Four prominent individuals from the political, humanitarian and academic communities stressed the urgency for the international community to stop the Darfur atrocities in Sudan Wednesday to a packed audience in Carpenter Hall.
All the panelists strongly concurred that the international community's hesitation to intervene in Darfur was unacceptable.
Panelist David Scheffer, the former ambassador at-large for war crimes during the Clinton administration, criticized the international community for arguing legal terms rather than intervening.
"It takes years to make a determination that genocide has occurred," he said. "You need to pay attention today that atrocity crimes are occurring. We don't need a discussion about the precise character of the crime -- people are dying, villages are destroyed. We'll get to the legal formulations in due time, but we need a much speedier reaction."
Government professor Nelson Kasfir argued, on the other hand, that the legal definition of mass murder is extremely important in determining the type of action to be taken.
"Is it a genocide?" he asked. "It makes a difference when you go solve the problem. By labeling a mass murder genocide, it misleads what we're supposed to do. If we can find the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a group, then it is a genocide. Otherwise it's not, but that doesn't mean we back down."
Introducing the topic to the audience, Kasfir attributed the atrocity to the different identities of the African and Arab people within Sudan. After the Sudanese government dropped bombs on villages, the Arab Jan Jaweed, or "evil horsemen," agents targeted Africans within Sudan by raiding the damaged villages.
Kasfir estimated the death toll is actually more than 218,000, with 1.65 million people living in camps out of a total population of 6 million.
Daowd Salih, vice chairman of the Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy, represented the African voice on the panel. Salih's organization supports the human rights of the Sudanese Massaleit community in exile.
"We, as Africans in Darfur, want to keep our African culture, our African traditions," Salih said. "We don't want to be brainwashed to be Arabized. We are not going to change our identity."
Ambassador Ken Yalowitz, director of Dartmouth's Dickey Center for International Understanding, moderated the panel and provided the opening commentary. Yalowitz emphasized the important role of individuals in the fight for intervention to prevent crimes against humanity.
"Individuals matter," Yalowitz said. "What each of us does is very important during times of crisis, especially in the situation going on right now. We cannot allow what happened in Rwanda to be repeated in the same way."
Scheffer has been deeply immersed in the international genocide conversation, having headed the U.S. delegation to the United Nations in the International Criminal Court debate. Scheffer offered some criticism of the current Bush administration's dealings with the Darfur situation.
"I negotiated the [ICC] treaty for the United States, and in all those years of negotiation, the Darfur situation was the dream situation -- this it he kind of situation it should be for," Scheffer said. "I find it ironic now that when the dream atrocity confronts us judicially, the Bush administration balks."
He was not completely unforgiving of the Clinton administration either, however, but claimed that progress has been made.
"We know from Rwanda, we failed, but we need to learn from that failure," he said. "We applied some of those lessons in Kosovo. We reacted much faster."
While the panelists differed in the solutions they proposed to address the problem, all agreed on the need for more awareness on the issue.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, Mamie Mutchler, a human rights advocate for Refugees International, stressed student advocacy in alleviating the situation in Darfur. Mutchler said the U.N. Security Council is currently weighed down with ideological debates.
"We need more troops and a stronger mandate for the African Union. We need to call for greater funding and action for women and victims of rape and other sexual violence. We need to call for the U.S. to support the role of the ICC to try those responsible for crimes against humanity. We need to work in coalitions to contact congressmen and U.S. administrators," Mutchler said.
The event, which was sponsored by 13 on-campus organizations, motivated students to become more active in raising awareness.
Anne Bellows '06 and the Dartmouth College Greens are forming an organization to look into the Darfur issue further and spread the word across campus. Their first meeting will be Friday night at 8 p.m. in Brewster Lounge.
