George Clooney Will Speak To UN Security Council Thursday About Darfur

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LA Weekly: George Clooney Will Speak To UN Security Council Thursday About Darfur

It's been said that Hollywood's hottest marriage is the one between actors and Africa. That'll be true Thursday when Oscar winner George Clooney is scheduled to address the United Nations Security Council on the crisis in Darfur. That's right, not some small media conference, but the actual Security Council. Hosted by John Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the briefing is organized by The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity (EWF), which recently established a Darfur Commission of Nobel Laureates. Clooney visited Darfuri refugees last April to use his celebrity clout to raise awareness of the plight of refugees in the war-torn region, considered the 3rd biggest humanitarian crisis in the history of the UN. According to the Oscar-winning actor, the US, the UN and the world's policies on Sudan is failing. "If we turn our heads and look away and hope that it will disappear then they will-all of them, an entire generation of people. And we will only have history left to judge us," Clooney has said about the tragedy.

Alongside Clooney at the UN will be Nobel Peace Prize Winner Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and anti-genocide activist who expressed outrage when Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir summer blamed "Jewish organizations" are behind calls to put UN peacekeepers in the strife-torn region. In June, a UN Security Council delegation toured Darfur. Since February 2003, the worsening genocide sponsored by the Sudanese government and perpetrated by its "Janjaweed" militia allies has claimed at least 400,000 lives, displaced 2.5 million people, and left 3.5 million dependent on international humanitarian aid. The Sudanese government has refused to accept U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur, and is threatening to expel African Union peacekeeping forces. Both Clooney and Weisel have addressed various U.S. rallies sponsored by the Save Darfur Coalition (http://www.savedarfur.org/), a coalition of 165 faith-based, advocacy, and humanitarian organizations representing over 130 million Americans....

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....Clooney and Wiesel will hold a press conference immediately following the 3 p.m. Thursday briefing.

http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/george-clooney-will-speak-to-united-nations-security-council-about-darfur/