(CNN) -- A satellite surveillance project spearheaded by actor George Clooney's organization will monitor violence in Sudan during a January vote that could split the country into two.
The program will use satellite images to assess the situation on the ground for any signs of conflict, monitor hotspots in real time, and post the findings online, organizers said.
Humanitarian agencies hope the alert system will prevent human rights violations in a country where attacks in the western Darfur region have killed hundreds of thousands in the past seven years.
Not On Our Watch, an organization co-founded by Clooney that focuses on Darfur, is funding the satellite effort. It is collaborating with other groups, including the United Nations, Google and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, organizers said.
The January referendum, which will determine whether southern Sudan will become an independent state, has sparked fears of renewed violence.
The vote is part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended two decades of violence between the north and oil-rich south. The conflict led to the deaths of 2 million people, many from starvation.
The program, dubbed the Satellite Sentinel Project, is expected to launch this week at www.satsentinel.org.
The United Nations' Operational Satellite Applications Programme -- which is part of the effort -- said it is ensuring its "capabilities for satellite analysis and geographic information" are utilized to avoid another humanitarian crisis. CNN
