Durbin on Darfur: Act Soon or Genocide will have Occurred on Our Watch

Press Release

Durbin on Darfur: Act Soon or Genocide will have Occurred on Our Watch

United States Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) called on the President, the United Nations and the African Union to immediately develop a comprehensive strategy to address the ongoing crisis in Darfur in a resolution unanimously passed by the Senate late yesterday. A similar resolution was also introduced this week in the House, marking a final joint statement on Darfur by the 110th Congress. Durbin urged the parties to end the violence, participate in efforts to further peace talks, work to ensure the full deployment of the UN-African Union peacekeeping force, and ensure the free flow of humanitarian aid In Darfur.

"Years from now, we cannot allow ourselves to look back and say we did nothing while a genocide happened in Darfur," Durbin said. "The U.S. and the global community have a moral responsibility to speak out and act to save the people of Darfur. I hope President Bush will, in his few months remaining in office, use the full weight of the presidency to take definitive action and put an end to the violence in Darfur."

Four years ago, the House unanimously affirmed that the situation in Darfur was genocide. Since then, Congress has passed legislation increasing economic pressure on Sudan and the UN Security Council has imposed arms embargos. Yet the crisis in Darfur has continued.

In May, 28 other Senators joined Senator Durbin in a letter to President Bush saying that it was time for definitive U.S. leadership to bring a long-term resolution to the crisis in Sudan. This bipartisan letter from almost a third of the Senate said,

"Fourteen years ago the world watched as genocide unfolded in Rwanda. Despite dire warnings and pleas for help, 800,000 people were brutally killed in less than one hundred days. Today the world looks back in painful regret at its failure to take action. Yet, we are likely to face a similarly harsh historical judgment if we do not once and for all take action against the genocide in Darfur."

Despite this appeal and promises to the contrary, the Bush Administration has not done enough. The Sudanese regime continues to launch horrific violence against its own people, creating untold human suffering and a mounting refugee crisis. It is also brazenly obstructing the deployment of a historic peacekeeping force -- a force that is still only one-third deployed more than one year after it was approved by the UN Security Council.

In March, the United States Senate passed a similar resolution introduced by Senator Durbin. That resolution was cosponsored by more than a third of the Senate.

Durbin is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, the first ever congressional committee focused solely on the issue of human rights. Late last year, the President signed the Sudan Divestment and Accountability Act. That bill, drafted in part by Senator Durbin, gives federal support to state and local governments, seeking to divest from Sudan.

Today's resolution was co-sponsored by Senators Snowe, Kerry, Lugar, Obama and 25 other members of the Senate.

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