Genocide Awareness Week

This week at my school the STAND (Students Taking Action Now in Darfur) group hosts Genocide Awareness Week. We build a model refugee camp and give tours of it the whole week. On Friday, we give presentations about historical genocides to classes and that night we have a musical fundraiser event. Events still occur in Darfur often, however, it is very rarely in the news.

Recently, I attended a talk at the Illinois Holocaust Museum given by Rebecca Hamilton, author of Fighting For Darfur, a story of activism and journalism surrounding the genocide in Darfur. She followed the spotlight of international attention in Sudan and Africa and found that when eyes are concentrated in one spot other conflict in other areas falls through the cracks. Once attention shifts, the attention-lacking areas are redefined but there are always places where events take place that warrant outcry and action, but do not receive it. The sad thing is that even when there is an outcry of a large group of people, as there was in the United States when the events in Darfur came to light, it does not guarantee any action or any wrongs being righted. Hamilton made the argument that if the attention does not shift, and if we can unite the stories of the different people of Sudan, then less crises and atrocities will slip through the cracks. So how can the story of Sudan be unified in a way that leaves nothing in the dark but brings into attention what needs to be done?

The two 'big' stories in Sudan recently were the referendum for Southern Sudan to secede and the Darfuri Genocide. As attention switched from one event to the other, people would be killed in Darfur or election preparations would be left undone in Southern Sudan, so both locations suffered. Uniting the narrative of the Southern Sudanese and the Darfuri people would have prevented, or at least helped to spread awareness about, some negative events.

Now, with the events happening throughout North Africa and the Middle East, Sudan might as well have fallen off the earth. Because 2 million people are still displaced from the conflict in Darfur, because more are joining their numbers every day, and because Darfur is not the only place that houses refugees and conflict is, why we host Genocide Awareness Week. To unite the stories of many into something that is consumable to the public may sound overly consumerist, however, in a fast paced world it is disgraceful that our outcry and our action is still slow. Our goal should be to find the balance between depth and scope of information so that the first story on the news is not the only crisis that we address.

So this week, remember those throughout the world that need remembering - and do what you can to act.