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to the extreme danger and lack of security. Save the Children and Relief International, for instance, were actively helping but have been forced to leave due to Janjaweed attacks on their workers and their equipment and vehicles. Oxfam, which has been extremely active in providing assistance, has had to close some stations for the same reason. Cars carrying medicine and suppies are regularly hijacked. At least twelve aid workers have been killed since May of this year.

Even in areas where less attacks are taking place, a lack of funds is drastically hurting the humanitarian cause. As the attacks increase and the numbers of people needing help swell, money dwindles. The UN World Food Program was forced to lower food rations in Darfur drastically in late April, and can no longer provide even the minimum amount of food needed to keep people alive and healthy. Conditions in the camps are so bad and the camps are so overcrowded that in some cases there is only one latrine for hundreds of people.

In 2005, the world finally began to respond to this crisis. The United Nations officially acknowledged the genocide in March of that year. The United States was slower, finally making an official acknowledgement early this year. The African Union has been trying to keep peace, but they have been told that without international aid they will have to leave at the end of October 2006. If they are forced to leave, and UN peacekeepers do not take their place, there will be no one to defend the camps and the relief workers in them. The organizations will be forced to pull their people out.

Every day, more people die in Sudan than died in New York on 9/11.

Things are only getting worse. The fighting is spreading across the border from Darfur into Chad, where many of the camps are located. More and more people are dying or being displaced. Children are growing up knowing nothing but violence and hunger. Human life is being held as something of no value, and no matter how hard the relief organizations strive to help, they can not do enough unless the concerned citizens of the international community speak up, and assert enough pressure on their governments to influence the Sudanese government to stop this unspeakable bloodshed.

It may seem that there is little each of us can do. But we are not powerless! If this was the 1940's, and we could do even one small thing to stop the genocide being carried out in Germany at Hitler's command, we would do so, wouldn't we? We need to do something

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