reflections on lecture 1

Tonight I attended a lecture given by an Egyptian Human Rights lawyer who has worked with refugees and Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) from Darfur for the past 9 years. (In case you care, in super simple terms: a refugee is a person seeking refugee who has crossed an international border whereas an IDP is someone who has been forced to relocate but within the same country (i.e.: people from New Orleans that relocated to Chicago after Hurricane Katrina are IDPs)).

It’s situations like these that make me feel truly naïve to what is currently, in the very moment that I’m writing, happening to human beings in the world and more so, to what atrocities “human beings” are capable of committing.

Genocide is happening today- in Darfur, Sudan. (And in case you didn’t know, Sudan is the country south of Egypt.) But it’s more than genocide. For example, women in supposedly protected camps are getting raped as they go to the bathroom. They started asking for a brother/husband/son to accompany them, but that just led to a killed brother/husband/son and a raped women. Not worth it, to some. If they desire to prosecute 1) there are unreasonable court fees, which no one has and 2) if the accused is not convicted then the woman risks flogging for infidelity. That’s ONE injustice besides genocide.

March of this year, 13 International Aid agencies were kicked out of Darfur…thus IDPs are grossly increasing and aid is grossly decreasing…

I’ll stop here but if you want to read more the International Refugee Committee, (www.irc.org) in particular has done some great work on the ‘situation.’

The stories he told were almost incredible, but what really struck me was to be able to listen to a man who has dedicated (conscientiously or not) to getting on the inside and serving these people. He has learned and continues to learn how to maneuver systems based in corruption and vile hatred. He risks his life for justice because as he said, “peace does not exist without justice.”
I must say it really re-affirmed what I am doing in Cairo, it adds a lot of fuel to my fire to learn and be able to fight and simultaneously intimidates me about how much I have to learn…