Mark Jones, the Global Community Editor for Reuters, writes about our new initiative:

A couple of bloggers in the past few days have been considering what the blogosphere can do for Darfur.

Our friends at Global Voices tipped me off to the We Blog for Darfur initiative. And Google Blogoscoped asks the question: “Is there anything that we can do - with our knowledge of means and methods of communication - to get world leaders to act, finally, to prevent the death and suffering of millions of people?”

One of the issues facing bloggers is whether it is best to start new initiatives or to focus on boosting existing ones.

I think Mr. Jones should’ve read the header more clearly. No initiative currently exists to bring awareness to a specific region. Most have to do with donations, or are UN-funded activities. We are neither. We simply wish to inform, and to fix the misconceptions that people have about this conflict. We can’t boost another campaign when this initiative takes on a completely different turn, and aims to bring awareness to people who aren’t paying attention due to lack of coverage and resources within the Arab world.

We aimed for something different, because it was time to wake people up through other means. Furthermore, no other initiative focuses on actually educating the readers on what’s going on - they list certain figures but never analyze beyond those statistics. Mideast Youth’s co-editor, Drima, has been working on changing that by re-writing the facts of this conflict in a simple manner in order for people to understand what’s going on. It is not just due to the lack of reporting that made us start this initiative, but rather, the inaccuracy in reporting. We’re not a funded group. We’re not a donation group, where you donate a dollar and you feel as if you’ve done your part. We aim to inform and to increase awareness amongst a specified group of people - and we would love it if this initiative makes people who aren’t within our sphere aware, but we did specify a target in order to make our aims more achievable. It helps us maintain a stronger strategy.

A routine search on Youtube for ‘Darfur’ gave me nearly four hundred videos including several covering September’s ‘Day for Darfur’ protests, advocacy networks targeting politicians — Genocide Intervention Network — and TV executives — beawitness.org.

What has struck me, however, is the shortage of material coming from Darfur itself. I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about the UN envoy’s extraordinary diplomacy blog, and Sleepless in Sudan was for a while a riveting eyewitness account of reality on the ground.

But there isn’t much else. And my question for bloggers is this: what, if anything, can be done to encourage more bloggers from the scene to give us the reality of life in this conflict?

Doesn’t this initiave answer this question? It is exactly the question we asked ourselves - and this campaign is our answer. It is the perfect tool to use in order to gain people’s much-needed attention at a time where the problems seem to be escalating in Darfur, with no hope in sight.

Dear readers, before dismissing this campaign as yet another Darfur campaign, think of this as a much more specific project where we not only hope to increase general awareness, but we also hope to influence the Arab media in order to cover the Darfur conflict more often and with accuracy, too. We don’t ask for your money, we ask for your attention so that you will be educated as to what’s actually going on in Darfur. Our co-editor (and the main contributor of this campaign) feels very passionately about this conflict and has been working hard on gathering more information in order to re-tell the story in a simpler way so that readers of all backgrounds can understand. In the coming weeks, this will be his main focus, and we, together with our friends at Good Neighbours, will remain staunch supporters of this campaign. We are already putting a lot of effort into this. Once the basic research is out of the way, we will ask for more participants, and eventually the campaign will get bigger and we can start discussing possible solutions together with the rest of the members and supporters of this needed initiative.

Never claim that a small group of people can never contribute to change or influence it. We started this campaign with confidence, and we will lead it with confidence.

This is an article featured in this week’s Economist -

Despite frustrations, the UN has advanced by a small but crucial step.

HOPES were raised at the end of last week that the United Nations had finally persuaded the government of Sudan to accept a large UN force to intervene in the region of Darfur, ravaged by brutal fighting since 2003. The secretary-general, Kofi Annan, announced after a meeting in Ethiopia that he and the Sudanese government had agreed “in principle” to a new “hybrid” UN force. This would take command of, and enlarge, the existing 7,000-man African Union (AU) force which has manifestly failed to keep the peace.

Then, yet once more, these hopes were crushed. By the beginning of this week, the Sudanese government was stressing that no agreement had been reached, in principle or in any other fashion, and that all the old sticking-points remain. Sudan still will not accept a force in Darfur that is under the command of anybody other than the AU. Troop numbers must be kept relatively low; a little more than 7,000, maybe—for controlling an area the size of France. The Sudanese said that they would clarify their position in a week or two, but nobody is expecting them to relent.

Mr Annan did, however, have one clear success at the talks: the Sudanese have accepted what is called in the jargon a “heavy support package”. This means logistical, communications and financial support for the existing AU force. So, for the first time, the UN will attach a small group (with numbers yet to be agreed) of specialist officers to the AU force, as well as providing helicopters and armoured cars. This may not sound much but it is an important step. Until now, the Sudanese have claimed that UN soldiers in Darfur would be agents of Western imperialism, ready to break the country up, as in Iraq.

The way in which the concession was wrung out of the Sudanese is significant: for the first time, the Chinese, in the words of one diplomat, were “putting the screws on Sudan to accept this.” China wields particular influence on the government because it buys almost all of Sudan’s oil, providing most of its foreign earnings. But it had been reluctant to support any sort of concerted UN action against Sudan’s wishes.

This may now be changing, perhaps because China no longer wants to be held responsible for the tragedy going on in Darfur. The news from the region is very bad, and getting worse. People who are trying to supply food to more than 2m refugees say that the violence is back at the same level of intensity as it was before a “ceasefire” was agreed in 2004 (the ceasefire that the African force is supposed to monitor). Another mini-summit of African countries took place in Libya this week to try to get the Sudanese government and the Darfur rebel groups back to peace talks. But peace looks a distant prospect.

Not exactly the most hopeful article, but such is the reality of this situation. We’ll be doing our best here to keep you updated with accurate information.

In order to be a member, all you need to do is plug our banner in your sidebar. After that contact us and provide us with a link to your blog so that we can add you on our member list.

Hi and welcome to “We blog for Darfur”. We apologize for the lack of contents on our awareness site. At the moment we’re still in the process of adding more things since we just started this initiative 3 days ago.

Many people have heard about Darfur and many more still don’t have any idea what it’s about. Most of those who do know about the Darfur conflict unfortunately know very little about it. All they know is that “it’s a genocide being waged by Arabs against Africans” and that “UN troops must go in to protect the innocent people”. Darfur is so much more complex than that and hardly anybody who’s heard about it truly understands what’s going on there. We don’t blame people for this since we’re aware that the main stream media, especially the Arab main stream media hasn’t been reporting enough about it. It is therefore necessary to give a louder voice to the voiceless victims of Darfur. It is also necessary to present the conflict thoroughly and in a simple straight forward language so that people can understand its root causes. We have taken it upon ourselves to do so. We don’t want to present “politicized news” or “politicized perspectives”. We want to present a raw perspective that’s informative. Informed people are people more likely to act. They’re more likely to push those in positions of power to do something.

This project is still in its start. We haven’t officially launched it yet. Once we do, we hope that as many bloggers as possible will join us in spreading awareness. Let’s not rely on the main stream media. Let us get the word out and spread awareness on the blogosphere instead. Let us inform. Let us give a voice to our voiceless fellow human beings. Let us blog, blog and blog some more.

Together we can make a difference.

That’s a very good question, but an extremely hard one to answer. I’m afraid the only answer to that is another question, “what are you willing to do to help?”

It is absolutely ridiculous that information on Darfur is becoming increasingly difficult to find. We have to go out of our way in order to seek it. We are not exposed to such information otherwise. The mass media ignores it, as if nothing is going on, as if this is an unimportant fact soon to be history. We look at our past and we think “never again.” We looked at Rwanda and we thought, “how horrible. Something should’ve been done about it!”

And this? It’s still happening today. Right now.

Is this not worthy of our attention?

Is this not front page material? Are you that comfortably numb? Too bored of numbers, dead bodies, horrific details, human beings who have been reduced to a footnote? Are you waiting for this current event to turn into a depressing statistic? Or are you simply unaware due to the unbelievable lack of coverage?

If the mass media is not acting responsibly, we will do whatever we can in order to provide vital information with the help of other campaigns launched for similar purposes. This is a grave crime against humanity and it pains me to see it unknown amongst many individuals, more specifically fellow Arabs. Where is the Arab media? What is it reporting that’s so much more important than this unspeakable crime?

Indeed, ignorance is bliss. But ignorance does come with a big price. If you are ignorant as to what’s going on in Darfur, you are allowing the rivers of blood to keep flowing. You do not put a limit, you do not even attempt to build a wall to stop the violent bloodshed. Why wait for others to do it? No matter who you are, where you are, this no longer matters. It is time to strip ourselves of these useless subtitles. No one cares about the labels you subscribe to, because today, we are human, and we stand with humanity.

If we were all truly aware of what’s going on, this will not happen, or it will at least not be as bad as we allow it to be. Regardless of their race, beliefs, or whether or not you’re even interested in the country or region, put yourself in their shoes and imagine the horror. Imagine how disgusted you would be knowing that others are living in a completely different, safe environment, distant enough not to be able to hear a peep while you and your loved ones were being chased and tortured to a slow painful death. Children crying on top of their dead mothers, husbands brutalized and killed in front of their families, areas where the houses are nothing but haunted with the memories of the dead … and yet here we are, in the sunshine, the silence, where this news isn’t worthy enough to make it to the front pages of any of our news services.

Knowing this, can you sleep at night? Because I can’t, and I stopped trying. Not until I stand up and say, “I will do something about this.” It’s time for you to stand up and state the same thing.

Together, we can.

Together, we blog for Darfur.