Issue date: 7/31/08 Section: Forum

I had a dream the other night. I guess it was a bit more of a nightmare really. The details have become blurry as days have passed, but suffice it to say the setting was Nazi Germany and my life was in danger. One could argue quite convincingly that being a Jew and bookmarking BBC Africa on my computer would predispose me to these types of nights.

But usually nightmares end once one awakens. Not so with mine.

When I woke up, there was still a genocide occurring. This genocide is in Africa - Sudan, specifically - at the hands of that country's diabolical president, Omar al-Bashir, and his camarilla of murderers and crooks. In the four years since the genocide began, they have succeeded in murdering up to 400,000 innocent civilians and forcing over 2.5 million innocent civilians to flee their homes. And the violence rages on.

After years of collective inaction from the international community, a sign of progress has finally emerged from this dismal status quo. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, has sought an arrest warrant for President Bashir on charges of genocide and war crimes.

There happen to be a couple of major snags that have many skeptical as to the efficacy of this move. For one, the proceedings are sure to be arduous, potentially granting a recalcitrant Bashir many more years of unpunished violence. Sudan's amiable relationships with Russia and China also make gaining international leverage difficult. Even more troubling is the fact that Sudan does not recognize the legitimacy of the ICC.

So why in the face of all this discouraging evidence I am filled with a tempered feeling of relief? Because at the very least, this is a step in the right direction.

But even as the ICC continues its grand-scale legal proceedings, the question turns to what each of us can do both as individuals and members of the larger Northwestern and Evanston communities to affect change in this seemingly intractable tragedy.

Continued...

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