Looking the Darfur Genocide in the Eye

In an increasingly interconnected, globalizing world, our greatest challenge is not apathy, but a sense of political powerlessness. That's why I'm so excited to see the launch of 24 Hours for Darfur.
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Amidst the thousands of archival materials displayed at the US Holocaust Museum, I found myself haunted by a photograph. It's a shot of a man standing in the middle of a busy thoroughfare as pedestrians pass him by. The man has a sign around his neck that says, "I am a human being." The pedestrians avert their eyes.

I find this photo particularly chilling -- the dehumanization of the man, and the acquiescence of the crowd. I wonder why nobody looked at the man, stopped, said something, did something. I'm sure some were simply busy, rushing to work. Perhaps others were Nazi sympathizers. But I suspect that most people in that crowd were both aware of and disturbed by the situation. And these people averted their eyes for one simple reason:

They had no idea what to do about it.

I think people around the world today feel similarly about the crisis in Darfur. We may not know the details of the murder, rape and pillage, but we know hundreds of thousands have died, and millions more have fled from their homes. We may not know the legalese behind the term "genocide", but we know that a brutal regime is targeting civilians because of who they are. What we don't know is what we can possibly do about it. In an increasingly interconnected, globalizing world, our greatest challenge is not apathy, but a sense of political powerlessness.

That's why I'm so excited to see the launch of 24 Hours for Darfur, a new advocacy campaign that empowers people to get informed and get involved -- on video, and online. 24 Hours for Darfur collects personal video messages from people around the world, calling on their political leaders to address the crisis in Darfur. These messages will be emailed directly to participants' political representatives and screened in front of the United Nations headquarters during a rally on September 16, 2007 as part of the Global Day for Darfur. And to help people make informed appeals, 24 Hours offers a comprehensive video analysis from Darfur experts such as John Prendergast, Nicholas Kristof and Georgette Gagnon.

After officially launching with a video on YouTube, the campaign is now going viral, as people record messages, post them on their blogs, embed them in the facebook pages, and forward them to their family and friends.

You can check out the site for video messages from such prominent individuals as presidential candidate John Edwards, actor-activist Mia Farrow, former UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown, Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh, and author Samantha Power.

But personally, I'm much more excited about the over six hours of footage already received from people on the street. People as young as eight and as old as 80, from across the US and around the world -- including people from Sudan itself. 24 Hours for Darfur has enabled people like Irwin Rothschild Jr., Amy Larsen, and Gouma Mahamat to share their voices with the world.

One day, these messages will be displayed in a museum about the Darfur genocide, alongside transcripts of congressional hearings and UN Security Council sessions, reports from humanitarian agencies and human rights workers, photos of peacekeepers and peace summits. These messages will serve as powerful archival evidence of people refusing to avert their eyes from the dehumanizing violence visited upon the people of Darfur.

But I wonder, can these appeals impact the situation on the ground now? My initial reaction is "no" -- a few people speaking out cannot possibly make a difference. But then I realize that that is the only thing that ever has.

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