1st Edition
Genocide in Darfur Investigating the Atrocities in the Sudan
In response to the ongoing mass murder of Black Sudanese groups in the Darfur region of Sudan by Sudanese government troops and Arab militias, the US government sent the Darfur Atrocities Documentation Team to various points along the Chad/Sudan in order to interview refugees from Darfur. Based on their investigation, US Secretary of State Colin Powell formally announced that ‘genocide has occurred in Darfur and may still be occurring.’ The United States officially accused the government of Sudan of perpetrating genocide - the first time that any government has officially and publicly accused another government of genocide. As a result the United States played a key role in pressuring the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution calling for several measures, including an official UN Commission of Inquiry to conduct a genocide investigation in Sudan itself. This was the first time that any signatory of the Genocide Convention actually triggered provisions of the Convention requiring a UN Security Council response while genocide was occurring.
This book is comprised of essays from contributors who were involved in designing the project and hiring and training investigators, interpreters, and support personnel; US government and nongovernmental organization (NGO) officials involved in the genesis of the project as well as the analysis of the data; and numerous scholars, not all of whom were directly involved with the project, who critique aspects of the documentation project as well as its significance.
Part I: The Background on Darfur
Chapter 1. Disaster in Darfur: An Historical Overview
by Robert O. Collins, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Chapter 2. Moving Beyond a Sense of Alarm Over the Atrocities in Darfur
by Andrew Natsios, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Part II: The Investigation
Chapter 3. Creating the ADT and Making It Work: Turning a Good Idea into Reality
by Nina Bang-Jensen and Stefanie Frease, Coalition for International Justice
Chapter 4. Survey Methodology and the Darfur Genocide
by Jonathan Howard, U.S. Department of State
Chapter 5. The Critical Link: Interpreters
by Helge Niska, Stockholm University, Sweden
Chapter 6. Moving into the Field and Conducting the Interviews: Commentary and Observations by the Investigators
by Samuel Totten and Eric Markusen
Part III: The Genocide Determination
Chapter 7. Making the Determination of Genocide in Darfur
by Steve Kostas, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Coalition for International Justice
Chapter 8. A New Chapter of Irony: The Legal Definition of Genocide and the Implications of Powell's Determination
by Jerry Fowler, Committee on Conscience, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Chapter 9. Prosecuting Gender Crimes Committed in Darfur: Holding Leaders Accountable for Sexual Violence
by Kelly Dawn Askin, Open Society Justice Initiative
Part IV: The Significance of the Darfur Atrocities Documentation Project: A Precedent for the Future? -- The Perspective of 'Outsiders'
Chapter 10. The Darfur Atrocities Documentation Project: A Precedent for the Future? A Perspective from Washington, D.C.
by Taylor Seybolt, U.S. Institute for Peace
Chapter 11. From Rwanda to Darfur: Lessons Learned?
by Gerry Caplan, Independent Scholar, Toronto, Canada
Chapter 12. Proving Genocide in Darfur: The Atrocities Documentation Project and Resistance to Its Findings
by Gregory H. Stanton, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Chapter 13. Atrocity Statistics' and Other Lessons from Darfur
by Scott Straus, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Afterword
Appendices
I. Darfur Refugee Questionnaire
II. Final Report of the Darfur Atrocities Documentation Project Issued by the U.S. State Department
III. Written Testimony of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, 9 September 2004
IV. United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide
V Personnel of the Atrocities Documentation Team
Biography
Samuel Totten is a Professor at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and co-founding editor of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal. He has also been a Fulbright Fellow at the Centre for Conflict Management, National University of Rwanda.
Eric Markusen (MSW, University of Washington; Ph.D., University of Minnesota) was Professor of Sociology and Social Work at Southwest Minnesota State University and a Senior Researcher with the Department of Holocaust and Genocide Studies of the Danish Institute for International Studies.
"The afterword by Markusen and Totten is marked by this sharp contrast between a desire to help and frustration at being unable to do so. This theme runs like a series of counterpoints through the book, yet the conclusion seems to suggest that even in the face of adversity, an unrelenting commitment to the prevention of genocide will ultimately prevail. This might be the true lesson of the present volume. In addition to its solid scholarship, wealth of new information, and elaborate appendices, it is a welcome contribution to all those interested in the Darfur conflict, as well as genocide prevention in general.
Finally, it needs to be mentioned that this is one of the last publications of the recently deceased Eric Markusen—a man whose extraordinary devotion to studying and preventing genocide will not be forgotten." -- Maarten van Voorst tot Voorst, Journal of Genocide Research, 10:1 2008