The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has joined with Google in an unprecedented online mapping initiative. Crisis in Darfur enables more than 200 million Google Earth users worldwide to visualize and better understand the genocide currently unfolding in Darfur, Sudan. The Museum has assembled content—photographs, data, and eyewitness testimony—from a number of sources that are brought together for the first time in Google Earth.
Crisis in Darfur is the first project of the Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative that will over time include information on potential genocides allowing citizens, governments, and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.
“Educating today’s generation about the atrocities of the past and present can be enhanced by technologies such as Google Earth. When it comes to responding to genocide, the world’s record is terrible. We hope this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for the world to ignore those who need us the most.”
— Sara J. Bloomfield, Director, USHMM
If you have ever used Google Earth and wondered what you could use it for, the above is a perfect example of using it for good effect rather than flying around places you’ve visited or places you have heard of.
For those who don’t know what Google Earth is, the quote below is from the same USHMM site.
Using satellite imagery, Google Earth allows a user to fly to any location on the planet and explore from above in 3D. Additional “layers” created from data provided by the U.S. Government, United Nations agencies, non governmental organizations, and renowned photographers show the scope and personal impact of the genocide in Darfur and its continuing spillover into Chad.
Download the Crisis in Darfur layers for Google Earth.
I’m afraid 99.99% of the content above is directly quoted from their web site since I don’t have the right words to do it justice. When you think of the numbers of people killed, the property that has been destroyed, there isn’t anything I can say that could ever describe it.
Why has the ROTW turned its back on the Darfur region?
I would ask why are we not doing more to help, but that question should really be why are we not doing anything!
2,500,000 people driven from their homes and over 300,000 killed.
How can we as a society in 2007 not being doing more to stop this?
Why are our governments not doing anything about it?
Why are YOU! not doing anything about it?
They Turned Our Dessert Into Fire – film by Mark Brecke
