Washington Update - Uncommon Leadership for Common Values |
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November 8th, 2005 - 01:53PM |
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Rebecca Deng Diing's family has spent 20 years displaced in their native Sudan. Photo: Peter Biro/IRC As the International Rescue Committee’s vice president in Washington, my job is to build support for IRC advocacy priorities and to ensure smooth relations with the United States and other governments. I jumped at the chance to work with the staffs of Senator Brownback, former Secretary Albright and the Aspen Institute in helping to organize a bipartisan conference on human rights issues that included a panel on refugees and the displaced. Here are a few impressions of the conference, which was held at Georgetown University on November 1st: At the bipartisan conference on human rights, similar themes kept cropping up even as the roster of high-level speakers and topics addressed by panels changed. The clear unanimity around certain issues – the wickedness of human trafficking, the importance of religious freedom, the pressing need to do more for refugees and the displaced, especially in Sudan – is, sadly, not considered particularly newsworthy. But this little-noticed agreement across party lines could offer a respite from the partisan bickering that characterizes many Washington policy debates and also serve to strengthen US foreign policy. The conference, entitled “Uncommon leadership for Common Values,” was the brainchild of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Senator Sam Brownback, the Kansas Republican. These unlikely co-hosts, who agree on very little in terms of domestic politics, seem to relish their odd alliance around key human rights issues. The panel on religious freedom brought together another unlikely pair: Dr. Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. Both have served on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and they described how a legislative requirement for the US State Department to produce an annual religious freedom report had propelled foreign service officers out of the embassies and into contact with oppressed people all around the world, seeking to secure for them a basic right enjoyed by Americans. Over and over, different panel discussions returned to Sudan – a vivid example of the failure of the international community to move quickly to protect the victims of attacks from the janjaweed and militias. The desire to help in Sudan was echoed by many present and across the ideological spectrum. On the panel discussing genocide, retired General Wesley Clark called for deploying US or NATO forces, while Prof. David Gompert of the National Defense University outlined a proposal to upgrade African forces for active combat, and not just peacekeeping, duties in order to intervene and stop widespread killing. The unanimous support expressed by the panel to use robust combat forces to stop genocide in Africa would probably not survive consideration by the White House and US Congress, absent a groundswell of public outrage and involvement in the issue. Moderator John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group urged those present to support the Save Darfur coalition and student-organized groups like the Genocide Intervention Fund (GIF) and Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND). The few areas of disagreement illuminate issues where further work is needed. While aid to refugees normally receives bipartisan support, a split in the panel was evident with regard to the United Nation’s role in emergency response. Rep. Frank Wolf, co-chair of the House of Representative’s Human Rights Caucus, said he had witnessed the UN fail in places like Mostar in Bosnia, Vukovar in Croatia, Rwanda and now Darfur and called for reform of the UN, including fundamental reform of the UN Security Council. Former Secretary Albright declares that “we are the UN” and places responsibility for fixing UN shortcomings squarely on the shoulders of leading member states, including the United States. Some of the issues that have bipartisan support in Washington become controversial when discussed with other countries, including close allies. For example, trafficking of persons for involuntary servitude, including women and girls for sexual exploitation, is called modern-day slavery by American opponents like panel speakers Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Brownback, but is sometimes viewed as a traditional or normal practice in other countries. Prostitution is legal in some countries, so that international negotiations to stop the illegal slave trade in women or to prohibit visits to prostitutes by international peacekeepers become complicated by different attitudes toward prostitution. The main IRC contribution to the conference was president George Rupp’s service as moderator of the panel on refugees and the displaced. In his opening remarks, Rupp introduced key issues, such as the decreased levels of refugees admitted each year to the United States, the problem of “warehoused” refugees living in camps for years and decades, and the inequitable treatment the international community gives refugees and internally displaced persons. IRC leaders who attended the conference, including co-chairman of the Board of Overseers Winston Lord and senior vice president George Biddle, took an active interest in discussions by all of the panels. After all, IRC resettlement offices run anti-trafficking programs in US cities like New York and Miami. The panel on genocide discussed Sudan at length, and IRC field staff work throughout Sudan and across the border in Chad. Many panel members – and not just the two clergy present – quoted scripture. The most oft-repeated phrase was “From those to whom much is given, much is required” (Luke 12:48, famously paraphrased by John F. Kennedy). The quote was applied both to the United States as a prosperous nation and to Americans as individuals – including the many students present – who were challenged to act (donate, speak out, travel, witness) to combat human rights abuses. The IRC contributed photos and text on refugees to a booklet issued to coincide with the conference. Intended to keep the issues alive even after the end of the conference, it describes the four human rights issues discussed and also offers ideas for how individuals can get more involved in defending human rights. Posted By: Anne Richard | Sudan & the Darfur Crisis Permalink |
