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Faith-based, Humanitarian, Secular Civic, and Human Rights Organizations Unite to Respond to Massive Crisis in Darfur, Sudan

Unity Statement and Call to Action
The emergency in Sudan's western region of Darfur presents the starkest challenge to the world since the Rwanda genocide in 1994. A government-backed Arab militia known as Janjaweed has been engaging in campaigns to displace and wipe out communities of African tribal farmers.

Villages have been razed, women and girls are systematically raped and branded, men and boys murdered, and food and water supplies targeted and destroyed. Government aerial bombardments support the Janjaweed by hurling explosives as well as barrels of nails, car chassis and old appliances from planes to crush people and property. Tens of thousands have died. Well over a million people have been driven from their homes, and only in the past few weeks have humanitarian agencies gained limited access to some of the affected region.

Mukesh Kapila, the former United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, said on March 19 that the violence in Darfur is "more than a conflict, it's an organized attempt to do away with one set of people." The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has issued its first ever genocide emergency. John Prendergast of International Crisis Group warns, "We have not yet hit the apex of the crisis."

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) estimates that 350,000 people or more could die in the coming months. Ongoing assessments by independent organizations such as Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) suggest that USAID's estimate may be conservative. If aid is denied or unavailable, as many as a million people could perish.

Lives are hanging in the balance on a massive scale.

Call to Action
We commend the efforts of the U.S. government in brokering a peace deal to end the gruesome 21-year Civil War in the South and its generous pledge of $300 million in U.S. humanitarian aid. We also applaud the recent visits of Secretary of State Colin Powell and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to the region of Darfur to assess the atrocities human rights organizations are calling the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. And we congratulate Congress for taking decisive legislative action. But we must not wait for a legal determination of "genocide" to ensure a massive worldwide humanitarian response and call to end the violence and investigate crimes against humanity.

As Elie Wiesel passionately declared at our Sudan Summit on July 14, "the perils of indifference enable killers to kill and tormentors to torment… we cannot stand idly by [the crimes against humanity being committed in Sudan] or all our endeavors will be unworthy… We must act." We therefore call on people of conscience everywhere to take any and all actions permitted by each individual's or organization's abilities and constraints to:

• encourage worldwide efforts to stop the displacement and end the crimes against humanity
• demand massive worldwide governmental humanitarian support and access to match the need
• help in the relief efforts by supporting organizations giving aid
• promote efforts to rebuild villages and return the displaced
• call for a UN Commission of Inquiry to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide

This statement is hereby signed and endorsed by the leaders of faith-based, humanitarian and secular civic organizations joining together as the Save Darfur Coalition formed at a Summit on Sudan hosted by American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

Ruth W. Messinger
American Jewish World Service

Barbara B. Balser
Abraham H. Foxman
Anti-Defamation League

Norman L. Epstein M.D.
C.A.S.T.S.: Canadians Against Slavery and Torture in Sudan

Rev. Donald D. Witherup, SS
Rev. Ted Keating, SM
Rev. Stan De Boe, OSST
Catholic Conference of Major Superiors of Men

Rabbi Paul J. Menitoff
Central Conference of American Rabbis

Rabbi Marla J. Feldman
Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism

Jerry Fowler
Committee on Conscience
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

James S. Tisch
Malcolm Hoenlein
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

Rabbi Saul J. Berman
Edah

Gareth Evans
International Crisis Group

Hannah Rosenthal
Jewish Council for Public Affairs

H. Eric Schockman, Ph.D
MAZON: A Jewish Response To Hunger

Reverend Robert Edgar
Dr. Antonios Kireopoulos
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA

David Robinson
Pax Christi USA

Daniel Sokatch
Progressive Jewish Alliance

Rabbi Perry Raphael Rank
The Rabbinical Assembly

Rabbi Richard Hirsh
The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association

Rabbi David Saperstein
Mark J. Pelavin
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

Mohamed Yahya
Representatives of the Massaleit Community in Exile

Ricken Patel
Res Publica

Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb
Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America

Rabbi Eric Yoffie
Union for Reform Judaism

Robert Goldberg
Morton B. Plant
Stephen Hoffman
United Jewish Communities

Rabbi Jerome Epstein
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism

Shelley Lindauer
Women of Reform Judaism

Richard M. Joel
Yeshiva University

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