What Crisis Group has been doing - Darfur

Crisis Group advocates policy solutions to the world's leading policy makers on areas of actual or potential conflict across four continents. Since January 2002 we have been calling on policy makers to adopt our policy recommendations on Sudan.

Crisis Group has engaged, and is continuing to engage, in sustained advocacy on Darfur. Our advocacy combined with the work of our field analysts has presented practical options to policy makers aimed at stopping the violence and ending impunity. The advocacy takes a number of forms - involving meetings with key decision makers, the media and the internet.

For example, since May 2004, Crisis Group staff and Board members have raised Darfur in discussions with the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan; the Secretary General of the Arab League, Amre Moussa; the foreign ministers of Egypt, France, Germany, UK, Uganda, Kenya, Egypt, Senegal, Algeria and Chad; most of the Permanent Representatives to the UN Security Council; senior officials of the UN, the Africa Union and the U.S.; and many others. John Prendergast (Special Adviser to the President of Crisis Group) has traveled to Darfur three times in the past year – first with 60 Minutes and in January 2005 with a bi-partisan (U.S.) Congressional group, accompanied by General Wald of EUCOM, Paul Rusesabagina (who, as manager of a hotel in Kigali, sheltered Hutus and Tutsi during the Rwandan genocide), and actor Don Cheadle (who plays Mr. Rusesabagina in the film "Hotel Rwanda").

During this time Crisis Group has written to heads of government and foreign ministers of the G-8 and the permanent members of the UN Security Council, and  to the UN ambassadors of all fifteen members of the Security Council calling for Security Council action on Darfur.

• Over 40 opinion pieces on Darfur by Crisis Group staff and Board members have been published in major newspapers around the world. 

• Crisis Group's Darfur campaign page is one of the most visited pages on the web on Darfur.

• Crisis Group has additionally published nine reports in 2005 and four reports in 2004 on Sudan and the situation in Darfur. These and previous reports on Sudan can be accessed here.

Strong advocacy means disseminating the product as widely and effectively as possible, making sure that policy-makers hear the message and then persuading them to take action. Crisis Group distributes its reports:

• by direct mail of printed reports and papers to over 4,100 senior policy makers and those in the media and elsewhere who influence them;

• by email notification or attachment of reports and papers to 16,200 targeted "influentials", and over another 42,000 recipients subscribing through the Crisis Group website; and

• through our website, www.crisisgroup.org, which in 2005 received 3.3 million visits, and from which 2.3 million copies of Crisis Group reports and briefing papers were downloaded during the course of the year.

Our major advocacy offices, in Brussels, Washington, DC and New York, continue to ensure Crisis Group has the access and influence at the highest levels of the U.S. and European governments, the UN, EU and NATO. Our liaison offices in London and Moscow work to strengthen Crisis Group's profile and improve access to UK and Russian decision makers, while Brussels is responsible for the other European “Permanent Five” member, France. All Crisis Group offices, both advocacy and field, receive a regular flow of senior political and official visitors.

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Back to the Darfur advocacy page