The panel discussion CRISIS IN SUDAN: THE FAILURE TO RESPOND was
held yesterday afternoon July 7 at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University. The panel and discussion went on for more than two and a
half hours, and involved about 150 people.
The panelists and audience were extraordinary. Here are some notes
that will give you at least some flavor of the discussion. Where I have
good enough notes to quote, I do. Otherwise I offer close paraphrases:
JENNIFER LEANING
Prof. of Int’l Health, Harvard School of Public Health, and recently
returned from Chad-Sudan border on mission for Physicians for Human
Rights
“We need to operationalize the concept of genocide. We need
to agree on indicators of genocide, which we can then apply in crisis
situations in order to act in time.” According to Leaning, indicators
of genocide are met in Darfur. For example, in Darfur the
attacks are systematic and consistent, suggesting central
orchestration. The attackers move across regions in a pattern that
indicates an overall intent to put a population on the run. The attacks
include comprehensive damage aimed at destroying the long-term
sustainability of populations, including burning town structures,
poisoning or otherwise destroying water sources, destroying orchards
and crops, and killing and stealing livestock.
The pattern of destruction in Sudan parallels that in the
government-promoted famine of 1998, and in other similar actions in
South Sudan over the past twenty years.
There are people at high levels in the administration who
want to take action, but they need more detailed insights into how to
do it. I believe that some of us should pool our knowledge and help
provide ideas. [See below Eric Reeve’s comments about nationalizing the
Sudanese railway, and liberating concentration camps—which were a
direct response to this suggestion.]
LIZ WALKER
Award-winning television journalist, news anchor, Harvard Divinity School student
My Sister’s Keeper
I speak today for my colleagues who are in South Sudan. Earlier this
afternoon I spoke with Gloria White-Hammond, my friend and the founder
of My Sister’s Keeper, who is stranded in the rains after visiting
several villages in which we have projects.
We have made a priority of working with women. Women have
experienced unspeakable trauma—gang rape, genital mutilation, murder of
their husbands and families. In many cases they are now bearing and
rearing the children of rape.
There is no question that this is genocide. The situation in the
South and in the West, that is Darfur, may differ in timing, but the
government tactics are the same. This has been going on for years.
I have covered Sudan numerous times on television, and I
speak about it everywhere I go. But there is real resistance to hearing
it. This has been a story that is difficult for Americans to listen to.
People seem to glaze over when I speak.
We have a problem of inaction that we must solve.
ERIC REEVES
Sudan expert and activist, Smith College
“We need to understand that this regime is experienced in
manipulating the international community. It knows how to get what it
wants from the Arab states, from the UN, and indeed from the African
Union.” It is expert at using delaying tactics, at stretching out
negotiations, and extending the period within which it can carry out
its murderous plans. It has engineered famines before, and is doing so
again. This is not new behavior. It has been going on for 20 years and
the government-engineered social collapses in the South killed more
than two million people.
“We need to understand that it is already too late for Darfur. The
genocide has already been put into motion. It cannot now be stopped,
only mitigated.”
The situation is clearly a genocide. No one will call it that.
Understand why. To do so commits signers of the genocide convention to
take action “to prevent and to stop” genocide. No nation has ever found
it easy to invoke this.
We need to put together a comprehensive understanding of the
conditions in Darfur, so that we know what intervention must look like.
For example, to feed people in Darfur we will need to import more than
35,000 metric tons of food per month, for about 18 months. This cannot
be accomplished by air or truck. The right answer seems to be to
nationalized the Sudanese railway line running from Port Sudan to the
interior. This is the sort of thing that a forceful humanitarian
intervention would need to do.
Also, the “camps” that the government runs in Darfur really
cannot be called anything other than concentration camps. In many such
camps people are being held against their will, and are being
intentionally starved. So an intervention will need not simply to
protect refugees, but also to free them from government imprisonment.
[Mr. Reeves publishes a twice-weekly analysis of the Sudan
situation, distributed as an email. We will be adding it as a feature
of http://passionofthepresent.org.]
ADOTEI AKWEI
Amnesty Int’l USA’s Advocacy Director for Africa
“We need to speak of action. Others before me have documented the destruction.”
We hear that 350 monitors and their protective force has been
authorized for Sudan. But we must realize that little or nothing is
happening on the ground.
“At this time there are only about 30 cease-fire monitors in the
area, and they have no means of travel from the areas where the
government has dropped them. Thus there is no monitoring going on now.”
We need not only effective cease-fire monitors, but human rights
monitors/investigators. There have been no charges of human rights
violations against any person during the entire year and a half of the
current crisis. We need human rights monitors who can travel, take
testimony, collect evidence, and pursue not only militia members but
members of the Sudanese armed forces.
But we need much more than monitoring. We need strong intervention.
There are really two options before us: Unilateral intervention, or
intervention by the United Nations and the African Union, using African
troops with UN blue helmets. It is unlikely that the United States or
any other nation with the capacity to act unilaterally will do so. It
is more likely that the UN will authorize a peacekeeping force. We need
to press hard for an enabling resolution at the UN Security Council
that will make way for a peacekeeping force.
KRISTA RIDDLEY
Deputy Director for Policy, Oxfam America
Ms. Riddley asked that her comments be off-the-record.
AMBASSADOR JOHN SHATTUCK, Moderator, President & CEO, John F. Kennedy Library & Foundation
[In the 90’s Mr. Shattuck was Assistant Secretary of State for
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. While serving in this position, Mr.
Shattuck worked to end the war in Bosnia and negotiate the Dayton Peace
Agreement; establish the International Criminal Tribunals for the
former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.]
“As someone who has worked in government and taken input and support
from those in the public, let me first say that the fact that we are
having this meeting will have an impact.”
Second, remember that many in government want to act. But they need support, encouragement, and information.
“For example, if you want to help, visit or contact the
offices of Kofi Annan and Colin Powell in the next week or so to
express your support for strong action. This will be particularly
effective if you can represent some organization that they recognize
and respect. For example, if a group from the American Bar Association
would visit Colin Powell, this could make a real difference.”
We need to learn the practical politics of making human rights a priority.
THE AUDIENCE
I can’t begin to do justice to all the contributions from the
audience–I made several good connections and expect to bring several
people to our attention in later posts.
An important and heated discussion broke out when one audience member pointed out that Amnesty International USA has not yet agreed to call the situation in Darfur a “genocide”–despite
a mid-May formal request by Phil Villiers, a long-time member and
participant in the Director’s Leadership Council of AIUSA. Indeed,
subsequent discussion after the meeting revealed that Human Rights Watch has avoided anything stronger than “ethnic cleansing,”.
Note that Jennifer Leaning’s organization Physicians for Human Rights
calls the situation a genocide, as does Liz Walker’s My Sister’s Keeper
and associated groups.
In a consideration of the causes of inaction, perhaps one of the causes of inaction is this very unwillingness to call the crisis a genocide.
By playing into the definition of Darfur as a “humanitarian crisis” or
even “ethnic cleansing” NGOs and human rights organizations become
enablers of the game of denial and delay being pursued by the Sudanese
government and their allies. If human rights organizations are not
going to call genocides genocides, who will? Who in the “second
superpower” of civil society is better equiped to make such a
determination?
As a world community, we prosecute war crimes after the fact. We
create the Holocaust Museum. But where do we get the courage and the
honesty to call a genocide what it is while it is being perpetrated and people can be saved?
We need to be able to do this. The labeling of a situation a genocide
forces action. Declaring “genocide” is indeed the only single solution
to inaction. There are of course many other important ways to take
action, but this one action–labeling a situation a “genocide”–should
under international law trigger a whole constellation of subsequent
actions to prevent and/or stop the genocide in real time.
This would seem to be Eric Reeves’ point in emphasizing the strong consequences that are compelled by such a finding. It
is not true that “the label doesn’t matter.” If that were true, at
least some political leaders would use the term genocide. The reason
that no one does is no coincidence. No one apparently is willing to
trigger real, preventive, protective action under the Genocide
Convention.
Shame on these leaders and shame on the human rights
organizations who abdicate their responsibility as the relevant civil
society experts, and who also refuse to call the situation a genocide.
If there is one thing they should be pushing it is the correct labeling
of this tragic genocide. This label, more than any other single
contribution, would lead to action.