Genocide is raging in the nation of Sudan. It is now unquestionably the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today.

Unfortunately, our political leadership is not acknowledging it. The reason for this is clear. Use of the term "genocide," under international law, carries with it an obligation for countries to act-and action to save African lives carries too few political benefits.

Following the Nazi holocaust, a shocked international community cried, "Never again." Never again would a dictator like Hitler be permitted to exterminate an ethnic group like the Jews. Never again would the world stand idly by while hundreds of thousands of people stood waiting to be slaughtered. Never again would such an evil be allowed to take root and flourish.

But it has. The list of post-Nazi genocides, including Biafra, Cambodia, Rwanda, Congo and Sudan continues to grow. The international community, including Canada, has yet to demonstrate that it is serious about stopping genocide.

We recently observed the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan holocaust, where the world community stood idly by while extremists hacked to death more than 800,000 people in front of the world's media. This genocide was both predictable and preventable, yet the international community did nothing.

But no politician, no bureaucrat, no western official has paid any political price for this decision-one which has wrought such unimaginable suffering on the entire region. U.S. president Bill Clinton, who led the way in "doing nothing," was re-elected. UN bureaucrat Kofi Annan, who gave the orders to "do nothing," was promoted to the top UN position of Secretary General.

Recently, the Canadian House of Commons voted to declare the Turkish slaughter of Armenians to be "genocide." Yet Canada's Liberal cabinet refused to support the motion. Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham urged parliamentarians not to recognize this genocide, fearing that it might adversely affect trade with Turkey. 

Canada's justice minister, Irwin Cotler, who only a few days before had issued strong pronouncements about the need to never stand idly by in the face of genocide, did not even bother to show up for the vote.

With political leadership like this, it is not surprising that genocide is mushrooming in Darfur, Sudan. As New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in an April 14 editorial: "In the last 100 years, the United States has reacted to one genocide after another-Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Bosnians-by making excuses at the time, and then saying, too late, ‘Oh, if only we had known!'

"Well, this time we know what is happening in Darfur: 110,000 refugees have escaped into Chad and testify to the atrocities. How many more parents will be forced to choose whether their children are shot or burned to death before we get serious?"

On July 9, 2004, Sudan researcher Eric Reeves pleaded with the world to take action, concluding that if genocide is allowed to take its ugly course in Sudan, "It will not be because we did not know what was happening or what needed to be done. It will be because we ourselves, acquiescing in the face of political obstacles, judged these African lives not worth saving. 

"It is difficult to imagine an uglier truth for history to record, but history will have no choice."

For Canadians, the moral implications of genocide in Sudan are even more disturbing. It was Canadian oil money and Canadian moral cover which helped to solidify Khartoum's brutal stranglehold on power in Sudan. It was this blood oil, backed by Canada's banks and the Canada Pension Plan, which provided Sudan's military junta with the resources to purchase the helicopter gunships and other weaponry of genocide.

Sudan's holocaust is the direct result of failed Canadian foreign policy.

The real lesson of the tragedy in Sudan is that genocide will continue to occur until politicians pay a price for allowing it to occur. As long as turning a blind eye to genocide is the political path of least resistance, the cry of "never again" will have no meaning.

For God's people, who are commanded to "let justice roll down like a river," indifference is not a moral option.

Mel Middleton is executive director of Freedom Quest International (www.freedom-quest.ca).