The horror of genocide is not a far-off, abstract concept for Gretchen Steidle Wallace — she has seen its effects firsthand.

The founder of Global Grassroots, an organization providing aid to women in Africa, spoke to more than 100 people Monday evening at Millersville University about her work in refugee camps in Chad with people displaced by fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Audience members watched the 2007 documentary film "The Devil Came on Horseback," which depicts Wallace's brother, Brian Steidle, and his work as a military observer in Darfur at the height of the conflict.

Wallace said she often is asked by human-rights activists how they can convince people they should care about what happens in Darfur. Her response is that we were simply fortunate to be born in a country like the United States — and with that good fortune comes a duty to promote universal human rights around the world.

"In order to believe that we have a right to (human rights), that also means we have a responsibility to defend them for others who have no choice and have no voice and have no opportunity to stick up for themselves and fight for them on their own," Wallace said.

Since the Darfur conflict began in February 2003, about 450,000 people have been killed, Wallace said, and more than 3 million people displaced.

Steidle was working as an observer with the African Union for six months in 2004 — the height of the killing. The film is a mix of documentary footage and graphic pictures of atrocities he witnessed.

In the film, Steidle talks about his third day of observing in Darfur in the village of Um Zaifa. About 50 or 60 Janjaweed attackers burned and looted the village, killing most of the population. He took pictures of piles of dead bodies covered with loose dirt.

Another scene depicts an attack on the village of Hamada, in which 107 people were killed by the Janjaweed, a loose coalition of Arabic-speaking African tribes considered responsible for the Darfur atrocities. Steidle took a picture in Hamada of a bloody ax used to chop off limbs.

Wallace, who co-authored her brother's memoirs, also titled "The Devil Came on Horseback," said she is hopeful the Obama administration will take a stronger stand to encourage the United Nations to intervene in Darfur in any way that will end the crisis and bring peace to the region.

The most pressing need in Darfur right now is to ensure that humanitarian aid is restored, Wallace said. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir expelled 13 foreign aid agencies and three local agencies, cutting in half the amount of people providing aid in the region, after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him on March 3 for war crimes.

Wallace said there are 1.5 million Darfur refugees without medical attention, 1.1 million without water and sanitation and 1 million without food aid.

"It is going to get really bad (for refugees) quickly, as people slowly die of starvation and disease," Wallace said.

Genocide in Africa goes largely unnoticed in the United States, Wallace said. She pointed to the collective network coverage of Darfur by NBC, CBS and ABC. She said 26 minutes of news was devoted to Darfur in 2004 — out of 25,000 minutes of nightly news.

Wallace said movements have been growing in the U.S. to put pressure on governments, including divesting funds from mutual funds, pension plans and university endowments from companies doing business with the Sudanese government.

"The more that we can use our power to influence economically, then the more likely that we're doing as much as we can," Wallace said.

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