Darfur Now | Jason Miller | Talks at Google

Hi, I'm Jason Miller. I'm a co founder of the Sudan Investment Task Force, which is the other co founder. Adam Sterling was featured in this film and I am more than happy to answer any questions. The only I think point I wanted to make at the beginning was that the director of this film, who I got to know very well, made this film in the sort of rapid time frame that he did, which is one of the fastest from time that he started shooting to the time that he made the film was well, less than two years, which is kind of record time in terms of Hollywood standards. He made it that fast because he wanted to capture people's sort of spirit towards activism while the conflict was still going on. And unfortunately the conflict is still going on. And he wanted, I just talked to him tonight. He wanted to convey the message that one of the easiest ways to get involved in Darfur is to spread the message about this film. You can organize, you can get group tickets to go see this film or organize house parties around it. And all of that's available on the film's website@MySpace.com darfornow I'm happy to answer questions and since I'm the policy advisor for the organization now, I'm also quite familiar with Darfur policy and generally each of the characters in this film. So please, if you have any questions or if you have a topic you'd like me to talk about. I'm more than happy to talk about any topic areas. Sure.

Jason, have you made it? The question I have for you is practically speaking, how is the divestment?

Right.

Can you give a few examples of maybe.

I'm sorry, sure. So the question was in general, how is divestment implemented? This sort of what our organization is about and can I give a few examples of companies or whatnot. So our organization has a divestment is the general concept that investors have sway over companies as partial owners of those companies and that investors should, in situations in which the company is not acting in the sort of social values that the investors believe in, should raise those concerns with companies. Our organization believes strongly that economic investment is critical for improved living standards and democratization in the developing world. And as a result, we're very careful about who we decide to target. There are well over 500 multinationals operating in Sudan and we've selected a few that are in the key industries that have historically supported the Khartoum government while providing little development to the sort of surrounding areas like Darfur. There's many other areas in Sudan that are as underdeveloped as Darfur. And once we've sort of identified those companies that are participating in industries that have historically helped the Khartoum government, we then look towards what policies they've implemented to sort of mitigate the sort of support that they are providing to the government. Do they have a substantial policy in place? Have they addressed this issue? Have they talked to the government about it? And once we've sort of narrowed that down, we now have about two to three dozen countries, companies that we're talking about that really we feel are truly problematic in Sudan. And our approach is to first have investors engage those companies in a dialogue. And if that dialogue, in an expedited time fashion, does not work to change the company's behavior, then the next step is divestment. So we're trying to give companies every chance possible to sort of remedy their behavior in Sudan. Why would divestment even possibly work? Well, it turns out Sudan is hugely indebted, but it has a government, sort of, unlike perhaps the North Korean regime or other rogue states, that cares deeply about economic investment in the country and holds investor conferences on a somewhat basically monthly basis across the world to try to attract the capital necessary. And that capital, we've shown, has been critical for building up the military and also supporting the ruling regime. So there's a few companies that are really providing this sort of financial lifeline for Khartoum to exist. And we want to target those companies because they have more leverage, arguably than even the US Government, who has sort of lost a lot of its leverage in Sudan based upon our sort of standing in the world these days. And given that Sudan is a Muslim country and many of the companies that we end up targeting are in the oil and large power infrastructure industries, they predominantly come from their home countries, are predominantly China, Malaysia and India, who have sort of taken over, as in Africa, where Western companies have been unwilling to go. China is one of the largest supporters of the regime in Zimbabwe, which is known to be a hugely problematic regime as well. So that's the sort of general premise of what we're doing. But it turns out we have a lot of leverage in the US through investors. The US Has. I forgot what the stat is. But some, you know, large amount of the total capital markets operate through the United States, and especially the state pension fund systems themselves have well over 2 to 3 trillion dollars in assets invested, all of whom have just by the virtue of how you invest in the world today, you just sort of invest in a diversified portfolio. You will be invested in these companies. And so that's where we started. We started with. Well, we started with the UC system, then went to California, and now we have legislation that's passed in 25 states. And we also have legislation currently pending in Congress, sort of taking the similar approach in Congress. And we've opened up an office in London, and we're trying to build this sort of campaign in London. And with a lot of hard work, we're trying to get sort of grassroots efforts going in India, Malaysia and China, which really is where this sort of awareness needs to start springing forth. So that's a bit of a summary.

Hi, Jason.

Hi.

So in the beginning of the movie, I guess this is an event on, they did mention the number 200,000 dead in 2007. And what's your take on the number? Because I find it very hard to believe that 200,000 is still the number dead when that was first floated around in 2003. And we hear thousands being killed every month. And I know Eric Reeves says it's probably because it's. And a lot of people agree with him or that it's certainly higher than.

Right. Well, it turns out it's kind of a grisly science to figure out mortality estimates in conflict zones like this. Unfortunately, Darfur was sort of so underserved originally, which is the reason the rebels took up arms in the first place. There wasn't even a great accurate census. So you have a hard time knowing how many people are unaccounted for if you don't know how many people were originally there. The numbers that have sort of been tossed around is between 200,000 as the sort of low end estimate. Well, the Khartoum government says 9,000, but everyone else says 200,000 as the low end estimate and up to 450,000 as the high end estimate, with 2.5 million more displaced. Now. The genocide is sort of in a second phase right now. The first phase was the widespread clearing of villages. 90% of African villages in Darfur were wiped out. Almost the whole African population has been displaced, and they're existing in internally displaced camps or across the border in Chad. But there is no one really left in villages to wipe out. And so the Khartoum government has a sort of different strategy now, which is they've made it almost impossible for humanitarian aid to get through. It's the world's largest humanitarian aid operation. And every humanitarian group we talk to and we have connections to most of them say it's also by far the hardest in terms of getting food there. Humanitarian aid workers have been killed, raped by the Sudanese government and otherwise harassed. So that's sort of genocide as a definition does not actually require killing. I don't want to get into the legal definition, but it really doesn't require killing. It requires conditions calculated to deprive someone of their culture or life. And certainly denying humanitarian aid to a situation in which you created the displaced people and intentionally sort of hoarded them into the camps fits under the spirit and definition of genocide still. So how many people are dying these days? It's a little bit harder to calculate because you're in internally displaced camp. Malnutrition because of humanitarian aid is not getting. Malnutrition is rampant in the camps. Sorts of disease outbreaks are starting to happen. But Khartoum calls those sort of normal deaths. How do you calculate those as an above and beyond death attributed to the genocide versus a sort of normal death? Does that leave you with an unsatisfactory answer? Right.

I think people should up that number more to like maybe, maybe if it's another low end estimate of like maybe even 300,000.

Right.

Because for like years that number has been reduced in the media.

Right.

And so how like is this making the following.

Right, so. Yeah, yeah. And the answer there is that really since about 05, there hasn't been a serious attempt at quantifying it. And part of that is even the world's most sort of brave humanitarian organizations are not in a large swath of Darfur. So it's just you can't even get estimates if you can't even get sort of the people that are willing to put the risk their lives to deliver aid to the front lines. You certainly aren't going to get a statistician sort of who's just there to calculate things. And that's the reason there hasn't been an estimate since then.

Thank you, Jason, first of all for all of your work that you've done and getting the legislations passed and making this a global movement. And it's really been incredible. Thank you for that. Just wanted to touch on a few things. First, you were talking about the definition of genocide and I thought I heard in the movie that the United States is the only country that has actually called it a genocide. And one, why is that? And then the second question I wanted to follow up on was what is the current status with the ICC with, you know, actually capturing the two, Hassoon and Ali and sending them.

Right. So the first question was why has the US been the only country to declare this genocide? And it's as a taking a step back, it used to be, especially after the Rwandan genocide, there was a lot of scholarship around the Rwandan genocide. And it was sort of concluded that what really needed to happen was the term needed to be used while a conflict was ongoing in order to motivate people. Sort of shame factor. And what Darfur taught us is that even declaring genocide, Colin Powell, when he declared genocide In September of 04, the very next sentence after he said it was genocide said we do not need to change US Policy towards Sudan, right? So it was not enough even to declare genocide to motivate governments to act. What it was enough was to sort of motivate a grassroots organizations around the term. It. It evokes a strong response in, for example, the Jewish community, the Armenian community, the African American community, and it was those in combination with the evangelical community who had been following the conflict between north and South Sudan, which was a civil war that preceded Darfur in which Christians were persecuted. It was that sort of collective combination that really led to this grassroots effort, which is probably more prominent than anything since apartheid South Africa. So the lesson was that declaring genocide motivates grassroots organizations. It still doesn't motivate governments. Why has no other government declared it? Every government has basically come up the same way that the Clinton administration said acts of genocide have happened in the Rwanda and sort of danced all around the term genocide. That's what's been happening in Europe. The European Parliament called. Called it acts tantamount to genocide. That's what the European Parliament officially declared. At occasional times, diplomats from Britain and Germany and France have said genocide and then retracted it. And so there's clearly a conscious attempt not to use the term genocide, if possible in Europe.

And why is that? Is that tied to investments? Because generally it's usually European that is more progressive more than the US regarding.

And certainly in this case, it's been a complete role reversal. And leading scholars and activists in Europe have pointed that out that the US has been way ahead of Europe on the Darfur activism. And I would argue that's because of using that term genocide in the US Why hasn't Europe done it? I think it's the same reason the US decided not to do it in Rwanda, which is that there are legal, international legal obligations as soon as the term genocide is declared. The Genocide Convention adopted by the UN and ratified by, I believe almost every European country requires all possible action by each country if a genocide is happening. So even though international law is generally not enforceable or is not enforceable Sort of. They didn't want the stigma of saying, well, it's genocide, and then not acting. But interestingly enough, even the UN has not declared it a genocide. And there part of it is the politics of the un. China and Russia sit on the Security Council and they have. China is the number one arms seller to Sudan, also the number one investor in Sudan. And Russia generally aligns with China on terms of sort of not declaring rogue states rogue states or calling out humanitarian violations when they happen, which is actually what's happening in Burma right now as well. So that's part of the reason the UN hasn't declared it. The other is that there's been some, I think, reasonable argument to say, well, is this a horrible crimes against humanity counterinsurgency tactic or is this an actual genocide? And that's just, to me, more just legal liase. I don't care if it's a mass atrocity or genocide. It's just it's mass atrocities. But legitimately, if you're trying to keep the sort of legal framework, if you aren't very specific in the sort of group that you target and you do target, there are some Arab tribes, for example, in Darfur who have not signed up to the Janjaweed, and they've been persecuted as well, you know, then is it really just a sort of crimes against humanity instead of genocide? And that's sort of what the UN concluded. Oh, I'm sorry, your other question was regarding the status of the icc. Right. So these two. Unbelievably, this guy, Ahmed Haroun, was made, as you read, the Minister of Humanitarian affairs who's in charge of distributing the humanitarian aid to Darfur after he orchestrated the Darfur genocide. And the Sudanese government made the claim that they can prosecute, as you heard, heard the Sudanese ambassador to the UN say, we have a terrific justice system. We can prosecute these guys on our own. Which of course is not true. And in the case of Ali Kashib, who's the Janjaweed head, he was released because of lack of evidence, according to the Sudanese government. And Ahmed Haroun was never arrested and just sorts of sits there in his current position in terms of further prosecutions, there's pretty much no one doubts that this goes much higher than those two. But the ICC has to be very careful in maintaining its legitimacy to ensure that it has sort of the best possible case before issuing indictments. And so Ocampo has said that he plans on issuing further indictments. He has not to this point right now. And part of that is because he's hindered. He can't go into Sudan right now. The two that have been indicted remain in Sudan. And this is, of course, one of the great travesties of international justice, is this happened in Nazi Germany as well. And in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge committed crimes. And for decades the government in Cambodia protected the Khmer Rouge until just recently when sort of these ancient 95 year olds are now going on trial. I think Ocampo's point is right, eventually these two will be tried. The question is, how much after the sort of the conflict will they be tried and is that worth it? Does that bring the sense of justice that's necessary?

Aside from what you were saying about taking people to watch the movie? And it's a pretty common question, but what can the average person, what can the average person really do to do something that makes a difference? You know, not just watch a movie and take other people, but some level of involvement or.

Right. Well, even though I know it does sound trite, I wouldn't underestimate just watching the movie if you bring your friends who potentially weren't aware of. First off, Inconvenient Truth actually turned out to start just like this. The screenings for Inconvenient Truth were a set of people, small set of people that were interested. And eventually it got on. And, you know, I think everyone would admit the sort of. The dialogue about global climate change has dramatically changed since Inconvenient Truth. So, you know, there is the power for a movie to do this sort of thing, to change the dialogue. Having said that, I think that the. And the best things you can do are, number one, figure out how much time you have available, if it's five minutes a week or if it's one minute a week or it's an hour a week, and sort of create that budget of time that you're going to allocate to DAR for each week, which is how I started. I mean, I eventually expanded way beyond my allocated time, but that's the way I got committed and interested in the first place was to say every week I'm going to commit five or 10 minutes or an hour or whatever it is. And from there there's a lot of different mailing lists that you can get on that will send you a weekly action item to, for example, email a certain person or if you're more ambitious, organize a certain event here or lobby a congressperson. We have, for example, a bill that we've written which is being opposed by the administration and is passed to Senate committee and needs to pass the Senate fold. The more people we have willing to talk to their senators about this, the more likely the bill will pass. So the organizations I would recommend is our parent organization. I admit I'm a little biased, but our parent organization is called the Genocide Intervention Network. And it was actually also started by college students whose original idea was humanitarian aid is great, but we need actually to support peacekeeping and security. And so they raised funds that go directly towards the African Union and the UN to support their peacekeeping efforts. And then from there they expanded. And their core mission is to sort of build a permanent constituency that can be activated in a sort of moment's notice on issues of mass atrocities. They sent, they're terrific. They're well informed and they can send you out an action item anytime you want. And from there, they can give you myriad suggestions depending upon what you want to do, whether it is write to a congressperson, spearhead a divestment campaign, raise money for the Genocide Intervention Network, et cetera. They have a myriad set of ideas. That's where I would go first. And they're connected to all the other Darfur advocacy groups if you happen to find someone more interested. So if you go to their website, there'll be all the other Darfur advocacy groups there as well.

Thanks.

Sure. Thanks so much for the movie. I have a tiny question. Could you maybe present a best case scenario that's realistic for how to solve this conflict? And basically what's the if I can be a slight alarmist before I present the best case scenario? Because I was actually asked this on radio a few weeks ago when a caller called in and said, said, well, you know, it's not solvable. Just let's leave and just whatever happens, happens. And I can understand the frustration because we've been at this for a long time, but the truth is, is that Darfur could get a lot worse than it is. For example, the government is already essentially chomping at the bit to massacre the internally displaced camps. They've given every indication that they want to do that. And it's only international attention on the situation that that's protecting the millions of people that are in these internally displaced camps, the world looked away. I have not a single doubt that they'd be slaughtered in a heartbeat. And of course, they're all in one place. So that can easily happen. The second is the lesson you need to learn in Africa is if you let a conflict kind of fester, it will spread. Already it's sort of spread and destabilized Chad, which is to the immediate west of Sudan and Central African Republic, which is in the sort of southwest of Sudan. But look at the Democratic Republic of Congo, which originally started as a sort of internal conflict and eventually, by the time it was done, had brought in seven different countries, was called. Africa's world war killed 4 million people and has left the entire region in absolute shambles. Absolute shambles. I mean, you can't think of a more devastating place than. Than some of the areas in the DRC right now. And that's where Darfur could head if we don't sort of try to solve the problem now. So presenting that pessimistic viewpoint and hopefully motivating you to say it's not hopeless, I think the best case scenario is that the rebels need to unify. Right now, there's many different rebel factions, all of whom have disparate demands. And we need to spend a lot of time, diplomat, diplomatic heavyweight, heavy lifting, getting those rebel factions together to present a united front to the Sudanese government as well. We need to get community leaders within Darfur who have not been previously represented. There's sort of been an unfortunate trend that if you can pick up a gun and fight, then you'll get a place at the negotiating table. And that's, of course, the wrong signal to send. All these Darfur refugees who have lots of ideas on what they want their life to be like, should be present at the table. And the rebel groups, while this move, some rebel groups do represent them, others are just purely opportunistic rebel groups that want power or wealth. So we need the rebel groups to come together, and we need the United States, France, Britain, a couple of key African countries to mediate that sort of coming together of the DARFA rebels to negotiate once they've established a common negotiating position. We need to have peace talks with the Khartoum government, which are slated for December. The trick is, are the rebels going to be united before December to present the united front? And at the same time, we need to have a peacekeeping force unambiguously deployed without hindrance to Darfur. The UN Security Council has approved such a peacekeeping force. It's a sort of hybrid between the African Union and the un. Every step along the way, Khartoum sort of blocks implementation of that force, but it's slowly moving along. And that force, when it's deployed, if it's deployed to its intended capacity, will be the largest peacekeeping force in the world. And the hope is to get that force on the ground as soon as possible. And from our perspective, we need to pressure the United States to keep the UN Security Council on guard about constant updates on how that force is being deployed, reports on who's hindering the force, putting on sanctions on those who are hindering the force, be they rebel groups or the Khartoum government. And that's sort of the best case scenario. This two pronged approach of establishing security on the ground and getting people to the negotiating table to hammer out a deal. And there is hope. The original civil war between the north and south, which was basically Darfur all over again, 24 for 20 years, resolved in 2005 with exactly this approach, the sort of deployment and negotiating approach. And right now, even though it's a tenuous peace, the north and the south live in peace, which is great news. Okay, well, again, I just would if that was all the questions, I again encourage you. I started out, or still am, a Maryland PhD student at UCSF. I'm the last volunteer of the task force. Thankfully, we have funding and so we have staff and whatnot. And I'm going back to school. But I started out as a student and Adam started out. Adam the Sterling started out as a student. And the Genocide Intervention Network, which is the second largest ARFA advocacy group, started out as students. And I think the number one lesson I got in advocacy was all of the inertial roadblocks to advocacy are right up front. Once you commit yourself and you just get past that sort of initial roadblock, it's amazing how fast you can move. You don't meet the roadblocks like at step nine, you meet them at step one. And that was totally enlightening. Experience. Experience for me. I mean, I would have never. I started off saying, how are we going to get the UC to divest? And the minute we got the UC to divest, it was like everything was easier. I mean, the state of California was easier than uc and all the other states are easier than California. And it's just getting easier and easier. I don't mean to say it's easy, but, you know, advocacy, I think that's the number one roadblock, is that sort of initial step.