GLOBAL DAY FOR DARFUR: CELEBRITY WOMEN CALL FOR WORLD LEADERS TO END THE VIOLENCE

Are women united against violence and for peace?

September 17, 2007

LONDON: Women celebrities and activists – including the Australian actor Cate Blanchett, model Elle Macpherson and writer Germaine Greer – have urged world leaders to demand an immediate ceasefire in Sudan’s Darfur region and the swift deployment of an expanded peacekeeping force there.

The women made the statement in an open letter to newspapers around the world on Saturday before the United Nations General Assembly meeting to discuss the crisis this week.

Their letter was also published before street protests in Britain, the US, New Zealand, South Africa and Japan marked Global Day for Darfur yesterday.

Organisers including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Save Darfur Coalition urged protesters to wear blindfolds and to tell world leaders not to “look away now”.

“The crisis in Darfur and eastern Chad remains one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. The international community must not look the other way as the situation deteriorates,” said the letter by the 26 activists, eight of whom recently travelled to the western region of Sudan.

More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have fled their homes since ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese Government in 2003, accusing it of decades of neglect. The Government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the Janjaweed – a charge it denies.

Efforts are under way to speed up the deployment of a 26,000-strong African Union-UN peacekeeping force in Darfur that is to replace a smaller, ineffectual mission of African Union troops.

The letter urged politicians meeting at the UN to “move beyond sympathy for the suffering” and to “step up the pressure on all parties in the conflict to agree to an immediate ceasefire”.

Other signatories included the US actor Mia Farrow; Dame Anita Roddick, the Body Shop founder who died in England last week, and the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Associated Press

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