IRD, United Methodists, and Presbyterians Work Together to Stop Starvation in Sudan

By Faith McDonnell

Genocide in Sudan is one of those issues that brings together strange bedfellows. Groups that don’t agree on much else can come together to oppose the deliberate starvation of innocent civilians by their own government and to urge international action. In fact, if any issue has forced the reluctant to see the truth about violent Islamic supremacism around the world, it is Sudan. That’s because it really isn’t an “issue.” It’s people.

Last Friday, 123 organizations, including The Institute on Religion and Democracy, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness, and the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society, sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), urging that it address the humanitarian crisis in Sudan caused by the Government of Sudan. Act for Sudan, an alliance of advocacy and groups and individual activists of which IRD is a founding member, was also a signatory.

Like IRD, the Washington offices of both the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have had direct contact with the people of Sudan. We have all heard the testimony of those who have lived under attack of all their lives from their own government, those who have had countless family members and friends die, and those whose land has been stolen and children enslaved because of the color of their skin. And at this moment in time, we have all heard the reports of those whose people in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan and in Blue Nile State are being killed and deliberately starved to death by the Islamist regime of Omar al Bashir, the ICC-indicted war criminal.

In addition, we have seen the failure of the Obama Administration to act, particularly in any way similar to the way it did for the Arab “Spring” of Egypt and Libya. Since Khartoum began waging war on the Nuba in June 2011, advocacy and humanitarian groups warned that if aid was not delivered before the rainy season began to people hiding in caves in the Nuba Mountains and seeking shelter in refugee camps, there would be thousands and thousands that would starve. But although some aid was provided, most aid — to these self-sufficient people who were prevented by bombs and gunfire from sowing crops — was directed for distribution into the hands of the very regime that was starving them.

Now the rainy season is coming to an end, and many fear that once again the UNSC will allow Khartoum to cause deadly delays in any action by suggesting that it will cooperate and then refusing. The September 22 letter demands action by the UNSC to put an end to the Sudanese regime’s aerial bombardment campaign of innocent civilians and its blockade of food to those that are starving. The letter also demands that the United States and the UN seek alternative methods of aid distribution if Khartoum will not cooperate.

Perhaps one of the remaining differences of opinion amongst the 123 groups that came together to send a message to the UNSC is in their amount of faith in the UN! IRD holds out faint hope for strong, decisive action by that body. We signed onto a letter to the UN, African Union and League of Arab States on August 3, 2012, asking for airlifts of food to the starving during the rainy season. On the one year anniversary of Khartoum’s jihad against the Nuba, June 6, 2012, we signed onto a letter to the UNSC demanding sanctions and consequences on the Sudan regime. And on April 24, 2012, just prior to a UNSC emergency meeting on Sudan, we urged an end to the moral equivalency and impunity and impose consequences on Sudan. At the very least, our letters document our actions and the UNSC and the United States government’s inaction. They witness to the stand that we have taken in this one of many avenues of advocacy we travel in our fight against genocide in Sudan.