U.S. and European media

December 10, 2022

Agence France-Presse: Bush to meet Darfur activist, bloggers. US President George W. Bush was to mark Human Rights Day on Wednesday by meeting with an activist from Sudan's troubled Darfur province and speak with bloggers from Belarus, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, and Myanmar, the White House said. First, Bush will meet in the Oval Office with doctor and writer Halima Bashir "to get a first hand account of the horrible conflict and suffering taking place in Darfur," said spokesman Carlton Carroll. Bashir, the co-author of "Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur," has spoken out internationally "about the atrocities committed" in Darfur, the spokesman said in a statement.

Reuters: Darfur conflict ravages forests, environment-report. Sudan's Darfur conflict has devastated the environment in the region, stripping forests and destroying farmland, according to a U.N. report. Tree cover has become so sparse in some areas that Darfuris often have to travel more than 75 km (50 miles) from their camps to find enough wood to sell or use for fuel, it added. "We're now seeing extreme stress on the environment around many of the camps and the major towns in Darfur," said UNEP's Sudan country director Clive Bates in a statement. "We need to plant millions of trees and introduce new technologies for construction and energy as quickly as humanly possible."

Reuters: Obama urged to make genocide prevention a priority. A high-level U.S. taskforce on preventing genocide said on Tuesday it expected President-elect Barack Obama to support its call for a $250 million fund to back emergency action in high-risk countries. The Genocide Prevention Task Force, co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, issued a report this week calling for prevention of genocide to be a top priority in the new U.S. administration that will take office in January. Albright told reporters at the United Nations on Tuesday the United States should not bear the burden alone but should lead the way in taking responsibility to prevent mass atrocities and genocide wherever they may happen.

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].