Sound the Alarm

From a distance, I heard eerie high-pitched screams. The noise was actually hundreds of people blowing whistles outside of the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. This Human Rights Day is also a global day of action for Darfur.

In 40 countries across the world, people gathered outside Sudanese embassies to sound the alarm about the use of rape as a weapon of war in Darfur. Refugees told their personal stories, thanked us for being there, and begged us to help others hear their cries for help. I put on my blue beret, the symbol of desperately-needed U.N. peacekeepers, and I joined in the whistle cry for the women and girls of Darfur.

That's who has been targeted in this war. The Sudanese government militia, known as the Janjaweed, have deliberately used rape as a tool of the genocide. Women and girls are vulnerable when the Janjaweed attack their villages and when they must venture outside the camps to collect firewood.

If the tables were turned, if it were your sister, your daughter, your mother at risk, wouldn't you want the world to sound the alarm and take action to save them?

Today's Washington Post includes a message from outgoing U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan about the lessons he has learned: "Only by working to make each other secure can we hope to achieve lasting security for ourselves. This responsibility includes our shared responsibility to protect people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. That was accepted by all nations at last year's U.N. summit. But when we look at the murder, rape, and starvation still being inflicted on the people of Darfur, we realize that such doctrines remain pure rhetoric unless those with the power to intervene effectively -- by exerting political, economic or, in the last resort, military muscle -- are prepared to take the lead."

We ask our elected officials to lead. Read President Bush's Human Rights Day statement on Darfur and Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi's Save Darfur blog entry.

Make Darfur a higher priority. The true measures of success will be when the woman and girls are safe and the killing is stopped.