Quotes & Sayings About Darfur

Rebels in Darfur have learned the value of mobilizing western human rights groups to prolong wars, and this lesson is working gloriously for them. — Stephen Kinzer

Right now, I am in Fallujah. I am in Darfur. I am on Sixty-third and Park having dinner with Ellen Barkin and Ron Perelman ... Right now, I'm on Lafayette and Astor waiting to hit you up for change so I can get high. I'm taking a walk through the Rose Garden with George Bush. I'm helping Donald Rumsfeld get a good night's sleep ... I was in that cave with Osama, and on that plane with Mohamed Atta ... And what I want you to know is that your work has barely begun. And what I want you to trust is the efficacy of divine love if practiced consciously. And what I need you to believe is that if you hate who I love, you do not know me at all. And make no mistake, "Who I Love" is every last one. I am every last one. People ask of me: Where are you? Where are you? ... Verily I ask of you to ask yourself: Where are you? Where are you? — Stephen Adly Guirgis

By "West Sudan," for instance, an almost vanished term, people understood the whole gigantic stretch of savannah immediately south of the Sahara, from the Atlantic to Darfur in the country now known as Sudan. — Jurgen Osterhammel

If President Bush is serious about genocide, an immediate priority is to stop the cancer of Darfur from spreading further, which means working with France to shore up Chad and the Central African Republic. — Nicholas D. Kristof

There is a huge trapdoor waiting to open under anyone who is critical of so-called 'popular culture' or (to redefine this subject) anyone who is uneasy about the systematic, massified cretinization of the major media. If you denounce the excess coverage, you are yourself adding to the excess. If you show even a slight knowledge of the topic, you betray an interest in something that you wish to denounce as unimportant or irrelevant. Some writers try to have this both ways, by making their columns both 'relevant' and 'contemporary' while still manifesting their self-evident superiority. Thus - I paraphrase only slightly - 'Even as we all obsess about Paris Hilton, the people of Darfur continue to die.' A pundit like (say) Bob Herbert would be utterly lost if he could not pull off such an apparently pleasing and brilliant 'irony. — Christopher Hitchens

We estimate that humanitarian agencies have access to about 350,000 vulnerable people in Darfur - only about one third of the estimated total population in need. — Jan Egeland

If NATO goes in and solves the crisis in Darfur, when the next one comes along Africa's leaders will just sit back. — George Ayittey

The conflict in Darfur could escalate to where we're seeing 100,000 victims per month. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Virtually all of Darfur's six million residents are Muslim, and, because of decades of intermarriage, almost everyone has dark skin and African features. — Samantha Power

The United Nations has become a largely irrelevant, if not positively destructive institution, and the just-released U.N. report on the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, proves the point. — Linda Chavez

The Coalition for International Justice estimated that 450,000 people in Darfur have died since the deadly genocide began some three years ago. — Kendrick Meek

Did you know that Darfur was a great country long ago, so great that it was both in Sudan and also in Chad? Did you know that the French who controlled Chad, and the British, who later controlled Sudan, drew a line putting half of Darfur in each new nation? Did you know that? What do you care about this line if you are darfur men? What business is it of yours if the British and the French drew lines on maps? What does it have to do with the fact that we are brothers? The boys were moved by this ... — Daoud Hari

As for the sanctimony of people who seem blind to the fact that mass murder is still an annual event, look at Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Tibet, Burma and elsewhere-the truer shout is not "Never again" but "Again and again. — Paul Theroux

In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the eighteenth-century British historian Edward Gibbon describes the scene of Romans fleeing the city of Nisibis in A.D. 363 after it was handed over to the Persians......Gibbon could have been describing a photograph from the 1994 genocide in Rawanda or the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. He could have been describing any number of forced migrations that have occurred all over the world in the last ten years, even the last five. The picture has not changed much since the fourth century. — Charles London

Finally, I am encouraged to note that the Security Council issued a statement today expressing its concern about the massive humanitarian crisis in Darfur and calling on all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and reach a ceasefire. — Jan Egeland

The report [by a UN commission on Darfur] demonstrates beyond all doubt that the last two years have been little short of hell on earth for our fellow human beings in Darfur. — Kofi Annan

I knew nothing. Now I've seen what a raw deal lots of other people like Krystal get. And it's not their fault. Not their choice. People don't get to choose what body they're put into. Like, people get born into bodies in the middle of a genocide war in Darfur, and they don't get to worry about how tall they are or whether they'll ever be able to row. They're too busy worrying about how they're going to stay alive for another day. — Maureen Garvie

If the world allows the people of Darfur to be removed forever from their land and their way of life, then genocide will happen elsewhere because it will be seen as something that works. It must not be allowed to work. The people of Darfur need to go home now. I write this for them, and for that day, ... and for those still living who might yet have beautiful lives on the earth. — Daoud Hari

Although we have do not have adequate access to all parts of Darfur we do fortunately have humanitarian personnel, including staff from my own office, in each of the three provincial capitals of Darfur. — Jan Egeland

We receive reports now on a daily basis from our own people on the ground in Darfur on widespread atrocities and grave violations of human rights against the civilian population. — Jan Egeland

One other thing struck me. The margin between life and death was so very slim in Darfur, where people eked out a harsh semi-desert existence. The ability to cope was that much more limited than it had been in, say, Rwanda, a relatively fertile tropical country. Consequently, the ability to destroy people's means of livelihood was that much greater. — Mukesh Kapila

There are something like 300 anti-genocide chapters on college campuses around the country. It's bigger than the anti-apartheid movement. There are something like 500 high school chapters devoted to stopping the genocide in Darfur. Evangelicals have joined it. Jewish groups have joined it. — Samantha Power

Because of the industrialization of agriculture
using massive amounts of fossil fuel
only 2 percent of Americans work in farming. And yet they produce enough food to feed all 300 million Americans, with plenty left over for export. When are liberals going to break the news to their friends in Darfur that they all have to starve to death to save the planet? — Ann Coulter

We need to begin an all-out diplomatic offensive on Darfur in order to prepare the way for a peacekeeping force that can ensure protection for the people of Darfur. — Kendrick Meek

The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible. If we knew as much about Darfur as we do about Michael Jackson, we might be able to stop these things from continuing. — Nicholas D. Kristof

In all, dozens upon dozens of groups and organizations have prioritized stopping the killing in Darfur before there is no one left to be killed. It is high time that we, the U.S. Congress, join our name to that list. — Kendrick Meek

Despite the increase in world attention toward Sudan in the past months, the genocide in Darfur has continued without any serious attempt by the Sudanese government to do what governments primarily exist to do, protect their citizens. — Tom Allen

In issues of recent ethnic wars and genocides - particularly if you look at Darfur - one of the most remarkable things is our inability to act, still, despite the years of analyzing and re-analyzing what it does to subsequent generations. We still find a massive inability to step in and step up to the plate, when genocide is happening as we speak. — Stephen Daldry

In the eyes of her oldest friends and colleagues and extended family, she wasn't a painfully thin seventy-five-year-old gray haired woman dying of cancer- she was a grade school class president, the young friend you gossiped with, a date or double date, someone to share a tent with in Darfur, a fellow election monitor in Bosnia, a mentor, a teacher you'd laughed within a classroom or a faculty lounge, or the board member you'd groaned with after a contentious meeting — Will Schwalbe

They traveled deep into far-flung regions of their own country and in some cases clear across the continent. Thus the Great Migration had more in common with the vast movements of refugees from famine, war, and genocide in other parts of the world, where oppressed people, whether fleeing twenty-first-century Darfur or nineteenth-century Ireland, go great distances, journey across rivers, desserts, and oceans or as far as it takes to reach safety with the hope that life will be better wherever they land. — Isabel Wilkerson

It really is quite remarkable that Darfur has become a household name. I am gratified that's the case. — Nicholas D. Kristof

One of my friends has a saying: "If it's not true in Darfur, it's not true here." He means if we can't preach it in every context, for every person, it's not really for everyone, and so then we should probably ask whether or not what we are preaching is actually the gospel. — Sarah Bessey

What is most needed in Darfur is an international peacekeeping and protection presence, and this is what the Sudanese government most wants to avoid. — Samantha Power

What is more important for the world right now than preserving ways of living in balance with the earth? — Daoud Hari

Violence in Darfur is cataclysmic. — Emmanuel Jal

We all might ask ourselves why we tune in to these more trivial matters and tune out when it comes to Darfur. — Nicholas D. Kristof

After the sale of Celtel, I really wanted to give the money back, and I had a number of choices - to go and buy masses of blankets and baby milk or to go into Darfur or Congo. That would have been very nice actually, but it's just like an aspirin: it doesn't deal with the problem. — Mo Ibrahim

I would like to get out to the region in the Caspian sea. I would like to go there. I would like to get to Darfur. I would like to get to Khartoum in Northern Sudan. I would like to get to Zimbabwe. I would like to go back to North Korea, if I could. I would like to go to Yemen. I would like to get to Kashmir. Most of those destinations I will get to. — Henry Rollins

Because of my schooling, my fate would always be a little different from my friends. — Daoud Hari

Later, when she came to know of the letters he wrote to Congress about Darfur, the teenagers he tutored at the high school on Dixwell, the shelter he volunteered at, she thought of him as a person who did not have a normal spine but had, instead, a firm reed of goodness. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I see courage everywhere I go in Africa. Fearless human rights activists in Darfur. Women peace advocates in eastern Congo. Former child soldiers in Northern Uganda who now are helping other former child soldiers return to civilian life. — John Prendergast

People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries. — Denise Mina

I was proud to witness American Jewish organizations found the Save Darfur Coalition in June 2004 to mobilize a coordinated interfaith response to the ongoing humanitarian disaster. — Jan Schakowsky

All we hear about Africa in the West is Darfur, Zimbabwe, Congo, Somalia, as if that is all there is. — Mo Ibrahim

One's own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs, which is intimately connected to humanity in general. What happens in Darfur becomes an assault on my own community, and on me as an individual. That's what the human family is all about. — Wole Soyinka

No question that the spotlight on Darfur has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. And that's deeply problematic, because it hasn't disappeared because Darfur has been solved. — Rebecca Hamilton

People feel repressed by their own governments; they feel unfairly treated by the outside world; they wake up in the morning, and who do they see - they see people being shot and killed: all Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur. — Mohamed ElBaradei

What's really interesting, though, is that some people in the Messirya are starting to see Darfuri rebels - so non-Arab, [from the] Justice and Equality Movement - have moved over into Southern Kordofan, which is supposed to be a Messirya stronghold, and started recruiting Messirya to go and fight against the Khartoum government in Darfur. Just another example of how everything in Sudan is interlinked. — Rebecca Hamilton

In the time that we're here today, more women and children will die violently in the Darfur region than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel or Lebanon. So, after September 30, you won't need the UN - you will simply need men with shovels and bleached white linen and headstones. — George Clooney

I hate myself in interviews. All of a sudden, you stop and you're like, 'Chris, how dare you?' I don't live in Darfur. I have both legs. But you can't walk around all the time being like, 'I'm so grateful I'm not in Darfur.' — Chris Evans

Right. So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela - who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing. — Rush Limbaugh

But I can tell you what I believe: When tens of thousands of innocent souls have perished in Darfur-when 11 million children are without health insurance-when our colossal debt subjects our economic future to the whims of Asian bankers-no one can tell me that faith demands this Senate spend its time arguing over a handful of judges. No one with those priorities can use my faith to intimidate me. — John F. Kerry

You know who does a lot of good deeds and doesn't have kids and totally understands what's important in life? George Clooney. Unlike me, he doesn't give a fuck what you think about the fact that he's not "selfless" enough to father a kid. He's not writing a book defending his position. He's having sex with a cocktail waitress and then saving Darfur. Both are noble positions. — Jen Kirkman

Any critique of realism must begin with a sober assessment of the horrors of peace. — Christopher Hitchens

We don't really want to know what soldiers go through in combat. We do not really want to know how many children are being molested and abused in our own society or how many couples - almost a third, as it turns out - engage in violence at some point during their relationship. We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge? — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

The problem with representation in the media has very much to do with the conflicts between groups in the world. If you talk about Iraq, al Qaeda, Darfur, even Taiwan, representation is a part of that problem. — Arthur Dong

Then it came to me: I was asking the wrong question. The right one is: Where is God in gang warfare? And the answer is, The same place God is in Darfur, and in our alcoholism, and when children are bullied: being crucified. — Anne Lamott

As a Jew I cannot sit idle while genocidal atrocities continue to unfold in Darfur, Sudan. — Jan Schakowsky

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction. — Nicholas D. Kristof

This morning there s first a predictable story about Darfur; an expert on African affairs notes that seven thousand African Union troops patrolling a region the size of France have been ineffectual in preventing continued janjaweed terror. Funding for the troops is about to run out, and it seems that no one, including the United States, is ready to put forth more money or come up with new ideas to stop the killing and displacement. This is not surprising to those of us who lived through twenty years of oppression by the hands of Khartoum and its militias. — Dave Eggers