July 18, 2005
By Daphne Mack

"I believe citizen action is our only hope," crisis advisor John Prendergast told those gathered at Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) World Refugee Day commemoration held June 27 at the Episcopal Church Center in New York.

Prendergast, who is special advisor to the president of the International Crisis Group, and Bishop Catherine Waynick of Indianapolis were the featured speakers for the event held under the theme "Portraits of Suffering and Courage: Lifting up Sudan."

"Congress needs to hear from us citizen groups [in order] to act," Prendergast said. "Letters are still the quantifiable manifestation of public sentiment."

"One of the heart breaking things about the refugees and internal refugee is that we have more than a generation who has only heard what things were like before the war," Waynick said. "They have never seen their homeland."

Calling the gathering "...a day where we lift up the suffering and courage of 35 million persons in the world, either refugees or internally displaced persons," Richard Parkins, EMM director, prefaced the viewing of a 10-minute excerpt of a documentary on the exodus from Darfur, seen previously on CNN, by saying it was a "very poignant explication of the current human tragedy happening in Darfur."

Fear of retribution

"The refugee plight is common," Prendergast said, referring to the video. "Every one of these people have lived through 10 lifetimes of human suffering."

Prendergast has traveled to Darfur three times in the past nine months and "there is an underground railroad in effect between Darfur and Chad where thousands still haven't settled anywhere out of fear of retribution."

He and Actor Don Cheadle, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in "Hotel Rwanda," wrote about their visit to Darfur and the refugee camps in late January saying, "If we continue to stand idly by, the culpability for the continuation of the atrocities will be all of ours."

Systematic campaign

The crisis in Darfur began in early 2003, when an armed conflict started between an alliance of the Sudanese government forces and ethnic Arab militia and two non-Arab African rebel groups called the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Instead of fighting the rebels, the government forces have waged a systematic campaign against unarmed civilians belonging to the same ethnic groups as the rebel groups – mainly the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa.

According to Human Rights Watch – http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/darfur/index.htm – Darfur's population is estimated at 5 or 6 million; a census has not been taken for many years. The majority of the population is African and estimates of the affected range from 1 to 2 million, which is about 12 to 33 percent of the population.

Of the 1 to 2 million, nearly 158,000 are believed to be in Chad as refugees. There may be another 1 million people in Darfur who have not been hit directly by the crisis, but are affected because displaced family members staying with them have stretched and depleted their resources.

Prendergast stated that the three deadliest conflicts have taken place in Africa's Eastern Congo, Sudan (Darfur and southern Sudan) and Uganda. Citing that 6 million people have died in all three conflicts, he called it a "modern day holocaust." However, the level of attention these situations have received has been minimal.

"Beyond the occasional documentary and one minute segments on NPR (National Public Radio) it's atrocious, in terms of the attention that these people suffering within this conflict need and demand [and are not getting]," hesaid. "The Congo is the epicenter of resource generated human suffering on the continent."

Delaying technique

Watching the response to the devastation in Rwanda has produced a pattern of non-involvement, Prendergast said.

"The plights are portrayed as tribal and common and [we're told] there is nothing we can really do," he said. "It's a delaying technique."

He said the international community uses the divisions as an excuse for inaction. For two years, the Bush administration said it couldn't respond more forcibly to Darfur because China and Russia were sitting on the Security Council and would veto anything more from happening, Prendergast said.

"We apply humanity band aids over these gaping human rights wounds and then we cite the massive amount of humanitarian assistance that we provide as the demonstration of our political will," he said. "But there is still time to act in all these situations."

Support for Darfur

Prendergast identified civilian protection, accountability and promotion of peace as areas of priority to provide the protection "from the violence that continues to rack all through societies."

"Church-based groups, in my view, remain the central back bone of a larger national effort to try and encourage and congeal our government to respond to people like Adam [in the documentary] and the millions like him with nowhere to go," said Prendergast.

EMM's Parkins announced that the Executive Council had adopted, at its June 13-16 meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, a comprehensive resolution affirming the Episcopal Church's continued support for peace in Darfur, and that many of the ideas that Prendergast outlined were encompassed in the resolution.

"So the call to advocacy is a particularly welcome call and our church has been strongly committed to peace in that part of the world," Parkins said.

Benedictine spirituality

After opening with prayer, Waynick spoke about the triad relationship that exists with her diocese, Bor and Brasilla. It resulted in her traveling in 2002 to Bor with the bishop of Brasilla.

Waynick said she was the first bishop to visit the Sudan since 1979 and ordained the first three female bishops there.

She shared vivid memories of the people she met and the difficult and dangerous circumstances that they as visitors had to endure because churches were often bombing sites but, "What we encountered was a really remarkable living out of what we've come to know as a Benedictine spirituality that any visitor that comes to us will be regarded and treated as the Christ," she said. "That marvelous spirit of hospitality was always present no matter how humble the circumstances of the people we were visiting."

She reflected on a House of Bishops meeting in Burlington, Vermont in 2001, where she met some of the "Lost Boys" of the Sudan.

The Lost Boys were the 20,000 children, mostly boys, between 7 and 17 years of age who were separated from their families during the war in southern Sudan. These lost boys trekked enormous distances over a vast unforgiving wilderness, seeking refuge from the fighting. Hungry, frightened and weakened by sleeplessness and disease, they crossed from the Sudan into Ethiopia and back, with many dying along the way.

"I remember that they were very articulate as they shared with us their journey, their flight and years of wandering just trying to find a place to settle," she said. "I can remember one Sudanese boy asking if God made them [Sudanese] for an experiment and not for life."

However, the depth of faith, the deepness, the depth of their desire, and strength to return to their homes, to have peace to have some kind of justice in their lives, was nearly overwhelming, she said.

The Sudanese boy told her that we know God must love us because we are not lost anymore and we are not boys. We have a home here.

More information about the work of EMM is available online at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/emm/.

Episcopal News Service
Daphne Mack is staff writer for Episcopal News Service.