Google Earth and the US Holocaust Museum bring Sudan’s plight to the desktop

Since 2003, the Government of Sudan and rebel groups have been engaged in a bitter civil war in the Darfur region of the East African nation in a conflict that is estimated to have claimed over 300,000 lives and displaced 2.5 million people. During this conflict the government backed ‘Janjaweed’ militias, who identify as Arabs, have conducted a systematic program of ethnic cleansing in the region of the indigenous African communities through murder, rape and the destruction or theft of property. While the United Nations announced this week that the government of Sudan has accepted a plan to deploy 3,000 UN and African peacekeepers to the area the atrocities in Darfur are still ongoing and a permanent solution far from certain. In 2004 the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (‘USHMM’) declared Darfur a genocide emergency in an attempt to highlight the need for immediate action in the region and have carried on a campaign designed to draw awareness to the unfolding tragedy.