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genocide can be unproductive, non-productive, and even counter-productive. Unproductive, because there are always lawyers’ arguments about whether the legal definition in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide has been satisfied, and this can be a real distraction from the immediate imperative of protecting the victims of what everyone agrees are crimes against humanity. (The Convention definition requires that certain acts be ‘committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group,’ and it is extremely hard to establish that element of specific intent to destroy non-Arab groups in Darfur.)
    Non-productive, because, as the US response to Darfur illustrates, even when the term is invoked there is no legal obligation under the genocide convention for countries that use the term to actually do anything. And counterproductive when expectations are raised that a particular situation is genocide, but then lawyers’ arguments prevail that some necessary element is missing, as was the case with the UN commission in Darfur: in these circumstances the perpetrators of what are unquestionably mass atrocities or crimes against humanity achieve an utterly unearned propaganda victory. All of this demonstrates that right-thinking people can disagree about the use of the term genocide. What we and these organisations all totally agree on, however, is that mass atrocities are being committed in Darfur, as well as in the Congo and northern Uganda, and were being committed in the 1990s in southern Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, and Burundi. In those last five countries, international and local efforts have combined to bring about an end to the atrocities and the wars that generated them, giving all of us hope that horrors in Darfur, northern Uganda, Congo, and Somalia can also soon be ended, and future catastrophes prevented.
    [ 3 ] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
    [ 4 ] Testimony before US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 9 September 2004.
    [ 5 ] White House press releases, 9 September 2004.
    [ 6 ]Despite how Africa is often portrayed in the mainstream media, there is much good news. The journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s new book, New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance (Oxford 2006) tells the other side of the story.
    [ 7 ] ‘Heroes of Darfur,’ New York Times , 7 May 2006.

2
    Two Paths Out of Apathy
    Don’s Path
    March 2004,
    Johannesburg, South Africa

    I’m standing at the South African Airlines ticket counter in the Jo-burg airport, wife and children in tow.
    ‘DC!’
    I spin around and come face-to-face with Desmond Dube, his wife and son trailing along behind. ‘Ah hah ,’ says I.
    ‘Told you.’
    I’ve known Desmond now all of three and a half months—the amount of time it took to shoot the film Hotel Rwanda in South Africa and Rwanda—but we’ve made fast friends. When we first met, I had the earphones of my iPod jammed into my ears, eyes closed, listening to Babatunde Olatunji and stressing about my character, Paul Rusesabagina. Des tapped me on the shoulder.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘An iPod.’
    ‘I- what ?’
    The iPod was a rarity in Johannesburg at that time, and Desmond had never seen one before. I gave him a brief tutorial and let him hold on to it for a minute while I rehearsed. By the time my scene was through, Desmond was asking me how and where he could get an iPod—immediately. I checked around and found that there were indeed a small number available in town but at almost twice the price as in the US. The next day, I reported the news and offered to arrange to have a much cheaper iPod sent over from the States as my gift to him, but Desmond wouldn’t hear of it and insisted on paying whatever the cost. Desmond Dube was a big star in Jo-burg; his local television show had been top-rated for several years. He was a man proud and able to pay for