Rebecca Hamilton discusses “Fighting Genocide Around the Globe: What is Our Responsibility?”
Rebecca Hamilton, special correspondent on Sudan for the Washington Post and Harvard Law graduate, will speak at USC Law on Thursday 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.
The lunchtime talk “Fighting Genocide Around the Globe: What is Our Responsibility?” is sponsored by USC Law’s International Human Rights Clinic, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, USC International Law and Relations Organization and Fight On for Darfur. Held in Room 7 of the Musick Law Building at 12:15 p.m. on Thursday, the event is one of several on the USC campus to mark the fourth annual Genocide Awareness Week.
Hannah Garry, director of the IHRC, will moderate the discussion with Hamilton and Stephen Smith, executive director of the Shoah Foundation Institute.
“Rebecca brings critical thinking to how we, as the global community, can effectively prevent future genocides,” Garry said. “USC’s International Human Rights Clinic, in its work on international prosecutions of the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, shares her fierce determination to effectively uphold the promise of ‘never again.’”
In her book, Fighting for Darfur, Hamilton details how advocacy for Darfur has been a multi-billion dollar effort - from college students who galvanized university campuses in the belief that their outcry could save millions of Darfuris still at risk, to celebrities such as Mia Farrow, who spurred politicians to act, to Steven Spielberg, who boycotted the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. But what is unique about the book is that Hamilton’s analysis of the actual impact activists had on policy and the situation on the ground.
“This ends up being a story about a changing world order,” said Hamilton. “Activists shook up the U.S. foreign policy process, but 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.”
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 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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