Michael makes some important points. What use is a Chapter VII mandate if the force cannot find the right location? Or won’t fly without guarantees of safety? Why does the UN not have liaison officers in every town held by the armed movements? Why are there no international humanitarian organisations in areas of north Darfur that have been stable and under the administration of SLA-Unity for months if not years? Operating in non-government held areas used to be standard practice for the more courageous NGOs–what has happened to this tradition?

But there’s another question, what can be done today? The dead and injured children of Shigeg Karo are not just another statistic that is grist to a mill of condemning Khartoum. They are real people and the purpose of the advocacy and international presence in Darfur should surely be to make a real difference to real people. When it came to saving the critically injured schoolchildren of Shigeg Karo, who stepped up to the plate? In trying to “Save Darfur”, we should not neglect saving Darfurians when they really need help.

On May 31, representatives of the 15 country representatives of the UN Security Council will leave for a 10-day visit to the African continent, including a stop in Sudan.

How can this visit actually help change the international response to atrocities like this and move beyond the current of public hand-wringing and circular buck-passing? Do you think that Amb. Williamson raising the emergency in Shegeg Karo will lead the international community to make any changes in its approach to Sudan as a result of the lessons of this response? What should U.S. policymakers and other officials in donor countries do to best ensure that as UNAMID slowly scales up its capacity, it does so in a way that is both immediately impactful and conducive to a sustained effective presence, especially vis-a-vis relations with humanitarian orgs and local civil society?

In the case of Shigeg Karo, so many of the adjectives used so liberally to describe Darfur really do apply. The victims were indisputably innocent civilians. The attack was unprovoked (there are accounts, unconfirmed, that rebel commanders passed through the area a few days before–which even if true scarcely counts as military necessity). The bombing was indiscriminate (some other incidents of aerial bombardment, for example by MiG fighter bombers last year, were relatively well-targeted). The attack was in violation of repeated commitments made by the Sudan government, notably in the 8 April 2004 N’djamena Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement and the 5 May 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, not to conduct hostile military flights. The true number of those killed by aerial bombardment in Darfur over the years is not known, but the data from mid-2004 are pretty good–and this is the worst single incident in that time period.

In inaction in response is quite shocking. Billions of dollars are being spent on a UN mission with a mandate to protect civilians–its response fell short of expectations. There is a vast activist movement across the world, but when there was real-time news out of Darfur, the burden of reacting fell on the shoulders of just a handful of individuals.