هذا المحتوى غير متوافرة حتى الآن في العربية.
Archives
Categories
- African Union (12)
- Commentary on Darfur advocacy (70)
- Darfur – current events (81)
- FOIA (2)
- ICC (30)
- Nairobi (5)
- Perceptions from outside the U.S. (6)
- Podcasts (11)
- Rwanda (6)
- Sudan (33)
- Totally random stuff (3)
- Uncategorized (92)
- UPCOMING INTERVIEWS (3)
- WTF? (1)
-
RSS Links
-
Recent Comments
-
4 Comments
I agree with mass civil disobedience.
Although I agree with a need for a change in course, I am not sure that civil disobedience without a clearly-stated objective can be successful. In most cases where civil disobedience has been successful, two conditions had to apply: 1)the target was clearly defined and affected by its actions, and 2) the need for a sustained movement and high coordination was required.
Because the real target is the current Sudanese government and tacit support by other governments, I feel that any act of civil disobedience may fail its impact. Perhaps as some right-wing groups support Jewish settlements in the West Bank, we should consider heavy funding and strategic support by an organization on the ground in Sudan. Or work to find a way to create such an organization. Perhaps civil disobedience coordinated with this local group’s actions would work well.
The key is a clearly stated directive. Maybe some of you know what you expect your host country to do, but for myself, I am unclear. By stating a directive, you may reduce the number of people willing to commit civil disobedience, but you will increase their loyalty, I think.
Let us assume for a minute that a global campaign of repetitive acts of non-violent civil disobedience does have a positive effect on our nation’s leaders. What exactly would we be pushing them to do? Can we simply ride on the ask of “establish a viable plan on solving the crisis in Darfur”, or is that too general? I tend to the latter. I believe that before we can even talk tactics, we must iron out a specific set of policies we wish to see carried out. I think what Ms. Hamilton is insinuating (and please do correct me if I am wrong), is that the most we can do as activists is apply pressure to our own governments, who in turn can only implement certain foreign policies that would hopefully work to resolve the crisis. So before we jump right in, shouldn’t we come together on what those foreign policies would be? Personally, I have too little faith that if our government is left to its own will (even if that will has been imposed by activist efforts), that it will come up with the right plan for Sudan.
I think whatever activist strategies we use, whether it be civil disobedience or something else, they will have to focus on restoring our threat credibility in the eyes of the GoS. They have called our bluff time and time again (and by “our”, I mean the international community, not just the US), and now are fearless.
To tie all this into Ms. Hamilton’s original question, what next for the Darfur movement, I think what we need is 1) A reminder and reality check of how bad the situation still is, 2) A viable plan that the entire activist community can get behind, and 3) Substantial results that will not discourage the movement but instead motivate us to keep working. This conflict has been going on for six years – most people, including activists, assume that the situation is no longer grave, that there is no longer a need for urgent action. A proper wake up call is necessary. But until the community can come together as one movement, it will not matter how much compassion or motivation we have – without becoming unified, we will all keep fighting each other for the same goal (as we have been since this movement began) … and even if we all come behind one plan – if we see no substantial progress, the movement will constantly lose steam.
Dear Sunish
I don’t think that “the most we can do as activists is apply pressure to our own governments” – although I do think that is where activism has it’s greatest “value added” – for want a better term.
There’s a lot in your comment that gets us to the heart of the difficulties – Namely activists need to have a viable policy in mind if for no other reason than not to be “duped” by politicians saying they are doing something on Darfur to appease activists, without really do what is needed to create change on the ground. On the other hand, getting into policy prescriptions has a tendency (or at least has until now had a tendency) to divide the advocacy community which, in turn, weakens its impact on the “applying pressure” metric.
If there was a specific policy that everyone could get behind, then we would not be at this “impasse”, which is why I said in my intro that in terms of the root of the current problem, my money is that it lies at the policy end of the spectrum. So I guess it’s an ongoing process of getting to a point where there is a set of policy asks concrete enough not to allow the government to appear to be doing something when all they are doing is making noises that will appease activists, yet general enough that it doesn’t create such splits among the diverse advocacy community that their ability to create pressure is weakened. Which is all very easy to say, and yet extremely hard to turn into practice while there are continuing disagreements about what the facts on the ground actually are. . .
One Trackback
[...] a series of posts by Tim Nonn and Rob Crilly, today’s contribution comes from Alex Meixner – Senior [...]