For the past 16 months, the Sudanese government systematically has supported militias that have carried out massive killings, rape, burning of villages, and other inhuman acts of horror against impoverished civilians of Darfur. More than a million have been driven from their homes as a result of the genocide, with countless refugees being forced to flee across borders. The crisis has been heightened by the Sudanese government's destruction of food and water and its deliberate denial of humanitarian assistance to the people of Darfur.

The 1948 United Nations Convention on Genocide identifies genocide as actions "calculated to bring about the physical destruction of groups in whole or in part" and compels the 130 countries that are parties to it, including the United States, to prevent and punish these crimes against humanity.

In his letter to the President--which highlighted a resolution on Darfur passed by the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church June 14--Griswold urged that the United States actively engage allies in an effort to make clear to the Government of the Sudan that if it does not immediately cease the violence and allow the delivery of humanitarian assistance it will face "swift and immediate action from the international community." In particular, Griswold urged the U.S. to exercise leadership within the United Nation's Security Council to pass a Darfur-specific resolution that both responds to the current situation and lays the groundwork for a sustainable peace.

Griswold previously has addressed the crisis of Darfur on several occasions, writing in a Holy Week statement about the witness of Archbishop Joseph Marona, Primate of the Episcopal Church of Sudan, who earlier this year traveled to the United States and urged Americans to do all in their power to end the horror in Darfur. Furthermore, Griswold and the staff of the Church's Office of Government Relations in Washington, D.C., advocated on behalf of Darfur-specific congressional resolutions--which passed both chambers of congress last month--calling upon the international community to bring about an end to the atrocities.

Administration's Response to Darfur

Griswold's letter was sent the same day the Bush administration announced that Secretary of State Colin Powell will travel to the Sudan next week and tour the Darfur region. According to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, Powell's visit to Sudan "is intended to continue to call attention to the dire humanitarian situation in Darfur, to do whatever we can to stop the violence there and to make sure that the needy people of that region are receiving whatever supplies we can get to them."

Many international observers have been critical of the administration's response to Darfur, calling it slow and too focused on internal debates over whether the actions of the Sudanese government rise to the legal definition of genocide. In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group called it "appalling that we have been reduced to semantic debates about whether the situation in Darfur is ethnic cleansing or genocide."  Prendergast noted that, unlike the Rwandan genocide of 1994 which received very little attention from the international community--"it is not credible to say that we did not know what was happening [in Darfur]. Over the past year, Darfur has been Rwanda in painfully slow motion."

Griswold echoed the comparison to the Rwandan genocide in his letter to the President, noting that unlike the previous crisis, "we possess the knowledge, foresight and means to prevent the tragedy from reaching the proportions" of the Rwandan genocide. Underscoring the importance of American leadership, Griswold recalled the importance of U.S. efforts in bringing about an end to slaughter in Bosnia in the late 1990s and apartheid in South Africa nearly a decade earlier.

One of the most tragic ironies of the genocide in Darfur is that it comes at a time when peace finally has appeared on the horizon in Sudan's 21-year civil war. The Government of Sudan and the principal rebel group in the conflict last month signed the last in a series of peace protocols designed to bring an end to the war, and many are hopeful that a final peace treaty will be signed by the end of next month. The Bush administration--and in particular its envoy to the region, Episcopal priest and former U.S. Senator John C. Danforth (R-MO)--was critical in helping broker this peace process, a fact that Griswold noted in his letter to the President this week. The achievement of a peace treaty in the civil war threatens to ring hollow, however, as long as the violence in Darfur continues to loom.

International voices echo Griswold's call

Other international observers this week joined Griswold's call for the events of Darfur to be recognized as genocide by the United States. The U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., suspended normal operations for the first time in its history on Thursday to call attention to the events in Darfur. A half-hour program at the museum featured calls for action by three members of the U.S. Congress, a holocaust survivor, a citizen of Darfur, and international observers.  

"We Holocaust survivors know what it means to be victims of hate," said Nesse Godin, who survived the Nazi Holocaust. "That's why we stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Darfur."

Amal Allagabo of Darfur, whose family still lives in the crisis area echoed that sentiment. "In my eyes and many eyes this is the world's worst humanitarian disaster," she said. "My family is just like yours. They want to feel secure as human beings with observable rights."

Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS), Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Representative Donald Payne (D-NJ) stressed the need for a strong response to Darfur from the U.S. government. They called upon both the U.S. and the UN to term the situation genocide and to respond accordingly. Sen. Brownback and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) will travel to Darfur next week and report back to their colleagues in the congress.

Rep. Payne announced that he will introduce legislation to underscore this need to classify the atrocities as genocide and implement a Darfur resettlement plan to rebuild communities and reclaim seized land. A day before the event at the Holocaust Museum, Rep. Payne helped organize a Congressional Black Caucus press conference on Darfur. At that event, Payne and others, including House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA), urged Americans to sign the petition on Darfur posted on the Africa Action website (http://www.africaaction.org/). That petition urges that the U.S. government classify the crisis in Darfur as genocide under international law, and respond accordingly. The Episcopal Public Policy Network this week urged its members to sign that petition. After 30,000 signatures are collected they will be sent to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

As Griswold and others have noted, the situation in Darfur has reached a point of dire urgency. "The rainy season has set upon Darfur," wrote Griswold, "and widespread famine appears on the horizon. Moreover, new reports surfaced this week that polio is spreading within the Darfur region in epidemic proportions. Indeed, as the International Crisis Group has noted, 'every day we continue to look past this terrible record of death and destruction, we ensure that it will continue and intensify.'"

The full text of the Presiding Bishop's letter is available at: