Genocide in Darfur Sudan.

One of the things that's really bugged me in recent times is the popular American media's willingness to report meaningless celebrity gossip and by and large overlook truely important stories like this. That's where this piece came from, an illustration project that was motivated by my anger over the apathy of the press towards all of this suffering.

The Darfur conflict is an ongoing armed conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan, mainly between the Janjaweed (translated: "devils on horseback"), a militia group recruited from the tribes of the Abbala Rizeigat (camel-herding Arabs), and the non-Baggara people (mostly land-tilling tribes) of the region. The Sudanese government, while publicly denying that it supports the Janjaweed, has provided money and assistance and has participated in joint attacks with the group, systematically targeting the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit ethnic groups in Darfur.[1] The conflict began in July 2003. Unlike in the Second Sudanese Civil War, which was fought between the primarily Muslim north and Christian and Animist south, in Darfur most of the residents are Muslim, as are the Janjaweed. Estimated number of deaths in the conflict vary widely. Most NGOs use 400,000, a figure from the Coalition for International Justice that has since been cited by the United Nations. As many as 2.5 million are thought to have been displaced as of October 2006.
The mass media once described the conflict as both "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide," and now do so without hesitation. The United States government has described it as genocide, although the United Nations has declined to do so.
The whole article can be read here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict
It's obvious that more attention needs to given to what's going on there.