"A Stain on Our Souls:" The Darfur Genocide During the Obama Presidency

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Since 2003, the Sudanese government and its Arab militia proxies have conducted a genocide against Africans in Darfur, killing roughly 500,000 people and displacing 2.7 million. Public outcry compelled President George W. Bush to take diplomatic measures to end the atrocities, though they achieved little success. In 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama included Darfur on his presidential platform and denounced the genocide as a “stain on our souls.” Nevertheless, during his presidency, Obama not only failed to address the genocide, but also lifted sanctions that had been imposed on Khartoum for its criminal activities in Darfur. This thesis examines why the Obama Administration’s foreign policies in relation to Darfur were so weak. In particular, I focus on four main factors that constrained U.S. action in the region: lack of political salience, South Sudan's creation and subsequent implosion, humanitarian crises elsewhere, and China's and Russia's economic interests in Sudan. By understanding these policy constraints, we might learn how to end this long and violent genocide, as well as other humanitarian conflicts in areas with little national strategic import.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 2018

Author	Howe, Campbell
Advisor	Patenaude, Bertrand
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Program in International Relations

Subject	Sudan
Subject	Darfur
Subject	genocide
Subject	human rights
Subject	international law
Subject	humanitarian intervention
Subject	Obama
Subject	U.S. foreign policy
Subject	Stanford Department of International Relations
Subject	Honors Program in International Relations
Subject	Stanford University
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/bp232gj3148

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Howe, Campbell. (2018). "A Stain on Our Souls:" The Darfur Genocide During the Obama Presidency. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/bp232gj3148

Stanford University, Program in International Relations, Honors Theses

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