This exhibition is generously underwritten by The Joyce Foundation and the Polk Bros. Foundation.
Related Article
What the children saw
Spertus exhibit is a powerful record of the slaughter in Darfur
By Laurie Goering
Chicago Tribune Magazine
Past Exhibition
March 5 — April 2, 2006
From a drawing by Abd al-Rahman, age 13.
One of the world’s gravest human rights and humanitarian crises continues to unfold in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. Sudanese soldiers and government-backed militias called the Janjaweed have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing against civilians — and have forced the displacement of an estimated 2.4 million people. According to United Nations estimates, more than 200,000 people may have died since the beginning of the conflict in February 2003.
While conducting interviews with refugees in camps along Sudan’s border with Chad, researchers from Human Rights Watch, an independent human rights organization, gave the children crayons and paper to draw. The children drew vivid and disturbing scenes of the violence and atrocities they had witnessed and insisted the researchers take them so the world could see their story. Against the backdrop of the Anne Frank exhibition, Spertus shares their powerful drawings.