Darfur Activism: I'll See Your Rumble, and Raise You a Challenge

by Michelle

categories: Activism & Advocacy, The Rumble

Published February 18, 2009 @ 06:14PM PT

Last week on the ENOUGH blog, David Sullivan and John Norris added an excellent analysis to the multi-blog "rumble" over the utility of human rights activism:

"Within their own communities, activists, academics, and aid workers are all fairly mindful of the vexing ethical dilemmas involved in their work. If you talk with almost anyone in this line of work over a beer, you will get a frank acknowledgement of some of the hard trade-offs on issues such as the use of force, maintaining access for relief workers, or accountability versus justice. Equally true, when the debate is cast into the public sphere, lots of folks retreat to an unhelpful moral high ground rich with absolutes. Questioning the effectiveness of humanitarian aid is off limits. Academics, steeped in specialized discourse, maintain that only they can possibly grasp the complexities of any given conflict zone. Activists take umbrage at anyone who questions the utility of pointing out that a burning building is indeed on fire."

(I will take umbrage with anything, often just for the sake of umbrage-taking itself. Which, come to think of it, sounds like it might make an excellent game show. But anyway...)

David's (more nuanced) characterization hits the nail right on the head --- it's easy to get defensive when, well, defending one's core beliefs, and the moral high ground in, indeed, a nice place to position oneself. But within the complexities and shades of gray, the moral trade-offs and tough questions, activism against conflict and mass atrocity still has its place:

"We need to avoid the temptations to dumb down policy prescriptions in the search for a snappy catchphrase. But when grounded in sound field analysis and targeted at the right levers, activism can make a huge difference in the priority different conflicts are given by politicians and policymakers."

This gets at a recent topic of discussion between Michael and myself (yes, The Rumble continues offline as well): Much criticism is levied against activists for simplistic t-shirt and protest placard slogans, but really, not every grassroots activist can be a policy wonk --- not everyone who cares and speaks out against genocide can have the same level of nuanced understanding as a career advocate, or an on-the-ground researcher or aid worker.

There's an extent to which you need the snappy catchphrases to "rally the troops," so to speak, to grow and energize a base of support that can then be channeled into higher-level, behind-the-scenes advocacy. (Advocacy which the movement's critics often seem to assume is absent.) The Save Darfur movement is a puzzle of many diverse pieces --- or a multi-layered tier, pulling in different levels of engagement from various sectors and audiences.

The question is, then: Where do you draw the line between strategic activist outreach and disastrous oversimplification?

The question is not, in my opinion, whether activism has a role or not --- but how we can make smarter activist movements that are more aware of what's worth fighting for, and what's worth fighting against. The answer cannot be to do nothing, and let things play out as they will. The movement's critics don't seem to suggest that nothing at all should be done, but I've also yet to see the various complaints coupled with anything constructive.

In a hard-hitting post on the "messy calculus" of conflict resolution, Kate and Amanda at Wronging Rights argue,

"That advocacy story, however, fails to acknowledge that behind nearly every mass atrocity is a power struggle that won't go away just because the international community is giving it mean looks. And it certainly fails to acknowledge that the easiest way to resolve power struggles is to let the stronger party win, even if they're war crime committing jerks; and come to think of it, the weaker party probably isn't such great guys either."

But difficulties and dirty looks aside, conflicts are not intractable --- there are alternative ways out which, while not acheivable overnight, are better than letting the "stronger party" win. As Colin Thomas-Jensen, also from the ENOUGH Project, commented in response to the Wronging Rights post:

"If we followed their logic, Idi Amin would still be butchering people in Uganda, Slobodon Milosevic would be presiding over an ethnically pure 'Greater Serbia', the RUF would still be hacking off limbs in Sierra Leone, and East Timor would be a giant graveyard, not an newly emerging independent state."

So now, for the challenge --- open to anyone, but particular addressed to the critics of the Save Darfur activist movement (I actually issued this challenge to Kleinman already, and warned him that I would go public with it if he didn't respond): If you were handed the entire Darfur enterprise tomorrow --- the grassroots activists, the high-level advocates, the humanitarian aid agencies, the scholars, the media, all of it --- what would you do with it? How would you change and direct it to acheive what you see to be the realistic goals of human rights protection and conflict resolution?

Go.