CWS in the News
We’re Bound to Darfur by our humanity
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
By JOHN L. MCCULLOUGH
Copyright by and reprinted with permission of The
Montclair Times
A Darfurian woman sat on the stump of a tree in the middle of a community seeking refuge, in the midst of the confusion that comes when hundreds of people have been forced to flee their homes and villages. She looked emo-tionally spent. Her clothing was weighted by the perspiration that comes with being swept in the rush of the masses just to get out of harm’s way. This stump was where she stopped, but she was not alone.
Across her lap lay a young girl, perhaps 13 years of age. Her head hung to one side and her slender legs the other. The woman slowly and ever so gently stroked the back of this child. The child was dying, and this woman, despite her own personal exhaustion, tried to comfort the girl in the last moments of her life. Whether these two persons shared any family relation doesn’t matter, because under such circumstances there is a different bond that defines not only the meaning of family, but our humanity as well.
That same bond of humanity is a cord that extends from Darfur and from that unknown woman and dying girl to us. But in our inaction to stop the unrelenting perfidy that continues there, are we as Americans at risk of breaking the bond and in so doing, lessening our own humanity?
In far too many places around the world people suffer the indignity that comes with acts of violence. Nations war with themselves, and countries vie against others often for strategic political and economic gain.
Generally, it is the poor and marginalized who are victimized, and who derive no particular benefit from the spoils of conflict. They are the ones who are forced to flee even meager surroundings, who often walk barefoot for hundreds of miles carrying on their shoulders whatever personal belongings they can, often items having no intrinsic value to anyone other than themselves. They walk until they are too exhausted to go any farther, glad to have es-caped the reach of small armed conflict, but all too well aware that tragedy still stares them in the face.
For many, it is the slow relentless march of death that unfortunately goes unseen by most of the world’s people. The absence of public awareness usually translates into the absence of empathy. The absence of empathy, on the victim’s side, leads to feelings of hopelessness.
The victim wonders: Does anyone understand the fear that makes me flee, does anyone feel the same exhaustion and hunger and thirst, will anyone care when I have breathed my last?
Nearly two million Darfurians have been displaced from what are already primitive villages. Some 1.65 million Darfurians have fled to the desert and are without adequate access to food, water, shelter or health care. They fled faster than the pace of an encroaching insurgency; but more than 400,000 did not and are dead, and many others will also succumb because basically they fled to nowhere and have no resources to sustain their survival.
Darfur is one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our times. But similar accounts can also be told about East Timor and Bosnia, Uganda and Iraq, the Ivory Coast and North Korea, Israel and Palestine, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
While the debate wages about what qualifies as genocide, the haunting image of women soothing the pain of dying children continues to unfold. On the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, the international community said it would never allow genocide to happen again. Yet, if we take an honest look at the world, we must deal with the horrible possibility that we are complicit in our own global genocide.
Not only is Darfur at risk, our world is at risk. Religious intolerance and racism, economic indifference and greed, human trafficking and sexploitation, and more, contribute to the devaluing of our global family, and our collective sense of humanity. No people should suffer the indignities of pillaging, rape, torture, or bullying, and together we should put a stop to it.
One of the lessons of Sept. 11 is that America is no longer buffeted from tragic events occurring in so many other countries. The world has become smaller while America’s place in it has become bigger.
We can ill afford disengagement from acts of inhumanity and cruelty; from terrorism, racism and genocide.
Are we as a people as helpless and hopeless as the fleeing woman and the dying girl?
Are we willing to accept that role?
It is time for the government of Sudan to be called to accountability for the protection of all of her citizens. If Sudan does not adhere to international standards of good governance and humane conduct, the United States – working in concert with other international bodies – should engage options that include utilization of the International Criminal Court, economic blockades, and yes if necessary, military intervention as a humanitarian safeguard for the people of Darfur.
More than a country of laws, America is a nation built on the values and heritage of religious freedom, respect for the dignity of the individual, the prospect of a more hopeful future, and the pledge of liberty and justice for all.
Not only should these be the premise and guiding principles of our national response to Darfur, but they should also be our moral compass for working with other nations in resolving these conflicts.
A Montclair resident, the Rev. John L. McCullough is executive director and chief executive officer of Church World Service.
Original article at http://www.montclairtimes.com/page.php?page=11902
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