Washington Post correspondent speaks about new book, Fighting for Darfur
- Gilien Silsby
A packed audience of more than 120 USC students, faculty and staff from across the campus, attended a discussion recently at USC Law on “Fighting Genocide Around the Globe: What is Our Responsibility?”
Sponsored by USC Law’s International Human Rights Clinic, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, USC International Law and Relations Organization and Fight On for Darfur the noontime event featured Rebecca Hamilton, special correspondent on Sudan for the Washington Post and Harvard Law graduate, and Steven Smith, executive director of Shoah.
The event was one of several on the USC campus to mark the fourth annual Genocide Awareness Week.
Hamilton spoke about her new book, Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide, which looks at the grassroots campaign to draw global attention to the plight of Darfur's people.
“Rebecca, through her research, brings critical thinking to the Darfur advocacy movement, the first mass mobilization of ordinary citizens to prevent and stop genocide,” said Hannah Garry, director of the IHRC, who moderated the discussion. “She effectively demonstrates the need to measure success not just with respect to short-term ability to influence decision makers but with respect to achieving actual long-term solutions for victims and their communities on the ground. Otherwise, despite all good intentions, such movements are in danger of doing more harm than good.”
“In 1994, 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda, while the world stood by,” Hamilton said. She explained that U.S. foreign policy is grounded in the idea that people who are born here (in America) matter more than people born outside our borders. But she added that at the start of the Darfur movement “everyone thought that if we could raise our voices loud enough on Darfur Washington would begin to care.”
Hamilton detailed how advocacy for Darfur led to a multi-billion dollar effort. From college students who galvanized university campuses to celebrities such as Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg, who took on the cause, Hamilton offered a detailed account of the impact of the first major citizens movement against genocide.
But despite the advocacy efforts and the dramatic increase in news coverage (50 percent greater by 2007 than it had been when the story broke in 2004), “None of this resolved the situation in Darfur,” Hamilton said. She explained that citizen advocacy didn’t work like people doing the lessons learned writing after Rwanda had hoped it would.
Although activists shook up the U.S. foreign policy process, the situation in Darfur remains unresolved because the battle to protect civilians now takes place in the realm of global geopolitics.
“It’s not enough to get Washington to care,” Hamilton said. “The perpetrators are still in power and the survivors don’t feel safe enough to return home – they’ve been in camps for seven years. The advocacy movement never quite captured or created a long-term impact.” Hamilton said. Nonetheless, she hopes her work is viewed as narrating the beginning of a multi-generational effort to stop mass atrocities stretching beyond the situation in Darfur.
In researching her book, Hamilton conducted more than 150 interviews with a variety of policy-makers, including Colin Powell, Stephen Hadley, Jendayi Frazer, and all the Sudan envoys – most recently traveling to Darfur with Scott Gration. She also has interviewed United Nations former Secretary General Kofi Annan and Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa.
Hamilton met with both the survivors and the perpetrators of the massacres in Darfur, and in partnership with the National Security Archives, she obtained the declassification of 600 cables related to U.S. policy on Sudan. Her writing has been published in a range of outlets including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, Newsweek and The International Herald Tribune. She also worked for the Prosecution on the Darfur cases at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Awarded a Knox Fellowship to attend Harvard, Hamilton graduated as a joint degree student from Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School in 2007. She is a New America Foundation Fellow.
Sponsored by USC Law’s International Human Rights Clinic, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, USC International Law and Relations Organization and Fight On for Darfur the noontime event featured Rebecca Hamilton, special correspondent on Sudan for the Washington Post and Harvard Law graduate, and Steven Smith, executive director of Shoah.
The event was one of several on the USC campus to mark the fourth annual Genocide Awareness Week.
Hamilton spoke about her new book, Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide, which looks at the grassroots campaign to draw global attention to the plight of Darfur's people.
“Rebecca, through her research, brings critical thinking to the Darfur advocacy movement, the first mass mobilization of ordinary citizens to prevent and stop genocide,” said Hannah Garry, director of the IHRC, who moderated the discussion. “She effectively demonstrates the need to measure success not just with respect to short-term ability to influence decision makers but with respect to achieving actual long-term solutions for victims and their communities on the ground. Otherwise, despite all good intentions, such movements are in danger of doing more harm than good.”
“In 1994, 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda, while the world stood by,” Hamilton said. She explained that U.S. foreign policy is grounded in the idea that people who are born here (in America) matter more than people born outside our borders. But she added that at the start of the Darfur movement “everyone thought that if we could raise our voices loud enough on Darfur Washington would begin to care.”
Hamilton detailed how advocacy for Darfur led to a multi-billion dollar effort. From college students who galvanized university campuses to celebrities such as Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg, who took on the cause, Hamilton offered a detailed account of the impact of the first major citizens movement against genocide.
But despite the advocacy efforts and the dramatic increase in news coverage (50 percent greater by 2007 than it had been when the story broke in 2004), “None of this resolved the situation in Darfur,” Hamilton said. She explained that citizen advocacy didn’t work like people doing the lessons learned writing after Rwanda had hoped it would.
Although activists shook up the U.S. foreign policy process, the situation in Darfur remains unresolved because the battle to protect civilians now takes place in the realm of global geopolitics.
“It’s not enough to get Washington to care,” Hamilton said. “The perpetrators are still in power and the survivors don’t feel safe enough to return home – they’ve been in camps for seven years. The advocacy movement never quite captured or created a long-term impact.” Hamilton said. Nonetheless, she hopes her work is viewed as narrating the beginning of a multi-generational effort to stop mass atrocities stretching beyond the situation in Darfur.
In researching her book, Hamilton conducted more than 150 interviews with a variety of policy-makers, including Colin Powell, Stephen Hadley, Jendayi Frazer, and all the Sudan envoys – most recently traveling to Darfur with Scott Gration. She also has interviewed United Nations former Secretary General Kofi Annan and Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa.
Hamilton met with both the survivors and the perpetrators of the massacres in Darfur, and in partnership with the National Security Archives, she obtained the declassification of 600 cables related to U.S. policy on Sudan. Her writing has been published in a range of outlets including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, Newsweek and The International Herald Tribune. She also worked for the Prosecution on the Darfur cases at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Awarded a Knox Fellowship to attend Harvard, Hamilton graduated as a joint degree student from Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School in 2007. She is a New America Foundation Fellow. 
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