April 4th marks one month since Omar al-Bashir, the wanted president of Sudan, suspended the licenses of 13 international aid groups and 3 local ones, forcing them to abandon their work in Darfur.

Between March 23rd to April 1st, three Darfur activists will be in Chad as part of i-ACT 7.  Interactive-ACTivism is a project of Stop Genocide Now, “a grassroots community dedicated to working to protect populations in grave danger of violence, death and displacement resulting from genocide.”  They sent their first i-ACT trip to the Chad/Darfur border in November 2005, and have sent six other trips to the area since.

In this week’s issue: the Arab League rolls out the red carpet for Bashir, reports reveal atrocities committed by rebels in eastern Burma, and a former rebel group makes peace with the government in DRC.

Featured: President Obama talks tough on Sudan after a meeting with Darfur activists today.

I had a feeling I’d found my dream "job" when I found myself waking up every morning, excited to check my STAND email inbox before even getting up to eat breakfast.  I knew for sure I’d found it when I realized it was almost time to graduate and, accordingly, pass on the torch to another STAND student, and I felt more than a touch of sadness at the prospect of leaving.

In this week’s issue: Darfuris continue to suffer as Khartoum refuses to re-admit aid organizations into the country, the US appoints a Special Envoy for Sudan, and retaliatory violence by LRA and FDLR militias continues in eastern Congo

Featured: Check out this powerful op-ed by Mohamed Sulieman, a Darfuri living in the San Francisco Bay Area, on the expulsion of aid groups from Darfur.

For years now, we have been letting the genocide in Darfur slip from crisis into a state of permanent chaos, we have waited as the camps for the displaced settle silently into the sand and transform into villages, and we have allowed children to be born, raised, and sometimes die in states of malnourishment and fear.

For some of us who have been talking about the Darfur genocide for 5 years now, it is almost as if this has become normal.

After repeated calls from the activist community since the start of Obama’s administration, President Obama named General Scott Gration to be special envoy to Sudan. Scott Gration is a retired general from the Air Force who visited Chad with President Obama in 2006 when Obama was a senator.

Sixteen humanitarian agencies have been kicked out of Darfur by the Government of Sudan. This action by Sudan will leave about 1 million Darfuris without food, water, or medical aid.

Former Education Coordinator Sabina Carlson, interning in South Sudan, sent me some thoughts and observations a week after the ICC released the arrest warrant for al-Bashir.  Living in the midst of Sudan, Sabina is able to offer us a unique view of the situation that we don’t normally have as student activists.

It was the afternoon of March 4, at 4:00 PM local time in Sudan, and Juba fell quiet.

Not many know that just below the southern tip of India, exists a small, tear drop-shaped island. Perhaps a symbol of the sadness that has reigned in one of Asia’s longest and most brutal ethnic conflicts, from the time of its independence from Britain in 1948, Sri Lanka has silently, but violently, spiraled downward.