Swallowing Spiders

I remember when I was about six or seven years old, my cousin Ally told me that the average American swallows eight spiders per year. She explained that it can happen when a spider gets on your food and you don’t notice, but most often it happens when people fall asleep with their mouths open and spiders just crawl right in. I remember thinking that is the worst thing I have ever heard. I have never heard anything more terrifying and stomach-churning than that. I began wondering, if that is true, why isn’t something being done about it? How can everyone just ignore something so awful? They must not know! If only people understood the scope of the world’s spider swallowing problem, THEN, then, they would come together and find a way to stop it!

It was nice being a kid.


Excerpts from the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect’s “Open Statement on Atrocities in South Kordofan” (emphasis mine):

United Nations (UN) member states must uphold their responsibility to protect and take immediate action to protect populations from atrocities being perpetrated daily by Sudanese government security forces, and allied paramilitary forces and militias in South Kordofan. Since 5 June the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has unleashed a barrage of indiscriminate aerial bombardment targeting civilians. With reports of mass graves and at least 73,000 people displaced, this is not the time for states to ‘wait and see’ how things transpire. With each passing day the situation becomes more complex and intractable and the plight of civilians more dire.

…

The Nuba have borne the brunt of such targeting. They are marginalized and discriminated against by the Sudanese government on the grounds that they are not ‘Arab,’ and that many Nuba supported anti-government movements during the 1983-2005 civil war. Experts have labeled the government’s brutal actions against the Nuba during the early 1990’s, genocide. Once again the Nuba are the victims of mass atrocities. A leaked report by the UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan (UNMIS) argues that crimes perpetrated since the outbreak of fighting may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes – crimes that states unanimously committed to protect populations from by endorsing the responsibility to protect at the 2005 World Summit.

At the core of this commitment is the responsibility to prevent crimes before they occur. Few situations have had as much early warning of imminent mass atrocities as South Kordofan or such a glaring failure to heed these warnings.

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The Security Council’s 15 July issuing of ‘elements to the press,’ a minimal expression of the Council’s opinion that does not form part of the official UN record, was a first step but is insufficient absent sustained engagement. The Council’s inability to agree on a Presidential Statement drafted five weeks ago, or to consider a resolution, despite the disturbing findings of the recently leaked UNMIS report, sends a clear message to the Sudanese government that the Council is divided and that there will be no consequences for its heinous actions.

That there is division about issuing a more weighty condemnation is indefensible. Bombs rain down on civilians, individuals are targeted because of their ethnicity, and unknown horrors are being inflicted on populations in parts of South Kordofan that have been closed off to the rest of the world. The situation risks destabilizing the region, including the fragile newly independent South Sudan, and is a clear threat to international peace and security.

The desire to reward the Sudanese government for allowing the South independence cannot come at the price of lives lost in South Kordofan. At this moment, the Council must be guided by the lessons of the past. The strategy of compartmentalizing the various conflicts within Sudan has proved ineffective in preventing atrocities. The Sudanese government is repeating familiar patterns of behavior: it is trying to hide the true horrors of its crimes by denying outside monitors, the UN and humanitarian agencies access to the most vulnerable of populations; it is being relentless in its commission of atrocities as part of its counterinsurgency; it is relying on militias, often motivated by extremist ideologies to do so; and it is providing piecemeal concessions in negotiations to resolve crises, only to subsequently reject any agreements reached. Finally, what little protection was provided by UNMIS through their presence and by bearing witness to unfolding atrocities in its vicinity ended on 8 July and the mission is currently withdrawing from South Kordofan, at the behest of the Sudanese government.

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The leaked UNMIS report cannot be more clear, “the International Community cannot afford to remain silent in the face of such deliberate attacks by the Government of Sudan against its own people. If the current conduct of the SAF, especially the aerial bombardments, does not stop, it will dissipate the Nuban population in South Kordofan.” The time for warnings has passed. Atrocities are being perpetrated. Failure to act today will be a repeat of previous mistakes and will see more lives unnecessarily lost.


-Stephanie