This has legitimately nothing to do with weird news from Japan, but it's something that is important to me, that I've been following for a few years now. Let's keep our fingers crossed on this one:
Sudan president announces Darfur ceasefire
KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has announced a unilateral ceasefire by government forces in the devastated Darfur region and is calling for rebels to join in peace negotiations.
The announcement Wednesday launches a new push by the Khartoum government to show it is willing to make peace in Darfur, where at least 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes in fighting since 2003.
Darfur's multiple rebel groups have so far dismissed the government peace moves, calling them insincere, and has not signed on to a cease-fire. Past cease-fires announced by Khartoum have collapsed.
Al-Bashir also says he's willing to pay compensation to Darfurians who lost their homes to help them return and rebuild.
Here is more information on Darfur, from Wikipedia:
The influence of an ideology of Arab supremacy propagated by Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi that began to be acted upon by Darfurians, including those identified as "Arab" and "African". A famine in the mid-1980s disrupted many societal structures and led to the first significant fighting amongst Darfuris. A low level conflict continued for the next 15 years, with the government coopting and arming "Arab" militias against its enemies. The fighting reached a peak in 2003 with the beginning of the Darfur conflict, in which the resistance coalesced into a roughly cohesive rebel movement. The conflict soon came to be regarded as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world. Over 2.5 million people have been displaced since the beginning of the conflict. Many of these refugees have gone into camps where emergency aid has created conditions that, although extremely basic, are better than in the villages, which offer no protection against the various militias that operate in the region
Sudan also suffered the effects of a civil was through the 80's and into the 90's. One result of this was the now famous Sudanese Lost Boys. Some info:
Many of the boys came from the predominantly Christian southern section of Sudan who were fleeing persecution by Muslims that dominated northern Sudan. The name was given by aid organizations, including the International Rescue Committee program which resettled some of these refugees from Sudan to the United States.
In 2001, about 3801 Lost Boys arrived in the United States, where they are now scattered in about 38 cities, averaging about 100 per city.[1] Halted after 9/11 for security reasons, the program restarted in 2004, but peace talks were underway in Sudan, and so other refugee crises in other countries took priority.[1] As of 2006, the largest population of Sudanese refugees in the United States is in Omaha, Nebraska which hosts about 7,000 people.[2] A variety of charities helped bring Sudanese refugees to the United States, such as Catholic Charities. A variety of programs have been done to help and understand these displaced people, everything from reconnecting to the their traditional dancing [3] to dental work to replace teeth which had been removed by traditional custom, but whose loss is negative in the USA [4].
Most of the boys were orphaned or separated from their families when government troops systematically attacked villages in southern Sudan killing many of the inhabitants, most of whom were civilians.[1] The younger boys survived in large numbers because they were away tending herds or were able to escape into the nearby jungles.[1] Orphaned and with no support, they would make epic journeys lasting years across the borders to international relief camps in Ethiopia and Kenya evading thirst, starvation, wild animals, insects, disease, and one of the most bloody wars of the 20th century.[1] Experts say they are the most badly war-traumatized children ever examined.[1]
When villages were attacked, girls were raped, killed, taken as slaves to the north, or became servants or adopted children for other Sudanese families. As a result, relatively few girls made it to the refugee campsThe book What is The What, by Dave Eggers (and yes here I am plugging one of my favorite writers, attempting cool by association) is a phenomenal account (they only paid me about twenty bucks to say this, I swear) of one boy's journey through Sudan and into the United States.
Other sites to check out:
http://www.savedarfur.org
http://www.valentinoachakdeng.org/
Here's a trailer for a documentary about Sudan (you can watch Sudan docs in their entirety on youtube by simply searching "Sudan Documentary):
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