Not on Our Watch

by Don Cheadle

  Right now, we need to do all we can for the people of northern Uganda, of Somalia, and of Congo. Though genocide is not being perpetrated in these countries, horrible abuses of human rights are occurring, in some ways comparable to those in Darfur. Militias are targeting civilians, rape is used as a tool of war, and life-saving aid is obstructed or stolen by warring parties. Furthermore, by the time you pick up this book, another part of the world could have caught on fire, and crimes against humanity may be being perpetrated. We need to do all we can to organise ourselves to uphold international human rights law and to prevent these most heinous crimes from ever occurring.

  That is our challenge.

  Raising the Political Will to Confront Crimes Against Humanity

  Preventing genocide and other mass atrocities is a challenge made all the more difficult by a lack of public concern, media coverage, and effective response, especially to events in Africa. Crimes against humanity on that continent are largely ignored or treated as part of the continent’s political inheritance, more so than in Asia or Europe. The genocide in Darfur is competing for international action with human rights emergencies in Congo, Somalia, and northern Uganda—conflicts that along with southern Sudan have left over 6 million dead—but the international response to these atrocities rarely goes beyond military observation missions and humanitarian relief efforts, which are insufficient Band-Aids.

  Crises like these need the immediate attention of a new constituency focused on preventing and confronting genocide and other crimes against humanity. Of these four conflicts, only Darfur has generated sustained media and public attention. Images of innocent Darfurian civilians—men, women, and children—hounded from their homes by ravaging militia have triggered significant activism on the part of all citizens around the world. But these public expressions have not, by the time of this writing, at the end of 2006, yielded a sufficient international response. The world’s most powerful governments have yet to take bold action to protect the victims, build a viable peace process, and hold those responsible for this genocide accountable.

  There is some positive momentum building. At the United Nations World Summit in 2005, member nations agreed to a doctrine called the Responsibility to Protect, or R2P. R2P states that when a government is unable or unwilling, as is the case with Sudan, to protect its citizens from mass atrocities, the international community must take that responsibility. We believe that this doctrine, developed by a high-level panel co-chaired by Gareth Evans (the president of the International Crisis Group, where I work) and Mohamed Sahnoun (former Algerian diplomat and UN special advisor) commits us all, as individuals and nations, to do our part to fulfil that responsibility.

  During our visit to Darfur and the Darfurian refugee camps in Chad, we heard story after story of mind-numbing violence perpetrated by the Sudanese government army and the Janjaweed militias they support. We heard of women being gang-raped, children being thrown into fires, villages and communities that had existed for centuries being burned to the ground in an effort to wipe out the livelihoods and even the history of those communities. We heard things that simply should not be happening in the 21st century.

  In one of the refugee camps in Chad in 2005, we met Fatima, 42, who described how she had to escape her village of Girgira in western Darfur after her mother, husband, and five children were all killed by the Janjaweed militias. She said she feared the government would kill her as well. In desperation, she walked for seven days to a refugee camp. She couldn’t walk during daytime hours because of the Janjaweed gangs. She hid under trees and plants. Despite all this, she wanted to return home, but she wanted to be sure it was safe. Having lost everything, she no longer trusted anyone, even the African Union troops deployed in Darfur.

  Omda Yahya, a tribal leader we talked with from Tine, also saw all his children die in a violent raid on his town and in the subsequent escape to ‘safety’. His town, he says, was attacked by men on horseback, planes dropping bombs, and armies on foot. He fled with many of his tribe, and after more than 15 days of walking without food or drink, they arrived at a refugee camp. ‘We lost our village. They burned it. If we get all our possessions back, then after that we can go back. But now we don’t think it is safe to go back.’

  How do we respond to these horrors?

  What we’ve learned is that there are three pillars to fostering a real change in human rights and conflict resolution policy: field research to learn what is really happening in the conflict zones and what needs to be done, high-level advocacy to deliver the message to the people who determine policy, and domestic political pressure from a constituency that cares about these issues and takes them up with their elected officials.

  This last one often goes missing. Sustained and robust campaigns by organised citizens are needed for maximum impact. Fostering these constituencies must be our focus.

  Will the Western world lead efforts to protect people when they are being systematically annihilated by predatory governments or militias? Will we punish the perpetrators of crimes against humanity? Will we promote peace processes with high-level envoys and other support? None of these options is beyond the realm of the possible; they are simply matters of political will. If citizens and therefore their governments answer yes to these questions, millions of lives will be spared in the coming years.

  The good news is that much of the suffering could come to an end. It is within our power. If the Western world takes a lead role during each crisis marked by crimes against humanity, our chances to prevent or end these crimes increases dramatically. If they had taken a leading role in three areas of policy—peacemaking, protection, and punishment—these crimes could have been prevented or stopped. If citizens and their governments increase their activism and work to build an international coalition to stop mass atrocities, major changes are possible.

  Despite what you may see on the evening news, there are encouraging signs of progress. Indeed, sparse and sporadic news coverage of Africa focusing solely on crises there has led to a ‘conflict fatigue’ associated with the continent as a whole.[6]

  By ignoring the positive news, US and European media risk fostering a dangerous tendency to dismiss the entire continent as hopeless. So when wars erupt and their attendant human rights abuses emerge, the response—if there even is one—is often tentative and muted, and conflict-ridden countries easily descend into a free-fall. We think these conflicts are not just an affront to humanity; they are the greatest threat to overall progress throughout the African continent.

  Yet despite the many obstacles, there is good news coming out of Africa every day. There has been a move away from dictatorships toward democracy in many countries, and a commitment on the part of many African governments to fiscally responsible economic policies focused on alleviating poverty. Peace agreements have been forged in countries which only a few years earlier had been ripped apart by war and crimes against humanity. Witness the tragic tales of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Mozambique, southern Sudan, Rwanda, and Burundi, all of which had horrific civil wars that came to an end, laying the groundwork for huge positive changes.

  So that is the point. If we can prevent and resolve these wars that lead to such devastation, one of the biggest reasons for Africa’s misery and dependence will be removed. By giving peace a chance, we give millions and millions of Africans a chance.

  We have identified the Three Ps of ending genocide and other crimes against humanity: Protect the People, Punish the Perpetrators, and Promote the Peace. (We will describe these in detail in Chapter 9.) If the governments of the world’s leading powers, motivated by the will of their citizens, take the lead globally in doing these three things, crimes against humanity can come to an end.

  The decisions we need to make to protect those who are suffering are clear, and the sooner we decide, the more lives will be saved.

  That is our choice.

  Overcoming
Obstacles to Action

  So if it is as easy as that, why don’t we do it? Mostly it is what we call the Four Horsemen Enabling the Apocalypse: apathy, indifference, ignorance, and policy inertia. Western governments simply don’t want to wade too deeply into the troubled waters of places like northern Uganda and Congo. The US did once, in Somalia, and the resulting tragedy of Black Hawk Down—when 18 American servicemen were killed in the streets of Mogadishu—made everyone nervous about recommitting any effort to African war zones we don’t fully understand.

  As we all know by now, during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the world’s citizens—to the extent that they even heard about what was happening—largely averted their eyes, and as a result governments did nothing. Similar averting occurred during the 1975–1979 genocide in Cambodia, from 1992 to 1995 in Bosnia, and even during the Holocaust. As our friend Samantha Power documented in her book on genocide, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, this is the usual response to horrific crimes against humanity—disbelief in the totality of the horror and a genuine hope that the problem will go away.

  Somalia’s Black Hawk Down actually provides the wrong lesson. Instead of running away from these crisis zones, we could protect many lives, and do so much good, if we gave a little more of our time, energy, and resources, in ways that understand the local context. In most cases, we don’t have to send an intervention force every time there is a problem, though working with other countries to apply military force is sometimes necessary. Diplomatic leadership in support of the Three Ps (Protection, Punishment, Peacemaking) is what it takes to make a substantial difference.

  Beyond indifference and the ghosts of Somalia, responding to Darfur has an additional obstacle. Sudanese government officials, who were close to Osama bin Laden when he lived in that country from 1991 until 1996, are now cooperating with American counter-terrorism authorities. The regime in Khartoum rightly concluded that if they provided nuggets of information about al-Qaeda suspects and detainees to the Americans, the value of this information would outweigh outrage over their state-supported genocide. In other words, when US counter-terrorism objectives meet up with anti-genocide objectives, Sudanese officials had a hunch that counter-terrorism would win every time. These officials have been right in their calculations so far. As of this writing, near the end of 2006, the United States had done little to seriously confront the Sudanese regime over its policies.

  In order to win the peace in Sudan, we must first win an ideological battle at home. We must show that combating crimes against humanity is as important as combating terrorism. Often, as in the case of Sudan, the pursuit of both objectives doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. History has demonstrated that Sudanese government officials change their behaviour when they face genuine international diplomatic and economic pressure. If we worked to build strong international consensus for targeted punishments of these officials to meet both counter-terrorism and human rights objectives, they would comply.

  The policy battle lines are clear. On the one hand are the forces of the status quo: officials from the United States and other governments, and the UN who are inclined to look the other way when the alarm bell sounds and simply send food and medicine to the victims. They believe that citizens around the world do not care enough to create a political cost for their inaction. These officials are allowed to remain bystanders because of complicit citizens who know about what is happening but do not speak out, giving the officials an excuse to do nothing.

  On the other hand are a growing group of people, a ragtag band of citizen activists all over the world who want the phrase ‘Never Again’ to mean something. They want the first genocide of the 21st century, Darfur, to be the last. In the US these are led principally by Jewish, Christian, African-American, and student groups, they have slowly begun to organise. Yet far more needs to be done to overcome the institutional inertia in US policy circles. These groups are joined by an even smaller but determined core of citizen activists in other countries who are trying to build a global civil society alliance to confront crimes against humanity.

  Who wins this battle will determine the fate of millions of people in Darfur and other killing fields.

  That is our mission.

  A Citizens’ Movement to Confront Mass Atrocity Crimes

  Our friend Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has written about a ‘citizens’ army fighting to save’ millions of lives in Darfur. After describing some of the extraordinary efforts of ordinary citizens around the US, including fund-raising by young American kids, Nick wrote, ‘I don’t know whether to be sad or inspired that we can turn for moral guidance to 12-year-olds.’[7]

  Well, we are inspired.

  Samantha Power has written about the ‘bystanders’ who do nothing when genocide occurs and the ‘upstanders’ who act or speak out in an effort to stop the atrocities from continuing. Her book highlights the ‘upstanders’ and ‘bystanders’ of the last century. We all have the capacity to be ‘upstanders.’ The more of us there are, the better the chances that these kinds of crimes will not be allowed to occur in the 21st century.

  It is up to us.

  For us, Don first got interested in these issues through the movie he made, then through connecting up with John, who had gone through his own process of growing awareness and discovering a whole universe of Americans who are getting involved and trying to make a difference. We want to show that it is possible to care enough to change things. We want to remove all excuses and impediments to individual action, because such actions—collectively—do make a difference.

  Throughout American history, social movements have helped shape our government’s policy on a variety of issues. Often in the beginning, their appearance was not widely recognised as much of a movement. We believe we are witnessing the birth of a small but significant grassroots movement to confront genocide and—we hope, over time—all crimes against humanity wherever they occur. A campaign like ENOUGH is but one manifestation of that effort, and we describe many others later in the book.

  The ENOUGH Project was founded by a small group of friends and colleagues who had grown weary of watching the world reinvent the wheel every time mass atrocities lurched onto the world’s television screens. There is no reason that we collectively cannot do far better and save countless thousands of lives in the process. ENOUGH seeks to strengthen the efforts of grassroots activists, policy makers, advocates, concerned journalists, and others by giving them up-to-date information from on the ground in countries of concern and offering practical pressure points to end the violence. The initial efforts focus on a trio of countries: Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the situation in northern Uganda. To learn more go to www.enoughproject.org.

  Student groups are forming on hundreds of college campuses (and hundreds more schools) in the US, specifically to raise awareness and undertake activities in response to the genocide. Synagogues and churches are holding forums and starting letter-writing campaigns all over the country. National organisations—some faith-based, some African-American, some human rights–related—are running campaigns in every city. Celebrities are getting involved, taking trips and speaking out against the genocide. After all of the hollow pledges of ‘Never Again’ dutifully made by politicians and pundits, networks of concerned Americans and people throughout the world are taking matters into their own hands and demanding policy makers do more to end the crisis in Sudan.

  In the US, one of the best things about this growing movement is that it is non-partisan. So much of the venom that marks Washington these days—the red state/blue state divide—has been set aside. We always hear how politics makes strange bedfellows. How strange it must have been for some of the conservative evangelical members of Congress to find themselves agreeing with some of the most liberal members the Congress has ever seen!

  How the world responds to genocide and other mass atrocity crimes represent
s one of the greatest moral tests of our lifetime. In the face of genocide halfway around the globe, can citizens—acting individually and in groups—possibly aid in stopping these atrocities?

  Absolutely!

  We continue to be convinced that the growing chorus of outrage, from Florida to California, can stop war crimes and reduce the cries of agony in places such as Darfur. World powers can take a leading role in stopping atrocities, in most cases without putting forces on the ground in large numbers. However, the only means by which US policy can change, and thus the only way mass atrocity crimes can end, is if citizens raise their voices loud enough to get the attention of politicians and force our governments to change their policy.

  To encourage and embolden you, our readers, to join in this movement to bring an end to genocide around the world, we offer Six Strategies for Effective Change that you as an individual can employ to influence public policy and help save hundreds of thousands of lives:

  - Raise awareness

  - Raise funds

  - Write letters

  - Call for divestment

  - Join an organisation

  - Lobby the government

  Ultimately, this book is about giving meaning to ‘Never Again’. In short, this is a handbook for everyone who thinks that one person cannot make a difference, for those who feel that what happens half a world away is not their responsibility, and for everyone who cares but doesn’t know where to start making a positive difference.

  We want to tell that story.

  First, though, in the interest of full disclosure and since it is, after all, our book, we will tell you our stories ...

  [1] Paul was the manager of a hotel in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. In 1994, an extremist government set in motion a plan to exterminate Rwandans who were ethnically Tutsi and non-Tutsis who sympathised with them. Paul was a member of Rwanda’s other main ethnic group, the Hutu. When genocide consumed Rwanda in 1994, Paul protected more than 1,000 Rwandans from near certain extermination at the hands of extremist Hutu militias. Hotel Rwanda tells his courageous story.