Mark Hanis has been closely following the news of the conflict in Darfur since it started two years ago. The grandson of four Holocaust survivors, he knew he had to do something.

But Hanis is just 23. What could he possibly do about Darfur, where more than 180,000 people have died and about two million people have been forced from their homes by pro-government Arab militias who rape women and burn villages.

"I had been trying to answer that question: 'what can I do?'," Hanis said. "With all these policies on mandate and accountability, what can we as citizens do? I'm excited to say: 'A lot'."

Hanis found there is much an individual can do. As co-founder of the Genocide Intervention Fund (GIF), Hanis is part of a flourishing global citizen's movement that is pressuring fellow civilians and the international community to act ethically to protect the people of Darfur, who have been terrorized, raped and killed by Sudan and the pro-government militias, known as the "janjaweed."

Sudan has been accused of war crimes against the black African community. But the government denies masterminding the killing and blames bandits.

In reaction, thousands of students and concerned citizens from around the world have been pressuring governments to do more to protect the people of Darfur. At Harvard, students, faculty and alumni convinced the Harvard Corporation to divest its $4.4 million holdings in PetroChina Company Limited, which has been active in Sudan.

Their success sparked similar divestment movements at U.C.L.A., Swarthmore and countless other colleges. Hundreds of thousands of letters have been written to politicians, demanding action in Darfur.

The grandson of four Holocaust survivors, Mark Hanis founded the Genocide Intervention Fund (GIF), which has plans to directly fund the cash-strapped African Union peacekeepers with supplies rather than arms.

Capitalizing on the interest in this issue, GIF has been fundraising for the cause, and has found an especially creative use for the money it raises. A central question is what can be done with humanitarian aid when the Sudanese government is accused of blocking aid shipments and preventing peacekeepers from doing their job? Because aid will be of no use to those who have already perished in the conflict and because aid workers have been unable to reach large swathes of the population, GIF intends to directly fund the cash-strapped African Union peacekeeper with supplies rather than arms.

Human rights groups, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, and the U.S. Congress have labeled the killing in Darfur "genocide." But the international community's response to Darfur has been painfully slow, with much debate about the "G" word—"genocide," and little action. Until recently.

"It's unbelievable, I've seen nothing like it since the anti-apartheid movement in the '80s and early '90s," said John Prendergast, special advisor to the International Crisis Group and former U.S. State Department advisor. "The two successes that we as a citizen's movement have had really in the last two years since the genocide began were the two Security Council resolutions in late March."

Those U.N. resolutions authorized targeted sanctions against the perpetrators of atrocities in Darfur and allow for the referral of the case in Darfur to the International Criminal Court, which will give much needed accountability. But the more pressing situation of civilian protection is still desperate.

The response to Darfur has been slow partly because the international community has been fearful of disrupting the fragile peace process between north and south Sudan. The Sudanese government and rebels from the south recently agreed to end 21 years of fighting between the Muslim north and Christian and animist rebel groups in the south, which has killed nearly two million people.

But violence in Darfur continues.

Critics, including Prendergast, say there is no way the African Union (AU) can keep the peace in Darfur alone. The fledgling AU has been slow in deploying—there are about 2,300 troops there now and experts agree it will take at least 12,000 troops to protect the civilian population.

The AU expects to have 12,000 on the ground in Darfur within a year. But Darfur needs 12,000 peacekeepers now and some say the only solution is for international troops from NATO to help bridge the gap.

The international community's response to Darfur has been painfully slow, with much debate about the "G" word—"genocide," and little action.

But as Peter Takirambudde, the executive director of Human Rights Watch's African Division says, the AU "is the only game in town" and should be supported with more money and logistics, not troops. Sudan would not tolerate non-African troops, he said. And if Western peacekeepers did deploy in Darfur, it could spark a "jihad" if there was a semblance of "Western invasion of Sudan in the post Iraq era," Takirambudde said.

Despite the lack of a clearly defined mandate to protect civilians, the AU has been successful in the areas where it is deployed, protecting women in refugee camps from the raping janjaweed, he added.

But Suliman A. Giddo, president of the Virginia-based Darfur Peace and Development, disagrees. Giddo sides with Prendergast on this issue, arguing that more international troops are needed in Darfur, where he was raised.

"Nothing has been changed," Giddo said, adding that he receives daily emails about fresh killings by the janjaweed. "If we leave everything to the African Union then we are lost, Darfurians are lost."

Giddo believes the Sudanese government and militia are driven to kill Africans because of a desire for land and they will not stop until the population of Darfur is overwhelmingly Arab. The nomadic Arabs had used African land for grazing for years and the groups used to live in relative peace.

But Giddo says the problems in Darfur have been brewing for decades. When he was in high school (he was one of the only children in his village to be educated) he was suspended for defending the rights of a farmer whose land was under threat from Musa Hilal's father. Musa Hilal is an Arab sheikh and one of the janjaweed's top leaders. His father had asked the government to give him an African farmer's land.

Suliman A. Giddo, president of Virginia-based Darfur Peace and Development, belives that the Sudanese government and militia are driven to kill Africans because of a desire for land and they will not stop until the population of Darfur is overwhelmingly Arab.

"The Arab tribes in Darfur were killing the elites, the educated people, the tribe leaders, the community activists," Giddo said of the situation in Darfur in 1999 when he moved to the United States in fear for his safety.

While Giddo, Prendergast, Takirambudde and others disagree on what exactly is needed to protect civilians in Darfur, they all agree on one thing—the citizen's movement has genuinely helped turn up the heat on the international community and force governments to act.

Both Giddo and Prendergast are on GIF's board of advisors along with a lot of other policy heavyweights including Lt. General Roméo Dallaire, the UN general who famously defied UN orders to withdraw from Rwanda; six U.S. Congress members; U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback; Dr. Zac Nsenga, the Rwandan Ambassador to the United States; and Gayle Smith, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former Senior Director of African Affairs at the National Security Council.

The students who organized GIF recognized their limits and recruited as many experts as they could, including Smith. Hanis said that Smith, in particular, has helped make GIF a reality. She has been acting as a liaison to the African Union, which has agreed to accept GIF's donated money—the first time it has worked with private citizen donors.

By day 50 of their 100-day fundraising campaign, GIF had raised $100,000—just one tenth of its target. But the students graduated in late May and ramped up their fundraising over the summer with parties and lectures, culminating on the National Mall in Washington, DC where displayed thousands of hand prints to shame the US administration into acting. The "hands" symbolize the hand citizens have had in stopping genocide.

Donor countries at a conference in Ethiopia in late May promised an additional $300 million to peacekeepers. So GIF's million dollars will be but a drop in the bucket. But every dollar counts and the money could be used to buy a helicopter or walkie talkies, said Hanis, who was raised in Ecuador and lived in Sierra Leone for seven months.

"We think that there's a gap for citizen engagement in responding to genocide and this is sort of what we want to help fill."

Hanis advises people to hold parties to raise money and educate people about Darfur. And to be creative. He said a man in Britain was holding Salsa for Sudan, donating proceeds from his dance classes.

"Don't take no for an answer. We can change the terms of the debate. No one thought the ICC would be prosecuting these people," Hanis said of the international court. "We think that there's a gap for citizen engagement in responding to genocide and this is sort of what we want to help fill."

Hanis' goal is to make the GIF a permanent organization based in Washington. So unlike many new graduates, he won't be hunting for a job right away—his job is to raise money for Darfur. "I am willing to wait tables and do this at night," he said.




Contributed by Regan Morris, a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. She covers international and business news for various publications including WomensWallStreet and The New York Times. Reprinted with permission from ChangeMakers.net.

To read another Global Envision article about Sudan, see Sudan: A Story of Legal Robbery and Murder.

Learn more about the Genocide Intervention Fund here.