How One Agency Is Trying to Bring Peace to Sudan
an article by Maryann Kempi

In my class this week at Saint Joseph College I participated in a course called Cultural and Global Perspective and we had a guest speaker come in to talk to us about the Genocide taking place currently in Sudan. Christopher Allen Doucot of the Hartford Catholic Worker Hospitality House was the guest speaker who recently returned from Sudan on a humanitarian mission and talked to us about his experience.

From Christopher’s trip to Dafur he found that thousands of people are going days without food or water because the rainy season is over and all the river beds have dried up. The drought and the burning down of their villages by the military and janjaweed have caused the people in Derej which are mostly women and children to be forced to leave their villages.

In all surveys conducted by MSF the leading cause of death for those over age of 5 years was violence rather than disease or malnutrition. Christopher also stated that there have been over 70,000 people killed in the past two years, and in Dafur 20 kids die a day.

Although the government will not permit humanitarian aid agencies operating in the area to deliver the necessities such as water food and aid, Christopher along with other humanitarians were able to provide direct aid, food, clean water to the suffering at three different camps. They were also able to distribute $20,000 to other groups doing work in Darfur, to help provide more food and aid, while at the same time try to confront the root cause of the suffering. They are doing this by using non violence interventions by identifying contacts in Dafur that embraced a nonviolent political philosophy that would welcome the involvement of internationals.

If you would like more information about the work they are doing in Sudan you can contact The Hartford Catholic Workers by their website www.catholicworker.org.

DISCUSSION

Question(s) related to this article:

What can we do for the people of Sudan?


Can we help bring peace to Northern Uganda


As a reader, you are invited to join in the discussion of this article based on any of the above question(s): just click on the question, read the previous comments and add a new reply. You may also enter a new discussion topic on this article - see bottom of this page.

Thematic forum(s) in which this article is being discussed:

GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE

LATEST READER COMMENT:

CPNN has received the following request:

Dear Brethren,

Greetings. I am looking for resources on "Reconciliation, Tolerance & Forgiveness"e.g. Videos & DVD's. Working in the 19 years war ravaged Northern Uganda, we're faced with situation which demands Reconciliation, Tolerance and forgiveness between former Lords Resistance Army rebel and returnees and Civilians in communities where they have been resettled. They continue to call them killers, and all sorts of names they can find. Though superficially they confess reconciliation & forgiveness, they still ridicule, abuse & insult them of their past atrocities.. . ...more.

This report was posted on January 15, 2005. The moderator is Roxanne.

If you wish to start a new discussion topic on this article, please copy the title of this article which is How One Agency Is Trying to Bring Peace to Sudan and its number which is 222 and enter this information along with your discussion question and a brief text on the new topic form.

A few stories are retained on the main listings if they are considered by readers to be a priority. If you have not already done so, please take the time to check a box below: should this article be considered as a priority?