Aid workers fear a new disaster as militia forces close in on a major Darfur city.

On a sunny April afternoon in 2006, thousands of people flocked to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for a rally with celebrities, Olympic athletes, and rising political stars. Their cause: garner international support to halt a genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.

“If we care, the world will care. If we act, then the world will follow,” Barack Obama, then the junior Illinois senator, told the crowd, speaking alongside future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That same week, then-Sen. Joe Biden introduced a bill in Congress calling on NATO to intervene to halt the genocide in Sudan. “We need to take action on both a military and diplomatic front to end the conflict,” he said.

    • livus@kbin.social
      1·
      6 months ago

      No one here has been hearing about it in the news for hundreds of years tho (unless some of you are undead/vampires).

      Arguably the roots of the Sudan conflict go back to the 1300s.

      But in both cases the modern nation-state conflicts kicked off after the colonization of the 19th centuries, and in both cases most of us have been aware of it for decades.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
        21·
        6 months ago

        and in both cases most of us have been aware of it for decades.

        As an American, I can tell you that is not at all true about Sudan here, sadly.

        • livus@kbin.social
          2·
          6 months ago

          Is it naive of me to think American news must have at least reported on the international intervention into the 2004-2005 genocide?

          And the separation of Sudan into two countries in 2011? Those were both pretty big; I thought that would be why the person above was calling this an old conflict.

          • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            6 months ago

            I think it was more reported in News, not news. Actual News has been getting harder and harder to find as “news” providers shift toward entertainment or outrage. If it doesn’t drive clicks, it’s not worth the cost. Not many people go far out of their way to find actual News

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
            21·
            6 months ago

            It reported on it sparingly and not with enough detail to make it clear about the history of the region. And it certainly hasn’t been in the news since, so it’s out of the national consciousness at this point. Many people alive today were too young to even remember that genocide. I was in my late twenties and I’m not young.

          • Match!!@pawb.socialEnglish
            1·
            6 months ago

            US news absolutely did but all i remember is that early YouTuber who made sweet hiphop remixes of Bush speeches

        • Deway@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          Boston Legal did an episode about in 2005, as a non-American that’s all I know about the media coverage in the US. But that should have been seen by at least 2 million people. Plus reruns.