CHESTNUT HILL — Imagine walking into someone’s home and seeing a child’s drawing on the refrigerator. It’s filled from edge to edge with bright colors, wobbly lines and adorable depictions of everyday scenes. Now imagine taking a closer look at that drawing and noticing that in it there is a helicopter shooting bullets at a person who’s lying dead on the ground with blood coming out of his head. Meanwhile, a lime green and pink tank spits bullets at a cozy yellow and orange home made up of the most basic of shapes.

A child who escaped the nightmare in Darfur drew this disturbing image coated in candy colors.

That drawing is among a set of 500 others done by child refuges of Darfur as part of a traveling exhibition called Waging Peace.‚  The event is sponsored by Boston College’s center for Human Rights and International Justice, and the Center for the Arts and Social Responsibilities.

In 2007, Waging Peace member Anna Schmitt went to the country of Chad to learn about the living situations and humanitarian rights of Darfuri and Chadian refugees. Schmitt began collecting testimonials from adults in these areas when her focus turned to the youth, who had witnessed just as much terror as their elders. Schmitt handed out paper and pencils to kids between the ages of 6 and 18, and asked them to draw their future hopes and their strongest memories. What she found were honest depictions of the horror that these children witnessed in their everyday lives.

The government of Sudan’s story of the events that have unfolded in the past four years is not surprisingly very different from the pictures drawn by the children. What makes this exhibit fascinating is that the viewer enters with the back-of-the-mind thought that children have no reason to dramatize or fabricate their illustrations. At this age they are naƒ¯ve to the workings of politics and of government and its role in the gore and terror that they witnessed.

They just drew what they saw.

The sketches in the exhibit feature a number of elaborate events. Just as an American child might draw a scene from their home or school, the Darfuri children depict villages on fire, men on horseback shooting machine guns into crowds, and tanks and helicopters shooting into the air and dropping bombs on towns. The one common element that ties all of the drawings together is the blatant, and obvious red scribbles. Thick red smudges draw the viewer’s eye to outlines of adults, animals, and babies that lie on the floor of the representational villages, unmistakably and brutally murdered.

The images serve a duel purpose. While serving as a form of therapy for children that have obviously been emotionally scarred, the pictures also serve as an eye opener to audiences that may be unaware of the crisis that has taken over Darfur. The illustrations also provide evidence that there is much more brutality happening in Darfur than is being represented by its government. Therefore, many of the pictures will be submitted as evidence to the International Criminal Courts in the proceedings against officials of Sudan that have denied policies of genocide. The drawings certainly bring a level of awareness of the tragedy in Darfur to Boston, and shows how art therapy can be a useful tool when helping children and others deal with a crisis.

The ICC issued a warrant for this a while ago, but this Wednesday officially ordered the arrest of Sudan president Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and for the large part he played in the rape, torture and murder of those in Darfur, according to the New York Times.

Sudanese officials were outraged at the news and demanded that western countries who provide aid to those in Sudan leave immediately. Yea, that’s the way to convince us everything is OK. Tell the countries helping your people at no expense to you, to leave.

British charity Oxfam had its operating license revoked by the government (they help nearly 600,000 people in need). Doctors Without Borders was ordered to leave the country. The International Rescue Committee, which helps more than 1.75 million, was ordered to shut down operations, according to the New York Times.

The arrest warrant is expected to cause a breakdown in peace talks in Sudan. That’s serious bad news for the people in danger, but it’s good news if it leads to the arrest of al-Bashir, which it probably won’t anytime in the near future since the ICC has no police force.

The arrest warrant is the first the ICC has issued for a sitting head of state. It was appealed that he charged with genocide, but that was denied by the ICC.

Hopefully he’s‚ arrested‚ soon, but really, I’m not too optimistic. Like I said before, countries need to have some sort of physical or monetary interest in another country before they go in to protect its people. No one has that with Sudan.

FINALLY. Wanted, by the International Criminal Court: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, on charges yet to be named (but we all know what they are).

This was a long time coming, but was postponed because peace talks were going on with al-Bashir over the Darfur conflict. But now, for the first time since it opened in 2002, the ICC has issued a warrant for the arrest of a political powerhouse, and a genocidal one at that, the New York Times reports.

Problems could arise form this though. The introduction of the warrant will further complicate peace talks between diplomats and Sudan, and won’t do anything to help end the Darfur conflict.

And since the ICC has no real army or police force that can go in and extract al-Bashir, someone else has to. And no one will.

Why? Well, no one has a vested interest in Sudan. No other country is watching it’s own people die in Darfur. And without an immediate, physical threat to its own people, no country will risk entering the war-torn region. Not the U.S., that’s for damn sure. We have enough wars going on as it is.

But the court is trying to go about it another way. It wants to make the president come forward himself, by freezing all his assets.

But in that effort, a problem arose; al-Bashir’s assets are hidden under the names of others. Pinpointing each name and account will take more time than anyone would like.

The African Union and the Arab League are calling for further postponement of the warrant. They say al-bashir may still bring peace to Darfur.

Yea…right.