Council to host webinar on Lessons of Darfur: Acknowledgement, Justice and Peacebuilding?

Fermanagh and Omagh District Council is organising the third in its series of talks on human rights atrocities around the world as part of its International Lessons Programme designed to help people here to understand the past from a global perspective and to understand and learn lessons from it.

The talk ‘Lessons of Darfur, Acknowledgement, Justice and Peacebuilding’ will take place online on Wednesday 24 November at 10.00am.  The event will include contributions from ‘Waging Peace’ and a survivor of the genocide in Darfur.

Darfur is a region in Sudan, in North East Africa. It is home to an eclectic mix of people and places: there are more than one hundred and fifty groups of people who share languages, religion and traditions but also have different culture, ways of living and histories.

Like every place Darfur has a rich and complex history. In the 1980s Colonel Gaddafi, who ruled neighbouring Libya, sought to cause instability in the area thereby further increasing his power base in the region. Gaddafi began to tell the ‘Arab’ peoples of Darfur that they were part of a superior race, reminiscent of another despot, and that they should demand greater rights in Darfur than inferior ‘African’ people, who were seen to be landowners. The Janjaweed, secretly armed by Gaddafi, commenced a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the “African” population in Darfur. Villages were destroyed and over 200,000 people were killed. Millions more were displaced either to escape the genocide or coerced into leaving. By 2004 what was happening in Darfur was recognised as genocide – an attempt to wipe out the ‘African’ peoples on Darfur.

Speaking about the event Fermanagh and Omagh District Council’s Chair, Cllr Errol Thompson said;

“The genocide in Darfur only tentatively ceased with the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement between the Sudanese authorities and several rebel factions to end armed hostilities in August 2020 so it is very recent.

The horrific scenes which were broadcast on our screens in news reports and in documentaries demonstrated the callousness and inhumanity which man is capable of inflicting against their fellow human beings.

I hope that the testimony of a survivor of the conflict will adequately convey the horror and futility of war.”

Waging Peace, who are also contributing to the event, is a registered charity that supports Sudanese refugees to build meaningful lives in the UK. It campaigns against human rights abuses in Sudan which continue to blight the lives of citizens. It offers awareness raising talks and survivor testimonies, such as this one to educate people and understand what has happened in Darfur.

To register for this event please contact Fermanagh and Omagh District Council’s Good Relation team by telephone on 0300 303 1777 or by email at goodrelations@fermanaghomagh.com.

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