Urge the next U.S. president to make Darfur a day 1 priority.
Don't let Al-Bashir escape justice.
Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition, recently returned from Tanzania where he attended a workshop on re-energizing the Darfur peace process. He recorded the following video at the conference:
Stay tuned for more reports from the conference and to hear from Darfuri civil society leaders.
A brazen attack launched yesterday in North Darfur killed seven UNAMID peacekeepers and wounded 22, many of them critically. This is likely to be the largest assault ever on Darfur peacekeepers - a sad display of the deteriorating conditions in the region and the world’s failure to address them.
According to a report by the United Nations, the unidentified militia used heavy weapons and exchanged fire with the UNAMID convoy for more than two hours.
It is a miserable state of affairs that a year after the U.N. Security Council authorized UNAMID, the troops have neither the numbers, the training, nor the equipment to protect themselves, let alone the people of Darfur. Twelve months, and the world’s most powerful nations cannot find it within themselves to produce the political will, a few hundred trucks, or even just 24 helicopters to protect Darfuris who have weathered more than five years of genocide.
The Save Darfur Coalition’s President, Jerry Fowler, was on CNN last night. We’re trying to locate the video clip, but you can read the transcript right now.
JERRY FOWLER, PRESIDENT, SAVE DARFUR COALITION: I think there’s a tremendous amount of frustration, but even deeper than that it’s a disappointment. And all we can hope is that when President Bush does go to China, that he takes the opportunity to really press the Chinese and get commitments from them to start being part of the solution in Darfur instead of being part of the problem.
Complete transcript (scroll most of the way down).
