Release date: Oct. 20, 2004
Contact: Elaine Justice, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0643 or elaine.justice@emory.edu

Panel at Emory Addresses Crisis in Sudan

WHAT: "Crisis in the Sudan: A Panel Discussion," part of a series of events on "Genocide in the Sudan"

WHO: Jerry Fowler, staff director, Committee on Conscience, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Deborah Scroggins, journalist and author; Basia Tomczyk, epidemiologist, International Emergency and Refugee Health Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Michael Rewald, senior advisor for rights-based programming, CARE

WHEN: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 27

WHERE: Woodruff Health Sciences Administration Building auditorium, 1440 Clifton Rd., Emory.

INFO: Free. Mary Jo Duncanson, 404-727-2536, or mary.jo.duncanson@emory.edu.

Four leading voices in the effort to raise awareness of the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan will speak at a public panel discussion on "Crisis in the Sudan" at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26 in the Woodruff Health Sciences Administration Building auditorium, 1440 Clifton Rd., Emory. Admission is free. For more information, contact Mary Jo Duncanson at 404-727-2536 or mary.jo.duncanson@emory.edu.

The discussion is one of a series of initiatives underway on the Emory campus to bring attention to the ongoing crisis in Sudan and the Darfur region. The Sudan working group is a coalition of student groups, academic departments and administrative offices that are cooperatively sponsoring programming and conducting outreach and education to bring public attention and help to the region.

Panelists include: Jerry Fowler, staff director, Committee on Conscience, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Deborah Scroggins, journalist and author; Basia Tomczyk, epidemiologist, International Emergency and Refugee Health Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Michael Rewald, senior advisor for rights-based programming, CARE.

Fowler works to carry out the Committee on Conscience's mandate "to alert the national conscience, influence policymakers, and stimulate worldwide action to confront and work to halt acts of genocide or related crimes against humanity." In January 2004, the committee issued a "Genocide Warning" regarding Darfur, and in May, Fowler visited Sudanese refugee camps in Chad to obtain first-hand accounts of the situation. His publications include the essay, "Out of That Darkness: Preventing Genocide in the 21st Century," forthcoming in the second edition of "Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views."

Scroggins, a writer and journalist from Atlanta, is a former political and foreign affairs reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the winner of six national journalism awards for her reporting from the Sudan and the Middle East. She is the author of "Emma's War: An Aid Worker, Radical Islam and the Politics of Oil  A True Story of Love and Death in Sudan." The book is about aid worker Emma McCune and Rick Machar, the Sudanese warlord she married.

Tomczyk recently led a team conducting a health survey in northeastern Chad. She says that Sudanese children in Chad are experiencing a major nutritional crisis similar to those seen in Ethiopia in 1999 and Goma in 2000. She also says that public health intervention in the region now would save children's lives.

Rewald has been involved in the field of international relief and development since 1981, having worked in Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia and Bangladesh. He has worked with CARE for the past 14 years in a variety of positions in country offices as well as at the organization's headquarters in Atlanta. As CARE's senior advisor for rights-based programming, Rewald leads the organization's efforts to align its relief and development work with international human rights principles and standards.

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