With everything going on here in the USA, it’s hard to pay attention to what’s going on in Sudan and South Sudan. But the United Nations has labeled this the greatest humanitarian disaster happening on the planet. Here is my take, and please feel free to share this. Although it’s always much more complicated than the news can portray, it is always crucial to overlay international African conflict with the legacy of kidnapping and violence from slavery and European colonialism, which set up horrifically corrupt systems of puppet governments in order to extract humans, minerals, foods, oil, and other “resources.”
Those legacies exacerbate absolutely everything that’s going on.
Climatastrophe also exacerbates this conflict: Lake Chad has shrunk to only 10% of its size in the 1960s. This means access to the perimeter of the once-massive lake has shrunk so significantly that local tribes have to move closer to the shrinking water source, which means closer to one another, increasing tensions over access to this now scant freshwater resource.
When people blame Africa or African peoples for these violent realities, they really need to point the finger back at the greedy, racist legacy of Europe’s vile and violent exploitation, extraction, and oppression.
Darfur is part of Sudan and South Sudan—a region rather than a country or state. Over 12 million people from Sudan have been displaced in the last few years, most fleeing south and west, into Darfur, etc. Over 1 million of them have fled into South Sudan (South Sudan is where our school is), and well over 100,000 people have been killed, often tortured and gang-raped in the process.
This violence/genocide, climatastrophe and famine is almost always linked to political strife in areas lacking true democracy. This particular horrific strife is a multilateral proxy war with over 10 countries involved in supplying weapons etc., with the United Arab Emirates, a strong US ally, supporting the ones who are doing most of the killing. See this article.
Of course, being in Africa, the world simply doesn’t care very much about Black people. The genocide happening in Sudan is far more intense than what’s going on in Gaza, The United Nations having labeled Sudan the most horrific humanitarian disaster happening on the planet now…yet all of it, all war, is a sin.
Peace,
Mary Grace
President and liaison of UOCO
UpperNile Orphan Care Organization
www.uoco.org
Featured image: Photo by Lara Jameson