-Zilkic, that brings you the voices of human rights defenders, experts, advocates, and government officials. Vital voices addressing one of humanity's most vital issues. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not necessarily represent those of the Museum.
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4/03/08
8/16/07
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Interview:
In May 2007 filmmaker Jen Marlowe and journalist David Morse accompanied several southern Sudanese 'lost boys' back to their homes. The 'lost boys' were children who were forced to flee attacks on their villages in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Jen Marlowe, the award winning director of Darfur Diaries, speaks with Jerry Fowler about the current political landscape of southern Sudan and the connections to the crisis in Darfur. Samuel Mayoul Garang, one of the 'lost boys,' highlights his experience as a refugee living in the United States, his reunion with his family after 20 years of separation, and his future plans to start a school in southern Sudan.
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8/09/07
7/12/07
12/28/06
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Interview:
Human rights advocate for Sudan Social Development Organization (SUDO), Adeeb Yousif, speaks with Bridget-Conley-Zilkic about his work in Darfur, the changes that have taken place since he began working with SUDO, and what he believes are the next steps toward peace. He specifically focuses on uniting the rebel groups to find a lasting political solution to the conflict.
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12/21/06
12/07/06
11/30/06
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 Fighting between Sudanese military and former rebels in the southern town of Malakal remind us that the problem in Sudan is not just in Darfur. It's the broader problem of a ruling elite at the center (Khartoum) against a periphery that has long been marginalized and discriminated against. A so-called Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in January 2005 by Khartoum and the southern Sudanese People's Liberation Movement ostensibly ended the conflict in the southern periphery by providing for power and wealth sharing and guaranteeing southern security. But as Jason Matus told us a few weeks ago, implementation of the CPA has been very slow and way behind schedule. Unraveling of the CPA and renewed war in the south are not unimaginable.
(Photo of Sudan People's Liberation Army fighters © IRIN.)
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11/22/06
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We have held three student conferences on Darfur at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Save Darfur Coalition has also held numerous meetings and conferences. STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Constituency is holding regional conferences this year. With each successful gathering, we pat ourselves on the back and thank the attendees for traveling long distances and dedicating their time to such an important and difficult issue.
Two weeks ago, a similar such event was held in Khartoum. A United States-based Initiative for Inclusive Security, a program to involve women in peace processes around the world, convened a Conference in Khartoum to facilitate women taking the lead on bringing peace to Darfur and Southern Sudan. The attendees in Sudan traveled long distances and gave of their time, but they also risked their lives. Samia Ahmed Nihar, a lecturer at Khartoum University said:We were frightened all the time. We were scared that we could be arrested or even our families would have problems, because of what we were doing… People were giving their lives in the struggle, so it seems a small sacrifice [for me to risk being] arrested.” The Christian Science Monitor reported that the conference resulted in a published agenda for the women’s groups of Sudan “urging them to advocate that 30 percent of positions in all levels of government are filled by women, with an eventual target of 50 percent. The agenda also includes scrutinizing legislation of its impact on women and pushing for a fair share of donor and government money.”
The courage and strength of these women to stand up for peace in such a dangerous place should inspire us all to do our part.
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11/02/06
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Interview:
Andrew Natsios, President Bush's newly appointed Special Envoy to Sudan, presents a hopeful outlook on the situation in Darfur, and throughout Sudan. Special Envoy Natsios claims that in his talks with the government in Khartoum, officials stated that Sudan may be willing to accept troops from North Africa and other Muslim countries, to allow logistic and planning supplementation from the United Nations, and to make amendmendments to the Darfur Peace Agreement to broaden its appeal to all parties. He shared his opinions and findings from his most recent trip to Darfur with President Bush this past week.
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8/31/06
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 The Christian Science Monitor's Clara Germani has a nice profile of Eric Reeves: Like a wired Prospero making tempestuous "magic" in world affairs, he has conjured some convincing virtual realities. It's one thing, he says, when "Angelina [Jolie] and George [Clooney] say 'it's awful.' " But it's another to "know what to ask for ... what policy will halt it." "Prospero?," you say. A character from Shakespeare's The Tempest, who famously pleads But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
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7/25/06
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 A recent story from IRIN underscores the need to view Darfur in the context of Sudan as a whole. Southern Sudanese displaced to Darfur during the war in the south are now fleeing back to the south to escape the violence and insecurity in Darfur. But they're finding the devastation of more than two decades of the type of violence that now afflicts Darfur: The rural economy was destroyed during the fighting, and agricultural practices are still so rudimentary that malnutrition is chronic between May and August, the months before the next harvest, when the previous year's food has already run out.
To make things worse, lack of access to clean water and the nearly total absence of primary healthcare makes children very vulnerable. Year after year, disease-induced malnutrition rates in Northern Bahr el Ghazal are among the worst in South Sudan. Aid agencies fear that the thousands of deprived Dinkas who have recently started to arrive in the area from Darfur and Khartoum will increase the pressure on the region's limited resources. James Manuen Deng (pictured), a southerner who fled to Darfur in the late 1980s, returned to South Sudan in March with his three sons, including two-year-old Garang: "I decided to come because the situation was very bad in Darfur," Deng said. "Garang's twin brother had died already, and I was afraid my three other boys would die, too. We arrived in Arial Biam [12 hours’ walk from Nyamlell] without anything, and I have shame, as I am dependent on the community. They have nothing themselves, and because their food is running out, they don't share anymore."
Deng initially refused to bring Garang to the therapeutic feeding centre. He was afraid that during his absence his other two sons would die from starvation. Faced with this impossible choice, he decided to let Garang die. Only after the feeding centre agreed to provide food for all three children did Deng come to Nyamlell to get treatment for Garang. (Photo of James Manuen Deng © IRIN.)
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7/25/06
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Even if you follow Darfur closely, it might have escaped your notice that Sudanese authorities have arrested Tomo Kriznar, the special envoy of the president of Slovenia. It's all a little murky, of course, but the Slovenian president has had an intense interest in promoting peace in Darfur for quite some time. Tomo himself is no stranger to Sudan. A few years ago, he made a beautiful, poignant film about the Nuba peoples who live in the eponymous Nuba Mountains of central Sudan, Nuba: Pure People. The film documented his attempt to bicycle from Khartoum into the Nuba Mountains, which he had visited some two decades before. He eventually was held up by the Sudanese military. From the early 1990s, the Nuba endured Khartoum’s genocidal focus. They were cut off from the world, then decimated, largely because they asserted "the right to be Nuba" -- putting them at odds with the self-described “Arabs” of the Nile River Valley who have traditionally asserted control over power and wealth in Sudan and sought to define the identity of all Sudanese.
I met Tomo a few years ago, and his quixotic gentleness touched me. I don't know if he can hasten peace in Darfur, but I at least hope that he will be released soon and given the opportunity to do what he can.
Tomo's detention provides the opportunity to recall that the problem in Darfur today is not just a Darfurian problem, it is a Sudanese problem. The conflict in Darfur -- as previously in the Nuba Mountains and the South and intermittently in the East -- is about the struggle of the periphery against the center for access to national wealth and political power and, ultimately, the right of groups on the periphery to define their own identity. To defend its prerogatives, the Khartoum-based elite is willing to use mass violence against the civilian populations of recalcitrant ethnic groups. It is also well-practiced at using "divide to destroy tactics," working assiduously to turn one ethnic group against another. That is why the increasing fragmentation of the Darfur rebels along ethnic lines has a certain deja-vu quality -- much the same happened in South Sudan in the early 1990s. In fact, the current Sudanese Foreign Minister, Lam Akol, is an erstwhile southern rebel who defected and spent the late 1990s as Transportation Minister in the Khartoum government, even as the war in the south continued.
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