Here’s a very touching video that I saw for the first time a few weeks ago. In it, there are clips from a message Barack Obama put together for refugees in Darfur, interspersed with clips from people in Darfur sending their congratulations and support to President-Elect Obama.
I’m very interested to see the way that Barack Obama deals with refugee crises during his time as president. We haven’t had a very good track record over the last two presidents when it comes to this area (President Bush has caused some of the largest refugee crises in the world in Iraq and Afghanistan, and President Clinton refused to step in during the genocide in Rwanda, calling that the biggest mistake of his presidency). One of the first th
ings that President-Elect Obama can do is to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and start reallocating some of the funds being spent on military to helping move the refugees back to their homes, rebuilding the infrastructure so that they can actually live in their country. Also, he can use his position to help bring attention to the problems in the Congo and Darfur, and use diplomacy to help bring about solutions involving the governments of those nations. A HUGE move that would help end the refugee problem in Colombia would be for him to end the “War on Drugs” which has caused so much fighting among drug lords in South America resulting in the millions of refugees that are internally and internationally displaced in the South. Another way that he can have a huge impact would be to change the US’s policy on Israel (which isn’t really a policy, rather a blank check with no restrictions or accountability and unlimited arms supplies to perpetuate the genocide of another people). These steps would all go a long way to help better the world as a whole and help end refugee crises that don’t have to exist. 
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