humanitarian.info

The Humanitarian Futures blog asks:

What if the humanitarian expulsion from Darfur also involved sophisticated efforts to cripple aid groups at their core, vis-a-vis target denial of service attacks?

They already were. When I looked at connectivity in Darfur for the ECB Information and Technology Requirements Assessement, it was clear that the government was pulling mobile and internet communications whenever there were “security actions” taking place in the region. Aid agencies (and everybody else) would be disconnected for days, sometimes weeks – and nobody seemed to be that bothered by it. Unfortunately the human tendency to habituate to new situations meant that the more often this happened, the less people were bothered by it. In some environments, it doesn’t take an army of hackers to have a serious impact, just some bloke in the Ministry of Telecommunications with his finger on the lightswitch.

The humanitarian community and the aid worker blogosphere are afire with responses to the ICC indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir – which was a long time coming – and the subsequent expulsion from Sudan of at least 10 major NGOs currently working in Darfur – which was pretty much immediate. The general consensus seems to be: it was a stupid idea, and we knew it would have terrible consequences.

In some respects, this line of thinking is entirely correct. From the humanitarian perspective there are many, many arguments against indicting Bashir, and the Sudanese government’s response – coming down hard on humanitarian organisations as a way of drawing attention away from how politically impotent they are – was entirely predictable. The government will kick you out of the country at the drop of a hat, and one of the key factors in undermining organisation and staff confidence has been the uncertainty about whether your next action might see you on the next plane out of there.

The debate focuses on whether peace or justice comes first, and most people agree that peace must take priority. Not least of those people are those in Darfur themselves – the priority of most communities displaced by war is to regain some sort of security so that they can rebuilt their lives.We have conflicting reports of the response in Darfur – on the one hand Reuters gives us:

Darfur activist Hussein Abu Sharati, who says he represents residents of 158 displacement camps, said most people there were overjoyed by the ICC’s decision, but were too scared to show it.

While Rob Crilly reports that, of those in the camps,

Few have time for this debate. Few have heard of the International Criminal Court. Those that have are worried the government will come down hard on anyone celebrating Bashir’s indictment. And most seem to think that going home is more important than anything else.

These two perspectives are not mutually exclusive, since IDPs are rarely a homogenous body of opinion. Frankly, however, I’m in a difficult position. I welcome the expansion of the mechanisms available for extending (and hopefully enforcing) human rights law, but at the same time I don’t want to see communities in Darfur suffer any more than they already have. Given what’s happening now, how can I reconcile those two?

The short answer is that I don’t think I can. I think I have to make a choice and come down on one side or the other. The side I choose is the side that presses for justice, no matter how ill-conceived it might be. My reasons are cloudy, even to myself, and I hope that I can clarify them over the next few weeks. The feeling that drives this is the same feeling that drove me into humanitarian work in the first place – first a desire to prevent genocide, then a desire to see justice done more generally, finally translated into the practical action of humanitarian work. It wasn’t the perfect match, but it was close enough.

I understand the Thirsty Palmetto’s frustration with those who argue that you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs, and I have no desire to be painted as the sort of person who’s willing to gamble with people’s lives in order to prove their point. Yet it’s vital to remember one thing here: any suffering that occurs in Darfur is the responsibility of the Sudanese government. They are the ones who have failed the citizens of their country, and I’m not prepared to feel any more guilty about the situation in Sudan than I’m prepared to feel guilty about any other humanitarian crisis.

One reason not to feel guilty is that it’s exactly what the Sudanese government is banking on. Generally speaking, the government does not particularly care about its citizens, and the reason that UN and NGOs were allowed to operate in Darfur in the first place was because it suited their broader political purposes. Their calculus was that our self-imposed sense of responsibility would outweigh our sense of anger, that we would continue to work in appalling conditions to help people whose terrible lot was unlikely to get better any time soon – and more, that we wouldn’t kick up too much fuss about the role of the government in perpetuating that lot.

This is a difficult line to walk, and it’s one which the humanitarian community wrestles with continually in every complex emergency, one way or another. Yet one of the reasons that we continue to wrestle with it is because there have been no mechanisms which might really bring the justice that we want to see. The ICC might not be that mechanism, but I find it impossible to discount. At the same time, I don’t feel very comfortable standing alongside those standing outside the humanitarian situation entirely; perhaps the reason is because it feels like giving up the sense of solidarity that is vital for humanitarian work.

So I swing back to the other side: the unforeseen consequences (and the foreseen consequences, for that matter) from the indictment are potentially colossal, and not necessarily in the best interests of the people of Sudan. Some of those potential consequences I’m not that concerned about – the breakup of Sudan, for example, seems inevitable within the next 50 years (one for the prediction fans, there) – but some of them are serious enough to weigh against. Maybe I’m wrong – this isn’t the first stone in building an international order based on human rights, but a crisis in human rights that will pull the whole house of cards down. What choice do we have? These things have to start somewhere, and it’s hard to believe that the situation can get worse for the people of Darfur.

I told you I wasn’t clear, didn’t I? Oh well.