Blog

• Sep 29 2008

  The United Nations, The Bush Adminstration & failure in Darfur

  posted by Raquel Lins

  [Note:This is a report originally posted by "Google Darfur": http://www.myspace.com/googledarfur or
  www.googledarfur.com]
  
  If you have had the chance to watch "Google Darfur" great!
  If you haven't already click the player below and you can watch over 50 minutes of what is happening for the people of Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic for free.
  
  To summarize what we discovered when we filmed Google Darfur, we found refugees having to wait weeks to be registered just to be entered into the camps. While they are waiting for that registration process, they receive no food from the (WFP) World Food Programme because they are not registered.
  
  Meanwhile once they get into the camps the amount of food they are given is so small that malnutrition rates are often higher in the refugee camps then outside of them. Security is so volatile that refugees searching for firewood are often beaten, raped and sometimes killed.
  
  The United Nations and The WFP have spent many billions of dollars we know that much, the WFP in 2006 alone took in 2.9 billion in donations! Why are people hungry? Why aren't people safe? Where is the security?
  
  The United Nations promised last year that by year ending 2007 they would have 26,000 peacekeepers on the ground in Darfur.
  
  We knew this wouldn't happen,
  we talked about it but those who work with us to help the people of Darfur Chad and the C.A.R. thought we were just being pessimistic. Well it is September 18th 2008 and the amount of troops the United Nations say they will have on the ground is... 13,000 troops by years end 2008.
  
  We had an interview with a person from the United Nations
  whose role is to coordinate humanitarian relief for refugees
  and internally displaced people in Chad and the C.A.R
  
  We told him what you just read, he said he was "Surprised".
  He said he was hearing that things were "Stable".
  How can you coordinate humanitarian relief when you do not know what is going on?
  
  The United Nations legacy of failure in Darfur, Chad and Central African Republic goes unnoticed today especially in American media. Its election season and unless you are famous for eating moose burgers you can forget the American media. Its probably a good thing because the media never really tells the truth about what's really going on anyway, Just what they think is necessary to further our interests in the region.
  
  Meanwhile, millions of people are swept under the rug of insecurity to be forgotten and starved.
  
  But don't count on Save Darfur to come in and help those folks, none of the money you donate to Save Darfur the organization ever gets to Darfur. That money is used to pay the salaries of the lobbyist that work in Washington D.C.
  
  Google Darfur isn't a behemoth like Save Darfur.
  We don't have big budgets and loads of people working for us.
  
  We have volunteers and we have never made a profit from our work. We have used every dollar we made from the sale of the DVD to help the people of Chad and Sudan. You can count on us to remain small and grassroots oriented. If not for any other reason but because the powers that be do not want us to be heard. Because they know we will tell the truth. And they cannot be bothered with truth when there is oil to think about.
  
  It appears as if the rest of the world might be waking up to that fact. The one good thing the people of Darfur can be hopeful for is that the Bush administration is on their way out of office and maybe America will get a president that actually cares more about the people of Darfur, Chad and the C.A.R then about the resources underneath them.