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| Mural: Protesting Darfur's Genocide, Italy Photo by: Cascoly |
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| Green Represents Darfur |
Dr. Annie Sparrow, a Human Rights Watch researcher traveled to Darfur in 2005. She carried crayons
and paper along with her medical supplies. Upon meeting the children of
Darfur her first impression was that they were just ordinary children. Knowing this was not true, Dr. Sparrow gave them crayons and paper to
illustrate what their daily lives had been like. The outcome was anything but ordinary.
The children drew horrors of the Janjaweed Militia attacks and the Sudanese government genocide bombings in their villages in Darfur. Hundreds of thousands of people died under these attacks as the government ordered the ethnic cleansing of all non-Arabs. Brightly colored crayon drawings displayed planes bombing villages, dead bodies and a woman colored with red crayon who had been shot in the face. Human Rights Activists were shocked and saddened by what these children had seen. These images were more graphic and
realistic than some of what the photojournalists documenting the genocide had been able to capture.
Several of these graphic representaions of killings were used
in International Criminal Court during the war criminal prosecution on crimes of humanity in Darfur.
The children's acts of creativity gave them, smallest of human beings,
an opportunity to have a voice. Often, language does not come easily to a
suffering person. Giving them a chance to speak in a different way enabled them to tell their story.
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