By Laura Smith-Spark

BBC News, Washington



Visitors to Google Earth will see a marker pointing them to Darfur.

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The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC has teamed up with Google's internet mapping service, Google Earth, to try to halt what they see as genocide.

By combining the museum's Darfur database with clickable images on the ground, they aim to create a "community of conscience" among internet users.

The hope is that people around the world will then put pressure on their governments to stop the violence in Darfur.

At least 200,000 people have been killed and two million displaced during the four-year conflict between rebel groups and pro-government militia in the region.

Sudan's government has so far refused to allow a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission to be deployed.

Zooming in

From now, anyone logging into Google Earth will see a welcome screen with a marker highlighting the Darfur area.

More than 2m people are living in camps after four years of conflict

Other images show the tented camps where those displaced within Darfur and hundreds of thousands more who have fled to neighbouring Chad now live.

Users can also see photographs and personal accounts of people who have lost family members and homes to the violence.

John Heffernan, of the museum's genocide prevention initiative, said the site would show viewers the scope of the "systematic destruction" occurring in Darfur.

"This has certainly destroyed villages - it has also destroyed lives and livelihoods," he said.

The satellite images will be updated regularly by Google Earth

Museum director Sara Bloomfield said the challenge in preventing genocide was not only to inform people but also to make them empathise with the victims - and then act.

"When it comes to responding to genocide, the world's record is terrible," she said.

Each information screen has a link for people to follow for advice on what they can do to help - including writing letters to politicians.

And with some 200 million people using Google Earth over the past two years, the scheme's potential reach is huge.

The museum's Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative - which aims to halt violence before it becomes genocide - could be extended to other conflicts in the future.

Home 'completely gone'

The museum's database of information has been gathered from the UN, US state department and aid agencies working in the region.

We need President Bashir and other perpetrators to know they are being watched

Daowd Salih

Darfur campaigner

Hopes fade for solution

They plan to update the Google Earth site as new satellite images and information come in.

Daowd Salih, a former Red Cross and Red Crescent worker who was forced to leave his home in western Darfur, said he hoped the initiative would also serve as a warning to Sudan's leader, Omar al-Bashir, to rein in pro-government militias.

"We need President Bashir and other perpetrators to know they are being watched," he said.

Mr Salih, who now heads a campaign group on Darfur, has seen what little remains of his former village using the satellite imagery.

"It's one that has been completely destroyed," he said. "The site will show you how it was and how it is now - it is no longer there and you would never know where people used to play and gather.

"All this is completely gone, and we don't know how people will come back [to rebuild when the violence ends] - it will take years."

'It's us'

Google plans to track whether use of the Darfur site sparks new community and political action on the internet, taking that as a measure of success.

The site contains personal accounts of those affected by the crisis

So will it work? The Peavey family, visiting the Holocaust museum from Fremont, California, said they believed the public would grasp the project's message.

"I think people should know more about Darfur and about all the other genocides that are going on around the world," said David Peavey.

"We can offer help to get people out, we can offer places to take the refugees, we can put pressure on the government, we can document it, take pictures of it and show people's faces."

"I think the more personalised you get, the more of a difference it makes," said Arlynn Peavey. "You think 'it's people, it's us'."