A Victim's View of Tragic Darfur

The horror of Darfur seems especially disturbing when seen through an infant's eyes and this sketch, of a village being bombed from the air, was drawn by an anonymous child - one of the thousands now living in displaced people's camps in Sudan. The picture - other drawings by the Darfur children were too distressing to publish - was obtained by the human rights group Amnesty International, which has been monitoring fresh attacks in the region.

Yesterday Tony Blair called for an immediate ceasefire and political resolution to the conflict. He said continued attacks by the government of Sudan and rebel movements were prolonging the 'terrible crisis', and hinted at sanctions if rapid progress were not made, warning: 'We will consider alternative approaches with international partners.'

But the Aegis Trust, which campaigns to stop genocide worldwide, said the Prime Minister was 'wasting his breath', and that calls for an immediate ceasefire and effective peacekeeping had been made without any worthwhile result for more than three years.

On Friday, at a joint news conference with President George Bush and his South African counterpart, Thabo Mbeki, said the United Nations security council should increase the pressure on Sudan to allow more troops into Darfur. On Wednesday the UN evacuated staff from the town of El Fasher because of the growing threat from armed groups. Secretary-general Kofi Annan said the UN was failing to live up to its responsibility to protect human rights in Darfur. Speaking with unusual candour, Annan said he feared the UN was once again not fulfilling its promise that it would 'never again' stay silent in the face of genocide and war crimes.

'Sixty years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps, and 30 years after the Cambodian killing fields, the promise of "never again" is ringing hollow,' he said last Friday, adding that blame for the continuing horror could be shared among 'those who value abstract notions of sovereignty more than the lives of real families, those whose reflex of solidarity puts them on the side of governments and not of peoples.'

Today is UN Human Rights Day. It has also been named an international Day for Darfur, with events planned in cities across the world, including one outside the Sudanese Embassy in London.