|
All eyes are on the Sudan following the arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1593,
concerning genocide and war crimes in Darfur. The UN Security Council referred the case to the former Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, after the investigation of Sudan's own special prosecutor had not led to war prosecutions,
suggesting the failure of institutions of justice within the country. Events of this magnitude are to be expected given the pervasive political violence that engulfed the country following its independence from British rule in January 1956. Ever since, the
Sudan was converted into a theater of atrocity that shattered lives and rendered ordinary citizens perpetual refugees and internally displaced people in a vast territory, that once was the largest in the African continent. Within this context, this lecture
will examine multiple topics pertaining to culture, society and politics. It will probe in depth local, national, international, and transnational responses to the devastation of Darfur. This lecture will address wide-ranging forces pertaining to ethnicity,
militarization, banditry, border politics, diasporic activism, and marginality. Explication of these forces is essential for overcoming the rampant oversimplification of the conflict among peoples with long histories of intermixing and reciprocity in a complex
geography.
|
