One week before Pesach, the quintessential remembrance of freedom, and three weeks before Yom Hashoah, the reverential remembrance of the Holocaust, is an appropriate moment to call our attention yet again to the atrocities being committed against the suffering people from the Darfur region of Sudan.

Daniel Rackowski, a senior fellow for European Union affairs at the Transatlantic Institute in Europe, recently summarized the situation in the Sudan in a report titled The Darfur Disgrace.

“After years of deliberation, repeated condemnations and the eventual deployment of UN and EU troops, Darfurian communities continue to be threatened by expulsion, rape, famine and extermination in a strife-torn region. Darfur is not only a testimony to the atrocities committed by the apocalyptic Janjaweed horsemen and by Sudan’s very own armed forces in response to rebel factions demanding greater independence and power; it equally serves as a reminder of the world’s continuous and collective failure to effectively interfere in the gravest man-made catastrophe of our time.”

The extent and nature of that catastrophe are widely known, if alas too, widely ignored in the council chambers of many governments. It is a brutal, horrific atrocity involving human beings: more than 200,000 people have been slaughtered, more than two million people have been displaced from their homes, and countless thousands of women have been tortured and raped.

The UN-African Union peacekeeping mission that the Security Council created last year primarily to protect the preyed-upon Darfurians has again been delayed in its deployment. The mission is having difficulty finding sufficient recruits to man the mission, and the Sudanese government is placing stumbling blocks in the path of the mission’s intended lifesaving deployment.

The ongoing atrocities in Darfur are sad confirmation of the view held by many aid and relief workers, diplomats, NGO workers and simply forlorn observers of international politics that the United Nations is simply incapable of acting justly and quickly. It cannot overcome its inherent structural dysfunction. And thus, more innocent people are abused and more lives ruthlessly taken.

In the face of international inaction, what can be done on behalf of the people of Darfur? In her essay on the opposite page, Toronto-area member of Parliament Carolyn Bennett places our personal and our collective obligations in their proper perspective. “Canadian values exemplify a shared humanity and demand a renewed commitment to ‘never again.’ Africa is a huge test. We cannot turn our backs on this major humanitarian crisis.”

This Sunday, April 13, Day for Darfur rallies will be held across the country. The event is part of the fifth annual Global Day for Darfur. Lending our support to those rallies is one way, at least, we can point ourselves, our hearts and our consciences in the right direction, toward the suffering Darfurians.