Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan

Even by conservative estimates, the situation in the Darfur region of the Sudan is grave. There are 3.5 million people who are hungry, 2.5 million who have been displaced by violence, and 400,000 individuals who have died since the crisis began in 2003. The international community has failed to take steps to protect civilians, or to influence the Sudanese government to intervene. The spread of violence, rape, and hate-fueled killings across the border into Chad is simply the latest atrocity. Call it war. Call it genocide. Call it famine. There is no single word to describe the plight of these people. They face all of these horrors at once.

In answer, Proof: Media for Social Justice, Amnesty International, and the Holocaust Museum of Houston have partnered to create Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan. The book covers three periods in the Sudan crisis, including images shot in 1988, when an estimated 250,000 Sudanese died of starvation; images from 1992 and 1995 that capture the atrocities of a civil war, when hundreds of thousands fled their homes to other destinations in Sudan or left the country altogether; and images from 2005 and more recently, bringing to light the severity of the humanitarian crisis underway, with the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias committing systematic violence on the people of Darfur.

A handbook is included that provides website links and additional resources for readers to pursue. It specifies measures they can take to make their voices heard so the people of Darfur do not feel forgotten.

All proceeds from the book will benefit Amnesty International and Genocide Intervention Network.

Leora Kahn is a veteran photography editor who has worked on books, magazines, television, and documentaries. She was the editor of When They Came to Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust (Arcade, 1996), the photo editor of Shooting Under Fire (Artisan, 2002) by Peter Howe, an executive producer of the documentary Renee and I, and co-producer of Original Intent, a documentary on the Supreme Court. She heads the photography department at Workman Publishing and is the founder of Proof: Media for Social Justice, a nonprofit organization that works for human rights with photography.

Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan features the work of eight prominent photographers from Magnum Photos, VII, Sipa Press, Panos, and Vu who have covered the struggle in Sudan for the last two decades. Its writers include Jonathan Alter, a journalist for Newsweek and NBC News; Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA; Mia Farrow is an award-winning actress who has been a UNICEF Good Will Ambassador since 2001; Ryan Gosling, a young actor who most recently stared in Half Nelson; Nicholas D. Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times and previously its bureau chief in several countries; Susan Myers is Executive Director of the Holocaust Museum Houston; and John Prendergast, a Senior Adviser at the International Crisis Group and well known writer.

In addition, Darfur contains photographs by: Sven Torfinn, Chris Steele Perkins, Kadir van Lohuizen, Olivier Jobard, Ron Haviv, Colin Finlay, Lyndsey Addario, Pep Bonnet, Lynsey Addario, Pep Bonet, Colin Finlay, Ron Haviv, Olivier Jobard, Kadir van Lohuizen, Chris Steele Perkins, and Sven Torfinn; and essays by: Jonathan Alter, Larry Cox, Mia Farrow, Colin Finlay, Ryan Gosling, Nicholas D. Kristof, Susan Myers, and John Prendergast.