As the team begins to share the experiences that they have started to encounter from Chad on yet another trip the word genocide has really taken on a true meaning for me. I realize how much this hits home when two people that have forever changed your life are on the ground in unsafe conditions. Its makes what we all do even more important, knowing that there are millions of lives in these unsafe conditions everyday, continually, that don’t get to come back home where its safe. Being a 22-year-old college student before now I lived such a narrow, self centered life until my eyes were opened. I didn’t know what genocide was. It was never something I had to worry about. My mind was full of thoughts about my future, my social life, and how I was going to be successful in the up coming years. I realized in September when Camp Darfur came to my college that I had a role to play and this and it wasn’t just my world, as I had once perceived it to be. I wanted to make a difference. I was extended an offer to be on the Stop Genocide Now team and now coordinating a new project Tent to Tent. It is so crucial to me as I see these people go through these atrocities that they know our nation cares about them. I don’t know what it would be like to live through genocide. What it would be like to loose my family, to go with out food, or to live in fear day to day. I want the people of Darfur to know we have seen their pictures, heard their voices and are working everyday to save them. The project Tent to Tent is intended to directly connect communities here in America to families in Chad. Through pictures, video clips, and letters people here can forever stay connected with the Darfurian’s, not only while they are in the camps but also staying connected when they finally get to return home to a safe Darfur.

Tim Nonn the founder of an organization Tents for Hope has had such a huge hand in this project and together we have gathered over 22 communities that will be united this trip. In his hometown he organized k-6th graders to paint half of a canvas tent, which is traveling over to Chad as well. In Farchana kids of the same ages will draw pictures on the other half. These drawings that fill the tent will represent much different stories and it will be back in the United Sates to observe when our team finally returns home safely.

For five years now the people trapped in these camps have longed for hope, for support, and for a voice. The refugees have a story that they want the world to know, and the people around our nation want them to know we care about their story. To me this direct connection between communities represents unity. Tent to Tent allows us all to not only stand up for Darfur but beside the people of Darfur, like they are our own.

Read more about our collaboration with the Tents of Hope project featuredat Petaluma 360here!

Hello Friends & Familia:

A year ago, I spent New Year’s in Eastern Chad, where hundreds of thousands of Darfuri refugees have been living for years.  I did not really get to celebrate New Year’s.  This year, on my fourth trip to the camps, I am also close to departing but do get to celebrate with my family before leaving.  My mother, brothers, and sisters with their families will come to my home, and we’ll eat, drink, listen to music, and be together.

I have so many mixed feelings about returning to the camps.  We depart LA on Jan 14, and the first day of i-ACT will be on Jan 19.  You will be able to be a part of this, watching daily video webcasts and participating on our blog.  But, to really be a part of i-ACT, we will be asking you to act and make hope a reality.  You will be asked to do as much as you can to make a difference now for these beautiful people that continue to be in grave danger.

Check out the video for i-ACTzine issue #4.  In it you will see and hear Samantha Power, genocide scholar and activist and beautiful person herself.  She connects the dots between past and present atrocities and speaks about our responsibility to act.  This becomes even more crucial, as the world gets close to letting another promise to send protection come and go.  The year 2008 was supposed to start with a large “hybrid” force (UN and African Union) stepping in to the deathtrap for innocent civilians that Darfur has been for five years.  The force that will be taking over in Darfur will be no where close the 26,000 mentioned in the UN resolution, and it will be under-trained, under-equipped, and will not have a mandate strong enough to protect civilians.  We must hold our leaders accountable.

Thank you for being a part of SGN and i-ACT.  See you from Chad!

Peace,
Gabriel

As we begin a new year, many of us will think about what we accomplished since January 1, 2007 and set our goals for 2008. But in Darfur, the hope will remain the same: to return home, leave the camps behind and begin to rebuild their lives as people, as mothers, fathers and children of Darfur.

December 31st is the deadline for the deployment of a 26,000 strong peacekeeping force made up of global allies from the United Nations and African Union nations (UNAMID). But this will be yet again, another failed promise. The obstacles that UNAMID faces come from not only President al-Bashir, but from the international community as well.

Yes, al-Bashir has failed to accept non-African Union troop pledges for over two months while rejecting troops from Thailand, Nepal, and Nordic countries. He has delayed and denied the use of land in Darfur for UN base camps. He has denied night flights and continues to impose curfews for peacekeepers. Most critically, he is trying to insert language into the agreement that would require UNAMID to notify the Government of Sudan before all movement of troops and equipment. Additionally further language would give Sudanese authorities the right to disable UNAMID’s communications network at any time; a power that parallels the Government’s tactic of blocking cell phone usage before a village attack.

President al-Bashir is doing everything in his power, as a leader of a sovereign nation, to keep private the continued deaths, rapes and pillaging that his regime supports in Darfur. But even as al-Bashir attempts to stop the peacekeeping force, we as the international community should be continuing with our plans for deployment.

We should be preparing our trained peacekeepers to support the overwhelmed and under-funded AU peacekeepers. We, as a global community, we have military departments, and budgets, and technology, but we cannot even supply 24 helicopters and heavy transport trucks to stop ethnic cleansing. The United States said we cannot give vehicles and helicopters as ours are all in use. On December 2 nd, the general of the peacekeeping force said only 6,500 troops and 3,000 police will be on the ground by the proposed deadline of December 31, 2007; that less than a third of the 26,000 promised. And most of these will be an extension of the existing African Union troops already there.

As activists, and a community fighting to end the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, we need to continue to pressure our leaders to make the promise of resolution 1769 real. We need to demand that President Bush stand up to China, Russia and the world. We need to be an example for the world by providing our fiscal and logistical support. Your voice is the voice of Darfurians, please use that voice to demand immediate attention to the failed promise of Resolution 1769.

In October alone, 120 people were killed, 30,000 displaced, seven aid workers killed and 10 vehicles hijacked. The African Union mandate remains one to observe and monitor a 2004 ceasefire agreement between the government and rebels. Nothing has changed on the ground.

Our voices and our hope for change in Darfur need to be stronger in 2008. In two months, we will have allowed ethnic cleansing to continue for 5 years. We will NOT allow this to go on. As you look forward in 2008, hold hope in your heart and take action in your life.

Thank you for all your commitment thus far to end the genocide. We will end this in 2008.

Resources:

• Human Rights Watch and 35 global organizations UNAMID Report
• BBC article “Africa’s Failed Darfur Mission
• Sudan Tribune article: A Skeptical Assessment of Resolution 1769

Stop Genocide Now team members gather this week in Los Angeles to prepare for our fourth trip to the camps and my first trip into a conflict region. Our time is spent following up with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) contacts, checking satellite connections, charging video cameras and, for me, learning an entirely new computer before we depart on Saturday, January 12th. As we prepare for i-ACT and several other projects to be completed in the field, tensions between Chadian rebels and soldiers is on the rise.

January 3, 2008: the US Department of State issued a new travel warning, one that supersedes the warning I wrote about prior to our July 2007 i-ACT. Since our last trip the total number of Darfuri refugees in the 12 Chad camps has reached over 231,000. Additionally, 50,000 Central African Republic refugees have fled violence in their own country to join the growing number of displaced in the region. And all of these civilians are surrounded by ongoing violence between Chad rebel groups and government soldiers.

Skepticism of humanitarian aid workers has increased since France’s Zoe’s Arc workers were accused of kidnapping 100 supposedly orphaned Darfuri children. Bandits continue to target UN and NGO vehicles for carjacking. And unless you work through UNHCR or another aid organization, you will not be able to travel through Chad. The advisory warns: travel in groups, keep a cell phone on you, avoid night travel and leave detailed plans of travel with UNHCR or the US Embassy.

I anticipate that the air in N’Djamena will be thick with fear and exhaustion. That eyes of uncertainty will follow my every move. And that my usual and necessary trip to the market will produce a feeling of sorrow and sadness that I will have never felt before in what is usually the center of every bustling city.

But my feeling of excitement to connect communities and help provide Darfuri refugees with hope and the beginning of new future, one not centered around the idol life in a camp, surpasses anything that a travel warning might create. Out team will be on the ground for three weeks, i-ACT will be on air for 10 days, and when we safely return over 20 communities will be united with survivors. Regardless of any travel warning that anyone could give me, I know that our dedicated team is changing the way the world responds to genocide. And if not us, then no one would be doing it.

• Chad Travel Warning by US Department of State
• Sudan Travel Warning by US Department of State