Marketing Darfur
washingtonpost.com: Marketing Darfur
I know there's been a cease-fire signed. But I still maintain a healthy doubt about progress based on the inaction towards a meaningful end to the genocide in Sudan.
Apparently, I'm not the only one ... although I wish I was. Sebastian Mallaby's update on the work of Eric Reeves in spreading the word through the two biggest tools of the geek trade - intellect and internet - is well worth the read.
The question now is whether Reeves's prescriptions will be heard, too: that a far more determined effort must be made to get food and protection to Darfur's people, who have been driven from their fields by the army and its militia allies. For now, the signs aren't good. After a spike of energy last year, Darfur diplomacy has been sidetracked into a dispute about which sort of international court should be empowered to try its war criminals. But the moral power of Reeves's message cannot be counted out. Without tougher action, Darfur's death toll may be even worse this year than it was last year. Is the Bush administration going to claim that 300,000 more deaths are somehow not "marketable"?