One Night, One Voice - Panel Discussion

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in partnership with the Save Darfur Coalition, welcomes you to the nationwide release of a 12-minute film on gender based violence, featuring testimonials of women living in refugee camps in Chad and Darfur. The film screening will be followed by a discussion on gender based violence and the way rape is used as a weapon of war.

This event will be available for viewing online at SaveDarfur.org/women along with information on gender based violence. To access the panel live, please visit the website prior to 8:30 p.m. EST/7:30 p.m. CST and click through as you are guided. To access the panel after its live airing, please visit SaveDarfur.org/women on February 12th or thereafter.

Maria Bello

Ms. Maria Bello is an Actor, a member of the Save Darfur Coalition and Envoy for Enough. After majoring in Peace and Justice Education at Villanova University, Ms. Bello worked at the Women's Law Project in Philadelphia in the 1980's fighting for women's right to choose and for more stringent laws to be implemented for violence against women. In the 1990's in New York, she started an arts and education program at a school in Harlem called the DreamYard Drama Project. DreamYard has since opened a chapter in Los Angeles called Street Poets of which she is an active board member. Her work with Save the Children took Ms. Bello to refugee camps in Kosovo during the war, Africa, Central America and Nepal amongst other countries to bear witness to the plight of women and children living in war and poverty.

Niemat Ahmadi

Ms. Niemat Ahmadi is the Darfuri Liaison Officer with the Save Darfur Coalition and founding member of the Darfuri Leaders Network. A native of North Darfur, Ms. Ahmadi promotes cooperation between the coalition and the Darfuri diaspora within the United States and abroad. She is a founding member of the Darfuri Leaders Network, a coalition of over 20 domestic Darfuri organizations working to promote peace and security in Darfur. Ms. Ahmadi focuses on the role of Darfuri women in the peace process.

Dr. Kelly Dawn Askin

Dr. Kelly Dawn Askinis the Senior Legal Officer, International Justice, with Open Society Justice Initiative. In 2004-2005 she was a Fulbright New Century Scholar on the Global Empowerment of Women and Fellow, Yale Law School. Between 1995-2004, Dr. Askin taught and served as a visiting scholar at Notre Dame, Washington College of Law, Harvard, and Yale. She also served as Executive Director of the International Criminal Justice Institute and American University's War Crimes Research Office. Dr. Askin served as a legal advisor to the judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from 2000-2002. Her books include War Crimes Against Women: Prosecution in International War Crimes Tribunals (1997) and the three volume treatise Women and International Human Rights Law (1999, 2001, 2002, co-editor).

John Heffernan

Mr. John Heffernan is the Director of the Genocide Prevention Initiative of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience. Before coming to the Holocaust Museum, Mr. Heffernan was a Senior Investigator with Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), where he led three investigations to the Darfur region of Sudan and was the lead author of PHR's report, Assault on Survival which he presented to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands in February 2006. He also co-authored a report on rape entitled The use of Rape as a Weapon of War in the conflict in Darfur, Sudan. In 1995, Mr. Heffernan helped establish and run as, Executive Director, the Coalition for International Justice, a Washington-based non-governmental organization created to support the work of the international war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. As Country Representative for the former Yugoslavia, he managed a humanitarian relief program for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and from 1990 to 1993 he managed IRC's refugee resettlement program in Khartoum, Sudan. Heffernan has written opinion articles for the New York Times, Washington Post, International Herald-Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union- Tribune and other publications.

Reverend Gloria E. White-Hammond, M.D.

Dr. Gloria E. White-Hammond is the Chairwoman of the Save Darfur Coalition. She has been the Co-Pastor of Bethel AME Church in Boston, MA since 1997 and a pediatrician at the South End Community Health Center since 1981. She is the founder of and consultant to the church-based creative writing/mentoring ministry called "Do The Write Thing". In 2003, Dr. White-Hammond became the Co-Convener of The Red Tent Group with Rabbi Elaine Zecher of Temple Israel, which brings together Christian women and Jewish women for small group Torah/Bible study. Dr. White-Hammond has worked as a medical missionary in several African countries including Botswana, Cote D'Ivoire and South Africa. Since 2001 Dr. Gloria has made seven trips into war-torn southern Sudan. In 2002 she co-founded My Sister's Keeper, a humanitarian women's group that partners with women of Sudan in their efforts toward reconciliation and reconstruction of their communities.

This event will be available for viewing at SaveDarfur.org/women along with information on gender based violence.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a living memorial to the Holocaust, inspires citizens and leaders to confront hatred, promote human dignity and prevent genocide. The Museum honors the memory of those who suffered in the Holocaust by alerting the national conscience, influencing policymakers, and stimulating worldwide action to prevent and confront genocide and related crimes against humanity. Federal support guarantees the Museum's permanence, and its far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by donors nationwide. For more information on the Museum, please visit http://www.USHMM.org.

The Save Darfur Coalition - an alliance of 180 faith-based, advocacy and human rights organizations - raises public awareness about the ongoing genocide in Darfur and mobilizes a unified response to the atrocities that threaten the lives of people throughout the Darfur region. The coalition's member organizations represent 130 million people of all ages, races, religions and political affiliations united together to help the people of Darfur. For more information on the coalition, please visit http://www.SaveDarfur.org.