Natural disasters are easy to mourn, but human disasters are often more devastating, and largely ignored by the industrialized world. Case in point, the response to the tsunami as opposed to the Rwandan or Sudanese genocide, or any other crimes against humanity committed in a country that has nothing to offer us (like oil).
The UNHCR is the UN's Refugee Agency. Their mandate is to lead and coordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. This is the email UNHCR sent out as a response to Katrina:
"America is fortunate to have the national resources and willpower to mount a rapid rescue of New Orleans' refugees in the wake of a devastating natural disaster. But the world has not been as quick to come to the assistance of those adversely affected by on-going man-made disasters - like in Darfur, Sudan. And in the Congo. And in Colombia. These are more costly, longer-term logistical and political challenges. And they pose moral questions that must be answered.
In two weeks the US government and governments around the world will meet at a United Nations world summit meeting in New York to face that moral question squarely. The summit will consider what our collective responsibility should be to man-made disasters in which mass killings of civilians occur. If implemented, the new measure would mean that all states share the "responsibility to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner" to protect civilians from large-scale killings, including ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity.
Hurricane Katrina compels us to take immediate action to save lives. Darfur requires nothing less.
"Now that there is a peace accord for southern Sudan, there is hope for peace in Darfur also," UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres told schoolteachers in eastern Chad's Iridimi camp, home to 15,000 Sudanese refugees...
"We believe there is a window of opportunity that is open," said the UN Refugee Agency's new head, "and the international community must work fast that this window does not close, and that peace can be gained quickly."
Guterres said it is time to refocus world attention on Sudan. "We send an appeal to the international community to help create peace in Sudan, and to invest in creating conditions that are necessary to help Sudanese return to their homes once peace is established," he added in a meeting with refugees and local people.
There are an estimated 500,000 South Sudanese refugees outside the country and some 4.5 million displaced within Sudan, not counting the 200,000 refugees and 1.9 million displaced people who have fled the western Sudanese region of Darfur in the last two years.
About half of all of Sudan's needy refugees and internally displaced are children caught in the crossfire of a man-made disaster."
I'm not trying to belittle this tradgedy, or say that it should not garner the response it has gotten from the American government, media and public. In fact, I whole-heartedly agree that it is shameful that a better response was not made by this government, and that so many people were stranded and left to die in New Orleans when we knew the effect Katrina was going to have there. I am trying to say that this has gotten 24/7 media coverage, outraged citizens and advocacy groups, a personal response by the president (even if it was staged), while thousands of people are being massacred in Darfur and other places and there is not a word from the media and nothing but words from the president. It's yet another American tradgedy. Our inability to look beyond our borders.