USEFUL LINKS

Current Work

Res Publica's primary current project is www.AVAAZ.org, a global on-line community that already has over 1.4 million members, including citizens from every country on the planet.

Here is a bit about Avaaz:.

The Avaaz Mission
As major new challenges like climate change and escalating religious conflict threaten our common future, people from around the world are coming together to take global politics into their own hands. Avaaz.org (Our name means "Voice" or "Song" in several languages including Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, Nepalese, Dari, Turkish, and Bosnian) is a community of global citizens who take action on the major issues facing the world today. Our aim is to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people -- and not just political elites and unaccountable corporations -- shape global decisions. Avaaz.org members are taking action for a more just and peaceful world and a vision of globalization with a human face.

In our inter-connected world, the actions of political leaders and corporations are having a profound impact on all of us. To match the power and reach of global leaders and borderless corporations, Avaaz.org members are building a powerful movement of citizens without borders. As citizens without borders, we might not have the resources of governments, corporations or the media, but working together we can bring together millions of people around the world and make global public opinion really count on major global issues like poverty, climate change, human rights and global security.

Using the latest technology, Avaaz.org empowers ordinary people from every corner of the globe to directly contact key global decision-makers, corporations and the media. By signing up to receive updates from Avaaz.org, members receive emails and text messages alerting them to new campaigns and opportunities to act online and offline, and to make a real difference on pressing global issues.

Check out this project at www.AVAAZ.org.

Darfur
Res Publica also continues to support a variety of advocacy efforts on the crisis in Darfur, including management of www.darfurgenocide.org and sponsorship of www.24hoursforDarfur.org.

Please Note: We are currently seeking to transition our Sudan project to other organizations, as we prepare for our new project for 2006. Click here to see our next project.

After the Armenian genocide, the holocaust, and the Rwandan genocide, the world has allowed the unthinkable to happen again. Over the last 2 years, between 180,000 and 400,000 black Darfurians have been systematically murdered by their government. The brutal Islamic/military junta that rules Sudan responded to Darfurian aspirations for democracy and good governance the same they have to similar movements in Southern, Eastern and Central Sudan: they bombed villages and hired local militias to ethnically cleanse the region. Small mercenary Arab tribes, called the “Janjaweed”, were armed and ordered to kill or drive out black African tribes.

In early 2004, at the height of the killing in Darfur , there was very little attention in the international community. In response, Res Publica sought to raise awareness of the tragedy, particularly in the United States , as the nation with the most influence in Sudan . We built the first Darfur focused website in the world at www.darfurgenocide.org, and used it to bring news, information and opportunities to take action to over half a million visitors. We also worked with the Sudan Campaign to get high level personalities arrested in front of the Sudanese embassy, held a thousand person die-in in front of the White House, and partnered with True Majority to send a camera crew to Chad to broadcast live from Sudanese refugee camps onto CNN and MSNBC. In addition, we helped to organize a press conference on Darfur with Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, Pulitzer prize winner Samantha Power, and Clinton advisor John Prendergast. Through darfurgenocide.org and our project faithfulamerica.org, we sent tens of thousands of messages to the US Congress.

By August 2004, international action was still slow, and we organized the first of two one day hunger strikes. Over 5000 individuals participated in these fasts, including people from all 50 states of the US and 20 other countries.

By 2005, a great deal of awareness had been raised about Darfur, and the killing had slowed to a crawl as the Sudanese government worried about international attention and the decision of the International Criminal Court to investigate the killings. However, the Sudanese Government also saw an opportunity to push for a quick peace agreement with Darfurians that left its regime as strong as ever to brutalize Darfurians whenever the international community looked away. We found that the Darfurian resistance movement, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), which had amazingly fought the government forces to a stalemate, was totally unprepared for the negotiating table and the media battle that awaited them. In addition, the lack of unity within the resistance movement was hurting the prospects for a just peace.

In response to these problems, we spent five weeks in Darfur and the region, getting to know the resistance movement better than almost anyone else in the international community. We wrote a report that many international policymakers found helpful, and increased the engagement between international groups and governments, and the Darfur resistance. We are currently organizing capacity building assistance for the SLM, in the form of a advisor to help them at the negotiating table, a week-long media training for their communications team, and international support for a leadership conference for them to resolve issues of internal unity. We have also been working with a wide range of groups and political leaders, mostly in the US , to get more attention to the Darfur peace talks in Abuja , and more support for a strong peace agreement that ensures that the horror of the last two years does not continue.

To help support these efforts, take action, or for more information visit www.darfurgenocide.org