Googling Darfur

Right on the heels of yet another warning from the US to the Khartoum government to please stop killing people in Darfur, thanks, the BBC reports on the efforts by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC and Google Earth to highlight the evidence of ongoing genocide in the region.

Visitors to Google Earth can see a detailed map of Darfur, complete with visuals of burned-out villages. International relief and human rights groups such as Amnesty International have used such detailed images in their work to raise the world's awareness about the genocide in Darfur.


The conflict in Darfur has been allowed to continue for years, while the international communtiy shakes its head and issues idle threats. Thousands of people in Darfur have been killed, raped, and driven from their homes. Relief workers are unable to work in some regions without an international security presence. UN Missions to assess the situation in Darfur have been stymied, including one from the UN's own Human Rights Council in February. You can read a report with details on that mission as well as background on the situation on Darfur from the UN's Human Rights Council here.

I'm thrilled to see a company like Google take on something like this and work with so many great organizations like the Holocaust Memorial Museam. This is a great example of collaboration between the corporate and non-profit sectors to highlight an important issue. No doubt the relief and human rights organizations using Google Earth to document the atrocities in Darfur never would have been able to get technology like this up and running on the budgets they are forced to work wonders with.