Hands Up For Darfur

In Sudan over 200,000 people have been killed and at least 2 million people displaced since 2003.

Emily Cadei of student activist group Hands Up For Darfur writes about the appauling genocide in Darfur and what her organisation have been doing to help.

March 9, 2007: In Geneva, UN human rights investigators were attempting to deliver a report to the body’s High Commission for Human Rights, which accuses Sudan’s government of ‘gross and systematic’ human rights violations of its own people in the Darfur region.

Further north in England, University of Oxford students were attending a charity ball to raise money for aid organisations working in Darfur and perhaps to learn about the full scale of the atrocities there for the first time. And in Derby, the university was hosting a panel discussion on the conflict to raise awareness and generate activism on the issue.

Thousands of miles away in Darfur, itself, March 9 was just another day in what has become a seemingly interminable civil war, which is gradually becoming more and more catastrophic in scale.

The conflict, which began four years ago as a counter-insurgency effort by the government and allied militias, has led to the death of more than 200,000 people and the displacement of at least 2 million more. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been steadfast in his rejection of United Nations peacekeeper involvement and to make matters worse, the violence is now spilling over the borders into Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It is unlikely the people of Darfur are aware of the attention their plight has generated in the university halls and parliaments of far-off foreign countries. But they would hopefully be encouraged to know that finally, there are the stirrings of an international movement to effect change. In England, that movement is being led by students.

Lara Nassif first became interested in Darfur after reading We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, journalist Philip Gourevitch’s account of the genocide in Rwanda. It noted, she says, that despite all the uproar following the slaughter of the Tutsis, the world was now standing by as similar atrocities were being committed in Darfur.

Following her first year of undergraduate studies at Oxford, Nassif and several classmates decided that instead of lamenting the situation in Sudan, they wanted to actually do something about it. These discussions spawned the foundations upon which the organisation Hands Up For Darfur (handsupfordarfur.co.uk) would be built. Nassif became the organisation’s president.

In the past nine months, Hands Up For Darfur, or HUFD for short, has hosted a series of events to raise money and awareness for the ongoing human rights crisis in Sudan. These include a charity row-a-thon and a Hands Up for Darfur Day, which featured a discussion panel on how to diffuse the crisis, hosted by Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow. In the process, HUFD has earned the backing of some high-profile individuals - from Shadow Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell to American film actress Sharon Stone.

The culmination of Hands Up for Darfur’s efforts thus far has been the Midnight Moment Ball, held March 9 at the Oxford Town Hall.

The event - part social gathering, part awareness-raising forum - featured a key-note speech by Ishbel Matheson, former BBC correspondent in Africa and the first Western journalist to report on Darfur, and entertainment by Sudanese child-soldier-turned-rapper Emmanuel Jal. All told, the ball raised over £50,000 for HUFD’s two charity beneficiaries - Medecins Sans Frontiers and Kids for Kids, both of whom are performing desperately needed aid operations in the Darfur region.

According to Nassif, the success of the event took even its organisers by surprise, “I am thrilled with how it went, we sold 100 tickets over target, propagating the message about the terrible situation in Darfur more widely across the student population.”

In addition to promoting activism within Oxford, Hands Up for Darfur has teamed up with Aegis Society (aegisstudents.org), a national network of anti-genocide student organisations, to spread the initiative for Darfur across Britain’s universities. Aegis itself is a relatively new student group, spawned from the work of the Aegis Trust, a London-based charity working to publicise and prevent genocide.

The first student chapter was established at Oxford in 2005. The organization now counts 12 societies at uni’s around the country. Seven of these - Birmingham, Nottingham, Nottingham Trent, Leeds, Derby, Manchester, and Sussex - hosted events to raise funds for the HUFD charities over the weekend of March 8 through 12.

Since the ball, Hands Up for Darfur’s committee has taken a step back from their feverish organising, as they contemplate the next steps for the group. Nassif says HUFD will continue to conduct fundraising activities and, come spring term, will team with Oxford’s Aegis Society and other students to promote the university divestment campaign. Currently getting underway, the campaign is working to pressure the university and its colleges to rescind any investments made in companies doing work in Sudan or for the Sudanese government.

In Sudan, meanwhile, the Darfur conflict shows little signs of abating. Recent violence against aid workers and African Union troops sent to patrol the area has threatened the humanitarian missions operating in the region.

Despite meetings with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the secretary general of the Arab League, President Bashir has shown no inclination to bend to international pressure on stemming the violence or accepting UN patrols. But there is tougher talk coming from the governments of the United States and Britain, including agitation for a no-fly zone over Sudan.

While the average individual may feel hopeless to do anything to remedy what is undisputedly a complex political situation, Hands Up for Darfur and other student groups are leading the way in demonstrating how their fellow English citizens can contribute to positive change in Darfur and elsewhere.

The money raised by these groups will make a substantial difference in the lives of those being aided in Darfur. And by continuing to agitate on the issue and demand change, the students involved are making sure Darfur remains on the agenda of those in power.

As Jon Snow said in his closing remarks at the Hands Up For Darfur Day, “If everyone here tells five people about what they have learnt today, then the conflict in Darfur will be one step closer to being resolved.”