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July 4th, 2007 - 05:01AM |
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Photo: Emmanuel d'Harcourt/The IRC Anne Richard, IRC vice president of advocacy, testified about the plight of Africa’s refugees before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 20, World Refugee Day. Richard told the representatives that of the world’s 12 million or so refugees, a little over 25 percent are in Africa—and that Africa also has about half of the world’s 25 million internally displaced persons: In my job here in Washington, D.C., I try to find ways to get policy makers and citizens to learn more and care about Africa, especially Africa’s neglected or forgotten crises. Despite the glut of depressing news that daily fill our newspapers and computer screens about far-flung crises, I can report some modest reasons for hope. First, Americans in large numbers want to help refugees and displaced people, and this issue enjoys bipartisan support. We have real champions here in Congress, on both sides of the aisle. Congressional leaders sponsor legislation, increase funding and travel to international hot-spots to see first-hand the problems that we and other NGOs are trying to address, often supported by US aid dollars. There are also some champions in the media. In the past two years, IRC has presented our “excellence in media” award to Terry George, the director of the film “Hotel Rwanda”, and Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times for his coverage of humanitarian crises. Celebrities are also helping to raise awareness about some of these crises. Thanks in part to these efforts, there is a growing interest among Americans – churches, communities, citizens’ groups – and especially American youth in doing more to help. Although we are grateful for the attention brought by celebrities, this is also a problem: movie stars should not be filling the void in the foreign policy debate and generating policy solutions; this is the responsibility of policy-makers in this very city, in this very room. Not too long ago, colleagues in Kinshasa asked us to try to organize a grass-roots organization to care about the Congo. I admit to greeting this idea with skepticism: while we have supporters across the United States, the IRC is not a grass-roots advocacy organization. Nonetheless, several of my colleagues decided to pull together as many concerned NGOs, church and student groups, ex-Peace Corps Volunteers, academics and expatriate Congolese as they could find. The result is Congo Global Action [LINK to http://ga3.org/campaign/Congo_Global_Action], a fast-growing coalition that will advocate for Congo and urge increased local and international response, beginning with governments. Keep an eye out for them – they will be visiting your offices in the near future! One more attempt to draw the attention of Americans to crises in Africa. Posted By: theirc | Africa Permalink |
