Remember how I mentioned yesterday that Darfur activists are losing their patience?  Here's John Prendergast explaining some of the flaws of the administration's Sudan policy.

A coalition of Sudan/Darfur activist groups launched a new effort today they are calling Sudan Now. The timing is noteworthy. Since January, the administration has been unable to complete a Sudan policy review, something the president initially said would be concluded in the first 60 days.  Some in the administration, like Sudan Special Envoy Scott Gration,  believe that striking a more conciliatory tone with the Sudanese government will help secure cooperation on Darfur and on implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Accord with the south.  Activists, and a number of other administration officials,  think this is a wrongheaded approach; they argue that absent significant pressure on the government of Sudan, securing Khartoum's cooperation is unrealistic. This basic strategic question is as of yet unresolved. 

Enter Sudan Now.  From the release:

With the U.S. administration planning to release its major policy review on Sudan any day, Sudan Now calls on President Obama to:

1. Lead a more effective and urgent peace process for Darfur;
2. Build an international coalition for strict implementation of the North-South peace deal; and
3. Implement a policy that creates real consequences for those in Sudan who continue to attack civilians, block life-saving aid, undermine peace, and obstruct justice.

As you can see from the ads, the group intends to use the Obama administration's own words to show support for their preferred policy option. Ads like this one are appearing in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, a number of blogs and websites and for good measure, the Martha's Vineyard Times and the Vineyard Gazette

There is a big hearing about Sudan at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today, headlined by Sudan Special Envoy Scott Gration.  We exhausted our live twittering yesterday at Susan Rice's hearing on UN Peacekeeping.  Fortunately, Laura Heaton and Save Darfur are on the spot with live updates. 

Here's Chairman Kerry's opening statement.  

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Today’s hearing explores America’s need to craft a comprehensive strategy for Sudan. For years, the urgency of either the situation in Darfur or the long war between North and South Sudan drove U.S. policy strongly in one direction or the other.

 Over time, the result has been a bifurcated policy. However, today most understand that we cannot and should not pursue either of these challenges as if it existed in a vacuum. As the Save Darfur Coalition affirmed in a statement for the record, “policymakers have too often focused on the South to the detriment of Darfur, or Darfur to the detriment of the South.”

At the same time, many discussions of U.S.-Sudan policy here in Washington continue to center on the question of whether we should use carrots versus sticks—i.e. rewards or punishments—to influence Sudan’s leaders in Khartoum.

When I visited Sudan in April of this year, I came away convinced that we need to build a strategic framework that moves beyond simple oppositions like carrots versus sticks or the South versus Darfur. Instead, we need a nuanced, comprehensive strategy for Sudan as a whole.

We should begin by identifying our objectives. Our primary goals in Sudan are: helping to achieve peace and security in Darfur and the surrounding region; maintaining and strengthening peace between North and South Sudan; expanding cooperation on counter-terrorism; and promoting democracy and conflict prevention throughout the country.

Those are our objectives. The question is how best to achieve them. I believe that the ongoing consequences of the genocide in Darfur and the onrushing potential tragedy of a renewed north-south war together create a dynamic that demands high-level and sustained engagement.

As the President’s special envoy, Scott Gration has already traveled to the region multiple times. Last week, General Gration was in Abyei, Sudan, at the center of North-South tensions. His presence on the ground when The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration announced a decision on Abyei’s borders symbolized America’s recommitment to the peace process.

We must make the same commitment to finding peace in Darfur. Almost five years ago, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell testified before this Committee that the United States had found a “consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities’ that constituted genocide. He recommended that America “increase the number of African Union monitors.” Today, the African Union monitoring mission has been merged into the United Nations peacekeeping mission, UNAMID. It is making a difference, but it has yet to be fully deployed or to acquire full tactical mobility.

Millions of people remain in camps—under conditions made even worse when Khartoum expelled 13 humanitarian organizations, placing over a million people in potential jeopardy. General Gration was right to make his first priority as special envoy the restoration of life-saving assistance. But we must go further: When I was in Khartoum, I emphasized to the Sudanese that restoring lost aid was imperative, but also insufficient: our goal should not be to re-create the conditions that existed before the NGO expulsion, but to move beyond them.

Maintenance of a miserable status quo is not the answer. I strongly support the efforts of the African Union, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, and others to bring the voices of civil society into the discussion, and particularly to ensure that women are heard.

At the same time, we must recognize that even as we work toward peace in western Sudan and eastern Chad, the clock is relentlessly ticking down the hours between now and 2011. That is when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement allows Southern Sudanese to vote on the question of unity or separation from the North. If the people of Sudan are to transform a ceasefire and an uneasy power-sharing agreement into lasting peace, we need to think of the CPA as an ongoing process stretching into the future, not an event in the past.

Today, crucial elements remain unresolved, including borders; citizenship; and revenue sharing. A central focus of my visit to Sudan was to convince both sides to embark on a series of tripartite discussions with the United States to tackle these remaining challenges. Rising violence in the South is also a matter of growing concern and underscores the need for a tangible peace dividend. But even as we move forward, we must not fix our gaze on the 2011 referendum alone. We also need to consider what Sudan could look like in 2012 and 2015.

All of these issues and more, including complex regional forces, must be balanced within a comprehensive United States strategy for Sudan.

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It's worth noting that with all this triumphant talk about the Twitter revolution in Iran - especially when it's about a lesser-of-two-evils candidate - we can't summon a fraction of the energy and passion to save abused, raped and battered women across the globe. Nor can we muster the same attention and will to deal with the plight of children who are dying of hunger, deprived of the bare necessities of life.

Here are the brutal facts:

* There are four million new hungry people every week, over a billion total. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes - one child every five seconds.

* Millions of women and girls (our mothers, sisters and daughters) endure one or more of the following: intimate partner violence; sexual abuse by non-intimate partners; trafficking, forced prostitution, exploitation, debt bondage, sex selective abortion, female infanticide, and rape.

Perhaps it's boiling frog syndrome, the fact that global hunger and women's rights are ongoing tragedies/travesties without sudden spikes of interest. Or perhaps it's the futility of confronting these intractable issues, a sense that we're powerless to change such pervasive problems.

That's not to say that there aren't many courageous and dedicated people working to alleviate hunger and protect women's rights. There are. But where is the massive outrage, the worldwide focus, the grainy images, the Twitter-mania, the color-coded avatars? Most importantly, where is the urgency, the immediacy?

Clearly, something is happening in Iran with technology that signals a new era in global activism. This is the first period in human history when so many individuals, friends and strangers, can speak to one another simultaneously, on equal footing; there's never been a time when ten million people could converse at once, on the same topic, using the same platform.

That also means they can shout and raise the alarm about injustice together. And as we're seeing with CNN, those millions of impassioned people can pressure the media to get on board, further increasing the level of attention.

So why isn't this happening for oppressed and abused women or hungry and starving children, when their aggregate pain and suffering is far greater and the threat to them more severe than to the (brave) Iranian demonstrators? Where's the intense coverage, the excitement over the potential of Twitter and Facebook to alter the course of history?

I'm not calling for less focus on Iran, but more, much more, on the mortal threat so many women and children face.

I'll conclude with a clip from Channel 4 News in the UK, where I was asked to comment on Gordon Brown's statement that because of the Internet, there will be no more Rwandas. My answer: what about Darfur?

Cross-posted on CTN