MIA FARROW, U.N. GOODWILL AMBASSADOR
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award Ceremony
Remarks as Prepared, November 16th, 2007
The United States Senate Caucus Room

I have recently returned from my seventh trip to the greater Darfur region
Incomprehensibly, more than four years have passed since the Government of Sudan and its proxy Arab militia, the Janjaweed, launched its campaign of destruction upon the non-Arab population of Darfur. Only the perpetrators dispute that hundreds of thousands of innocent men women and children have died.

Never AGAIN

After the Nazi Holocaust, the world vowed “never again.” How obscenely disingenuous those fine words sound today. As we look at Rwanda, Darfur and eastern Chad, are we to conclude that “never again” applies only to white people?

Just days ago, the Government of Sudan attacked Kalma camp using mortars and machine guns in what is approximately the 20th attack on this refugee camp. And we have just heard Dr Mohammed Ahmed speak about the violent forced relocation of residents of Otash camp fro the displaced. . Many camps are so unsafe that humanitarian work is grinding to a halt. Today an unprecedented 1 million people are now out of reach of humanitarian assistance.

Attacks on aid workers rose 150% in the last year. UNICEF reports that in some camps 30% of the population is suffering from acute malnutrition.

Each camp shelters 50,000 to 175, 000 people. UNICEF recently stated; “we simply cannot absorb any more displaced.”

The stories of those who survived the attacks on their villages are numbingly similar.

Without warning, Antonov bombers and attack helicopters filled the morning skies and raining bombs upon homes and families as they slept, as they played, as they prayed, as they tended their fields. People tried to gather their children and fled in all directions.
Then the Janjaweed attacked on horseback and on camels (and more recently in vehicles). They came shouting racial epithets and shooting. They shot the children as they ran, they shot the elderly.

Strong women in frail voices described their gang rapes; some were abducted and assaulted continuously over many weeks.

Soroya Adam, 27, walked for 22 days to reach Oure Cassoni refugee camp in Chad. Two of her 5 children died on the journey.

The people of Darfur have been and they continue to be slaughtered, yes, - but they are also dying of disease and of hunger. In the camps women commit suicide; they die of humiliation and shame, they die of despair that they will never return to their homelands. They despair because their losses are too numerous to count or ever reclaim. They despair because four years of terror is too long. They commit infanticide because their babies are born of rape in an-Islamic culture where the victims of rape are held culpable.
WE NEED PROTECTION-the plea from camps across Darfur and eastern Chad

These are the victims of our indifference. After 4 and half years what message have we sent to the people of Darfur? Only that they are completely dispensable. Next month I will return to the region.

People will tell me their stories and again they will plead for protection. I will listen, I will write down every word. Again I will hold broken women in my arms-- and again I will promise them I will indeed tell the world what has happened to them. I will take more photographs-- and then, somehow- I will leave them there- in their hell and come back to an indifferent world.

What is required now and for future genocides, is the will of the international community to accept its “responsibility to protect” those civilians threatened by genocide, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity. A responsibility unanimously accepted by the UN in 2005.

And then there is China. China is underwriting the genocide in Darfur. Genocide Sudanese -style is expensive. It requires bombers, attack helicopters and a steady flow of arms and ammunition to the Janjaweed. Some 70% of Chinese oil revenues - which now top $2 billion per year, have been used to attack the non-Arab population Darfur.

The vast majority of weaponry used to attack civilians across Darfur is of Chinese origin.

But it seems that there is now one thing that China holds dearer than their unfettered access to Sudanese oil: their successful staging of the 2008 Summer Olympics. That desire is proving to be a lone point of leverage with a country that has previously been impervious to all criticism.

Under intense international pressure, China for the first time did not abstain from signing on to the newest United Nations Resolution to provide a protection force for Darfur. But China signed only after removing some of its sharpest teeth – including any mandate to disarm the janjaweed.

Beijing has two strategies. The first is to preserve its alliance with Sudan in order to meet its massive oil needs. The second is to fashion its brand new image—one that befits the host of the 2008 Olympic games. The two are inconsistent.

The Chinese have hired more than one prestigious international public-relations firm to clean up their image. But the words they are churning out about Darfur are, at this point, simply that.

If Beijing elected to act rather than talk, there is plenty it could do.
• China could use its influence to insist that the Janjaweed be disarmed
• China could demand that the regime call a halt on the on-going aerial bombardment of civilians and the forced relocation of IDPs that we just heard Dr. Mohammed Ahmed speak about
• China could demand that Khartoum acccept without obstruction the deployment of peacekeepers under UN Seccurity Council Resolution 1769.
• China could refuse to sell weapons to Sudan
• China could threaten to suspend new oil deals with Sudan.

How can China host the Olympic Games at home, and underwrite genocide in Sudan?

And what about the rest of the international community?

The US should support the peace process in Darfur by committing a full-time team to support negotiations based in the region (not the part time single envoy currently appointed).

But we cannot allow the people of Darfur to die while negotiations proceed (or fail to). Our best hope lies with the AU-UN hybrid force. If that force is to succeed, the international community must commit to providing funding, logistical support and equipment.

The success or failure of the hybrid force will hinge on the funding of powerful nations, especially the US. I would urge US leadership to make this a priority. As it stands, the force is insufficiently funded and equipped. Last week, the current commander of the hybrid force stated that “the minimum, not the ideal but the minimum” number of helicopters needed is 24. And I quote: “As of today, there is no country in the world that has volunteered to give us that capability – zero.”

We look at Rwanda and despair at our abysmal failure to act.
When the history of this terrible episode in human destruction is written, will we have any less reason to despair about our acquiescence before the ultimate human crime? Our country, the United Nations and all the nations of the world failed the people of Rwanda, and we are failing the people of Darfur-- collectively and individually we failed them- even as we utterly failed out most essential selves.

As Elie Wiesel wrote in amazement...

“The victims [of the Holocaust] perished not only because of the killers, but also because of the apathy of the bystanders. What astonished us after the torment, after the tempest, was not that so many killers killed so many victims, but that so few cared about us at all.”

This is a seminal moment for each of us.