In September 2008, Dream for Darfur closed the door on our China-Olympics-Darfur campaign, and began a new campaign: the Genocide Prevention Project.  ( Find out more about the Genocide Prevention Project)

What Dream for Darfur Accomplished – and What's Next

Dream for Darfur was always designed to end after the Beijing Games.  When we began in May 2007 we had a specific mission:  to use the 2008 Beijing Games as a way to press China to use its influence with the Sudanese regime to bring security to the Darfur region. 

In large measure as a result of pressure that linked China and the Olympics to Darfur, Beijing took important, unprecedented actions at the UN.

In July 2007, Beijing voted to authorize the UNAMID peacekeeping force for Darfur.  This followed four years of China aggressively preventing similar attempts to authorize UN peacekeepers. 

In June 2008, China joined the UN Security Council in calling on Sudan to cooperate fully with the ICC.  This was the first time that the Security Council directly addressed Sudan's failure to cooperate with the court.  China’s tacit support of the statement was a striking departure from past actions, notably Beijing’s abstention from the UNSC resolution that referred Darfur to the ICC in 2005. 

These actions were milestones and moved policy debates about Darfur forward.  Many commentators have said that China took these steps in order to protect its image in the lead-up to the Games.  Dream for Darfur also raised significant awareness about China’s complicity in the Darfur crisis among the media, corporate sector, and policy circles.  We made the issue, quite literally, front-page news and kept global attention focused on the crisis.  (In fact, our analysis of media coverage shows that a significant proportion of coverage about Darfur during the past year was generated by events linking Darfur to China and the Games.)

The coverage was taken seriously; it appeared, repeatedly, in the most influential news outlets in the world:  The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Economist, The Financial Times, the BBC, NPR, and all the major wires, among others.  Coverage by these outlets was a tacit endorsement of our campaign as a serious force.   (See a sample collection of articles about the campaign, including the New York Times Magazine’s profile of Dream for Darfur.)

Finally, it is significant that our campaign was covered in major international media outlets as well.  China, looking out for its image across the world in the lead-up to the Games, was faced with global criticism about Beijing’s complicity in the Darfur genocide.  This was due, mainly, to our symbolic Olympic Torch Relay through countries that experienced genocide.  (Watch videos of our international torch relay. )

In the aggregate, we rate our campaign a success.  In our view, the Darfur community’s advocacy aimed at China in the lead-up to the Games helped stave off further collapse in Darfur:  we posit that the situation in Darfur could have been worse had China not been worried about its image before the Games. 

Going forward, China is now forever linked to the Darfur genocide. This was a critical accomplishment:  the Olympics have gone away, but the Darfur genocide has not.  China still needs to be pressed to act. 

A comprehensive final report about Dream for Darfur is available upon request:  646-823-2412/ .