One of the things that is important to us here at Enough is to acknowledge when we make a mistake, and with the help of the blogosphere we often get some help in this regard. A recent blog post I wrote about distributing some basketball jerseys in the Djabal refugee camp in Chad was flagged by Alanna Shakih as violating some basic principles of good humanitarian practice. I agree. The t-shirt distribution was not well thought out, and I should have better consulted with area relief experts before undertaking something such as this. In hindsight, we should have worked more closely with our NGO counterparts to ensure a more organized and equitable distribution system or alternatively, we should not have distributed the jerseys. For that I apologize, and it is not a mistake we will make again.
Alanna was also quite tough on my word choices in the post and suggested that I was somehow dehumanizing the refugees. I recognize that my word choices in the blog post may have been poor, but I strongly reject the notion that I see the Darfuri refugees in Chad as anything but fellow humans. It has been almost 16 years since my family fled Sudan as refugees because of the North-South conflict, and I know full well the direct and lasting cost of war in Sudan. My past and my personal convictions have always pushed me to do more, not less for the people of Sudan. With that being said, we welcome constructive criticism, and will do better in the future.