What We Must Do to Bring Security to Darfur

Below are descriptions of Dream for Darfur's upcoming activities.  Click to jump to a section: Switch Over to Darfur | Alternative Opening Ceremony | Darfur Olympics | UNAMID Deployment | The Olympic Truce.

1.  Switch Over to Darfur

We are urging consumers to pledge to turn off the commercials of 15 select corporate sponsors – the ones that scored poorly on our most recent Olympic Corporate Sponsor Darfur Report Card – and switch over to Mia Farrow’s coverage of a Darfurian refugee camp and our alternative opening ceremony (below) during the first week of the Games.

2.  Alternative Opening Ceremony

We are organizing an “alternative opening ceremony” for the 2008 Olympic Games.  This ceremony will be a “virtual” online concert, combined with a video report from Mia Farrow at a refugee camp, to coincide with the propaganda portions of the Beijing opening ceremony (not the marching of athletes from each country).

This will be a 20-minute Internet broadcast on August 8.  The broadcast will feature eight videos and include some existing feature packages for interstitial material.  Carly Simon and Taking Back Sunday have agreed to donate videos and we are continuing outreach to a range of musicians.

3.  Darfur Olympics

The “Darfur Olympics” is a week-long, daily broadcast hosted by Mia Farrow from a Darfurian refugee camp (August 8 to 15).  This broadcast will coincide with the first week of the Olympic Games.  

The daily broadcast will be available on a website that provides educational material and actions about Darfur.

The focus of the program is to keep the spotlight on Darfur during the Games and to outline a Darfur advocacy agenda for after the Olympics. 

4.  UN Advocacy: UNAMID Deployment

We are pressing for the international community to provide full logistical support for effective and immediate UNAMID deployment, and for nations with capable armies to partner with struggling African battalions (equip, train, and sustain them).

The capabilities for UNAMID should be addressed at a “pledging conference” – a special U.S.-led session of the UNSC, the Friends of UNAMID, and the UN DPKO; the meeting would serve to line up all necessary resources for UNAMID and overcome all remaining logistical obstacles by the end of June, accompanied by high-level diplomacy from the US and UK to make sure all the assets are accounted for at the conference.  We will also press for United Nations sanctions on individuals responsible for obstructions to UNAMID deployment, including senior NCP officials.

Read the op-ed from the Wall Street Journal by Mia Farrow and Ambassador Nancy Soderberg that outlines our effort.

We have been meeting with Ambassadors to the United Nations from Security Council countries to press this idea and will conduct media outreach about the idea.

5.  Peace Process Advocacy: The Olympic Truce

The Olympic Truce is a long-standing mechanism of the International Olympic Committee that calls for a cessation of hostilities in the world for a period before, during, and after the Games, including the Paralympic Games (roughly August 1 to mid September).

The Olympic Truce dates from ancient Greece and was reinvigorated and reaffirmed by more than 100 governments in the 1990s.  Even though China introduced a General Assembly resolution on the Olympic Truce in October 2007 for the summer Olympics, which was co-sponsored by Sudan and passed unanimously, the Truce has been all but ignored as a positive tool for peace.

In June we will be issuing a report calling for the IOC and UN to revive the Olympic Truce to call on the international community to focus on a peace process for Darfur during the Truce period, August 1 to mid September.  The report will briefly explain the background of the modern Olympic Truce, including how it was used by the previous administration of the IOC – notably in Yugoslavia in 1992 – as an important mechanism for promoting and brokering peace.

The report will suggest how this unique tool provides an elegant and appropriate response to the crisis in Darfur.  We will organize a unity statement of high profile individuals from around the world to support the Olympic Truce for Darfur for 2008.