Darfur: Packaging a Tragedy | Newsweek International

DARFUR
Waiting For The Court
Steve Bloomfield 1/16/2009 12:00:00 AM
Pre-trial judges at the International Criminal Court are expected to decide in the next few weeks whether to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. As the waiting continues, tensions in Khartoum grow. On Wednesday, Sudanese opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi, who has been openly critical of Bashir, was arrested. If the ICC grants a warrant, aid workers worry about what the repercussions might be to the U. N. relief effort in Darfur, where about 1,000 international staff and 14,000 Sudanese staff are providing aid to more than four million people. Two U.N. peacekeeping operations, composed of almost 30,000 personnel, are also present in the country. John Holmes, the U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator—the organization's most senior humanitarian official—spoke to NEWSWEEK's Steve Bloomfield in Darfur about the threat of violence against aid workers and his fears for the future funding of the humanitarian operation. Excerpts:
MEMOIR
Piercing the Silence
Arlene Getz 10/29/2008 12:00:00 AM
Too often, atrocities blur into abstractions. The burned-out villages; the camps for the desperate displaced; the brutalized women—for all that we've seen, read and heard about Darfur, for all the celebrities who've adopted it as their own cause célèbre, it's still hard for us to get a real sense of the hideousness that has taken place there. Halima Bashir might be the person who finally pulls us through that barrier.
JUSTICE
'A Tremendous Day for International Justice'
7/18/2008 12:00:00 AM
With the controversial indictment of Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, earlier this week, the International Criminal Court is putting its reputation on the line. The court has taken years to assemble its case against Bashir, in large part because it is by design a passive institution: it can neither conduct its own investigations, nor make arrests. Perhaps more significantly, international reaction to the move is divided, with Russia and China complaining that it violates Sudan's sovereignty and NGOs worrying that the charges will endanger peacekeepers and aid workers in the country.
AFRICA
Dying Under the Radar
Seth Colter Walls 1/22/2008 12:00:00 AM
When pressed to think about death on a massive scale in Africa, one's mind likely focuses on the crisis in Darfur. The Rwandan genocide or Ethiopian starvation may also rate. But for all the (deserved) attention such humanitarian causes have attracted, they seem to have overshadowed a problem that is dwarfing many other crises in terms of lethality: postconflict death in Congo.
Boycott Opening Ceremonies
Jonathan Alter
It's a 100-day dash, and the world had better get at least a silver. In the time before the Beijing Olympics opens in August, the West has a chance to bring China further into the community of responsible nations. If we fail, we may spend the rest of the 21st century regretting that we didn't use some leverage when we had it. Half a dozen European leaders and the Democratic presidential candidates are urging a mini-boycott of Beijing's opening ceremonies. They're right to do so; it's the best shot we've got.
SOCIETY
Extinction Trade
Sharon Begley
The marauders galloped into Zakouma National Park in Chad, the last refuge of that country's once thriving elephant population. Rather than bother with the few remaining elephants, the attackers last May were after the 1.5 tons of ivory—worth as much as $1.3 million—that Chadian officials had seized from poachers over the years and stored in a strongroom at park headquarters. Neither the audacity of the attack nor its brutality—the raiders killed three park rangers—shocked wildlife officials: some 100 rangers, outgunned and outmanned, are killed every year defending Africa's wildlife. Rather, the shock was the identity of the attackers.