Christiane Amanpour Photo: CNN

An important part of the Freedom Center’s mission statement is the closing: “challenging and inspiring everyone to take courageous steps for freedom today.”  In order for us to take those courageous steps we must understand the unfreedoms that exist today: hunger, illiteracy, contemporary forms of slavery, racism, tyranny, and genocide.

December marks the 60th anniversary of the U.N.’s Genocide Convention, when - in the aftermath of the Holocaust - the nations of the world pledged to prevent and punish future attempts to eliminate ethnic, religious, and national groups.  Looking back on recent history, has this pledge been honored?

Tonight CNN will be premiering, “Scream Bloody Murder,” a documentary on the fight against genocide.  CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour traveled to Europe, Africa, and Asia for the documentary and interviewed individuals who attempted to bring attention to the henious crime of genocide but were ignored.

The documentary will discuss 1970s Cambodia and French Catholic missionary Father Francois Ponchaud, 1980s Iraq and Senate staffer Peter Galbraith, 1990s Bosnia and U.S. Diplomat Richard Holbrooke, 1994 Rwanda and Canadian Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, and 2003 Darfur and activist Eric Reeves.

“Scream Bloody Murder” airs tonight on CNN at 9:00 p.m. ET.  Watch the documentary and post your thoughts.

Here at the Freedom Center, we often talk about impediments to freedom in the modern world. We call them the “unfreedoms,” and they are six in number:

• Hunger
• Illiteracy
• Contemporary forms of slavery
• Racism
• Tyranny
• Genocide

That last unfreedom, genocide, is the subject of a very thoughtful column by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. He raises the issue of whether world leaders (who obviously confront dozens of persistent, often intractable problems) have pushed genocide down the list of global priorities.

What is genocide? The term came into general use in 1944, in the midst of World War II and the Holocaust. It means the systematic murder of an entire political, cultural, or religious group, usually sponsored or encouraged by a government entity.

Kristof, the Times columnist, is perhaps the leading journalistic voice decrying what he describes as genocide in the Darfur region of Africa, where thousands of Darfurian men, women and children — virtually all of them Muslims — have been brutalized, tortured and annihilated in an ongoing conflagration with no apparent end in sight. Yet, Kristof writes, with so many other crushing issues to deal with, like poverty, AIDS, and looming ecological disaster, most of the world not only is paying little attention to Darfur, but has shown no particular desire to stop what is happening.

We would welcome your reactions to Kristof’s column. With so many other things to worry about, is it acceptable to push Darfur off the world’s radar screen?