A message from Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth
(New York, December 10, 2004) — As we commemorate Human Rights Day, we are challenged by how little the world has done to save the people of Darfur, in western Sudan, from the year’s greatest human rights disaster. With the Sudanese government and its ethnic militia well along in their campaign of murder, rape, pillage, and forced displacement, and after several Security Council resolutions on the Darfur crisis, the governments of the world can no longer claim not to know. Now that tens of thousands of civilians have died and some 1.6 million have been forced from their homes, Darfur is clearly on the international agenda. But that has provided little solace for the victims in Darfur. There has been much international hand-wringing, many expressions of outrage, but far too little meaningful response. The international community has moved from ignorance to concern to feigned action – but not more. Coming a decade after the Rwandan genocide, this meager response mocks our vows of “never again.”
Click here to read the full statement.
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