SudanBy Gail Goochee

• Population: 30,080,373

• Language(s): Arabic (official), Nubian, TaBedawie, diverse dialects of Nilotic, Nilo-Hamitic, Sudanic, English

• Literacy rate: 46.1%• Area: 2,505,810 sq km• GDP: 11,516 (US$ millions)

Basic Information

http://jackgruber.com/darfur/

Background

• Longest and most costly civil war in the world

• More than 1.5 million deaths since 1983 (from famines, destruction of crops, and movement of refugees)

• humanitarian crisis in the western Darfur region, where the violence has been widely labeled as genocide.

http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/News1/2006/03/06/01150.html

U.S. Response

"It will not be easy, and there are no simple answers to the extraordinary challenges that confront this part of the world,but now is the time for all of us to come together and to make a strong and sustained effort on behalf of a better future for the people of Sudan.”-President Obama

The State Department lists three U.S. strategic priorities in Sudan:1) A definitive end to conflict, gross human rights abuses, and genocide in

Darfur.2) Implementation of the North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement

(CPA) that results in either a peaceful post-2011 Sudan or an orderly path toward two separate and viable states, at peace with each other.

3) Ensure that Sudan does not provide a safe haven for international terrorists.

• Number of Television Stations: 3• Television Sets per 1,000: 79.1• Number of Radio Stations: 14• Number of Radio Receivers: 7,550,000• Radio Receivers per 1,000: 251.0• Computers per 1,000: 3.3• Internet Access per 1,000: 1.0

Communication Statistics

• Strong, both self and government imposed• many documented arrests, closings, suspensions, seizures

of copy, abductions, and threats, but there is little documentation of physical torture or the death of journalists

• Foreign journalists can receive the same treatment as many of their Sudanese counterparts

• The Sudanese government controls all broadcast media• Hard-line Muslims want a full ban on Internet access

because they fear it fills young Sudanese with Western images and ideology

Censorship

• Eke, Chinedu. "Darfur: coverage of a genocide by three major US TV networks on their evening news." International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 4.3 (2008): 277-292. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. Web. 21 Jan. 2010.

• Morley, Suzanne Drapeau. "Sudan." World Press Encyclopedia. Ed. Amanda C. Quick. Vol. 2. 2nd

ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 884-888. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. CIC Penn State University. 21 Jan. 2010 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=GVRL&u=psucic>.

Works Cited