World ignores horrors of Sudan genocide
*Tim McElwee
In 1985, a song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, and sung by dozens of the world’s best known pop/rock singers, urged us to respond to the massive humanitarian crisis that was devastating the people of Ethiopia.
The song, “We Are the World,” focused attention on the fact that widespread famine was threatening the lives of more than 7 million people in Ethiopia. The 60 million raised through the song saved many lives.
But, ultimately, famine and hunger-related disease killed between 500,000 and 1 million Ethiopians between 1983 and 1985.
With that stunning figure in mind, consider this even more alarming fact: In just the next four months, two and a half times that many people will likely die of famine in Sudan. And yet most of the world seems either oblivious to this unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, or simply apathetic to the massive suffering.
Genocidal violence of the ongoing civil war that erupted in April of last year has forced 10 million Sudanese to flee their homes. More children have been displaced from their homes in Sudan than anywhere else in the world.
Both sides of the conflict — the governmental Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces — are guilty of indiscriminate bombing, torture and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. In December 2023, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that both parties to the conflict are guilty of war crimes.
Several countries, such as Egypt, Iran, Turkey and Russia, are actively providing military support and are financially benefitting from the war. But according to a recent Foreign Affairs article by former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and human rights activist John Prendergast, the country most responsible for the starvation and ethnic cleansing taking place in Sudan today is a U.S. ally, the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE must be held accountable for its direct responsibility for the genocide taking place in Sudan; the nation sends massive arms shipments to the Rapid Support Forces in exchange for unscrupulous gold smuggling. In 2022, the UAE imported 39 tons of gold from Sudan valued at more than 2 billion, leading the U.S. State Department to conclude that today the UAE receives nearly all of the gold exported from Sudan.
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-California, the ranking member of the Africa Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, recently introduced a bill that would prohibit further sale of U.S. weapons to the UAE until President Joe Biden can certify that the UAE is no longer providing arms and military hardware to the support forces.
I have written Rep. Jim Banks, urging him to take the small but significant step of co-sponsoring this urgent and important piece of legislation. To date, I have not received the favor of a reply.
Can we any longer sing out that we are the world? If not, why not?
*Tim McElwee of Wolcottville is the former director of the Manchester University Peace Studies Institute.
