MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Sarah Margon, Conflict Policy Advisor at Oxfam America, speaks with Jerry Fowler about the deteriorating situation in Darfur.
TRANSCRIPT:
Narrator: Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Your host is Jerry Fowler, Director of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience.
JERRY FOWLER: This is Voices on Genocide Prevention. I am Jerry Fowler. My guest today is Sarah Margon. She is Policy Advisor for Conflict and Humanitarian Response at Oxfam America and works out of their Washington, D.C. office. Sarah, welcome to the program.
SARAH MARGON: Hi, good to be here Jerry.
JERRY FOWLER: Sarah, there were reports recently that Oxfam temporarily had to close its offices in North Darfur because one of its employees was abducted. Can you give us some details on that?
SARAH MARGON: Sure. The abduction occurred a little more than two months ago, on May 3rd when one of our vehicles was hijacked, sort of carrying out routine work in the rural areas around Saraf Omrah. As I understand it, there were two unidentified armed men who shot into the air and then ordered the three national staff in the vehicle—including the driver—to get out. The armed men were unable to drive the vehicle, so they took the staff with them, and then apparently, after about two kilometers, they dropped off two of the staff, but they kept the driver. The released staff was unhurt, but thus far, the driver and the vehicle remain missing.
JERRY FOWLER: The driver is a Sudanese national?
SARAH MARGON: That is right.
Jerry Fowler:
What about the other two staff?
SARAH MARGON: All national; all Sudanese nationals.
JERRY FOWLER: How common is it for vehicles to be hijacked in this way?
SARAH MARGON: It is incredibly common. Unfortunately, the deteriorating situation on the ground has resulted in increased targeting of humanitarian workers and vehicles by armed groups which makes it a lot more difficult for us to operate and provide those who need assistance with basic services that they need.
JERRY FOWLER: I want to go into some detail about this and the status of the humanitarian situation and the operation, but first, I was wondering if we could just step back for a second and get an overview of what it is Oxfam does on the ground in Darfur and how it relates to other aid organizations that are on the ground?
SARAH MARGON: Sure; Oxfam is private, independent, relief or humanitarian organization. Right now we are providing services to about 400,000 people across all three Darfur regions; that is North, South and West. We are also providing services to about 125,000 people across the border in Chad. When I say services, I mean providing both people in both the displaced persons camps and in the local communities; things like clean water, access to clean water, jerry cans—which is what they use to carry the water—blankets, a lot of non-food items, mats to sleep on, sometimes tents or plastic tarps to make their homes. We also do a lot of public health education and programs; we work particularly with women and children. When I was out there last November, I spent a lot of time learning about the public health programs, walking around with some of the kids learning how they used traditional songs to raise awareness and pass their message through the people living in the camp.
JERRY FOWLER: When Oxfam has to close its office, what are the consequences for the people that it would be serving? (3:23)
Sarah Margon: It is a really hard decision for us to close our programs. The offices that we closed in North Darfur are only temporary. We are still planning on keeping assessment situation. We would like to re-open them because so many of the people we access do not have any other way of getting the services that we provide. Unfortunately it has a two-tiered fall out problem, the first is that there is local staff that looses their job and the other is that people sometimes loose the services that we provide. We are, in this case, continuing to work with local communities and some of the NGOs that are based in the region to continue to provide what we can. In the case of the office closings in North Darfur, the water supply will continue to run around the town and we have been doing monthly visits to assist maintaining the bore holes which pulls the water from the ground. The local population unfortunately suffers and that’s one of the reasons why we have been pushing to so much for strengthened African Union force because we need greater security to do our job properly.
Jerry Fowler: Well, could you give us an overview of the security situation. You mentioned, of course, that Darfur has three states: North, South, and West. And then of course there is the refugee population across the border in Chad where there has also been increasing security problems. Could you just go through each of those states in Chad and tell us what your perception is?
Sarah Margon: Yea, I haven’t been there since November and when I was there, I was in North Darfur only, I actually spent the night in West Darfur, but it was mainly in North Darfur, and the situation there was actually much calmer than it was in the other states; that’s changed a bit now. The signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement May 5, people hoped that it would provide a pretty quick peace dividend and we would see a calming of violence, but in fact the violence has gotten a lot worse over the past two plus months and we’ve seen a lot of increased banditry, armed attacks, internal fighting and the impact on humanitarian workers have been equally as devastating. There have been some humanitarian workers killed by two of our fellow organizations recently which was publicly discussed. We’re seeing cross border raids both in Chad and Sudan. There has been increased displacement in Southern Sudan in a town called Gerata it’s got a normal population of about a 30,000 people and it’s now up to 128,000 people and this is really difficult in Gerata because there is no humanitarian infrastructure there and this has continued to get worse since the peace agreement was been signed.
Jerry Fowler: And just for reference purposes, how many people rely on the humanitarian operation in Darfur and Eastern Chad?
Sarah Margon: Right now as we are able to count, which of course is very difficult because there are certainly people who get it sometimes who aren’t counted and don’t get it other times, we’re estimating that there are about 3.4million people dependent on international assistance.
Jerry Fowler: And from your perspective, how rickety is this operation, how close is it to being substantially cut back if not ended all together because of the insecurity?
Sarah Margon: Sure, I think that none of us want to say, I don’t want to speak for all humanitarian organizations, but we don’t want to pull out we’re there to provide those services, but we have started to resort, Oxfam I can speak particular about, we’ve had to resort to helicopters to access populations in areas because the roads are so insecure and this is incredibly expensive, very time consuming and requires a lot of advanced planning and as we continue to see these needs these high level intensive planning because of security isn’t getting better, I’m deeply concerned about hat the future holds. If I’m not mistaken there’s some 18,000 humanitarian workers in Darfur, it’s the largest humanitarian operation. We don’t have a choice but to be there but at the same time the insecurity makes it incredibly difficult for us all to be there and is regularly jeopardizing our ability to access the people we’re trying to help.
Jerry Fowler: You mentioned with regard to security the need for a strengthened African Union force and just recently there was a Donors Conference that was held in Brussels to generate more financial support for the African Union. Can you tell me first, what’s your view on the outcome of that conference?
Sarah Margon: Well, my understanding thus far, the information seems to be trickling in, the Africa Union was asking for some $270million and I think they got around $200million. The United States pledged $16milion, but interestingly, that was money that the United States has already committed, so that’s already done. They didn’t really commit any new money. When I say committed I mean it’s gone through the required budget process in Congress, there’s nothing new. Our sense is that donors should have dug a lot deeper than they did. The problem here is that if that the African Union doesn’t get enough money in kind donations, they’re not going to be able to continue. They are incredibly weak; they lack a lot of equipment. They lack the troop numbers that they need to do proper civilian protection, let alone the new responsibilities that are required of them under the Darfur Peace Agreement. Their mandate is not strong enough and all of these things are very, very critical for the African Union to do its job. It is the only force that’s on the ground and we need it to be good at its job.
Jerry Fowler: There is something of a catch 22, I suppose, in that the African Union in order to do these things that you just outlined, needs more resources, needs to be strengthened, on the other hand there seems to be a growing consensus everywhere outside of Khartoum and including within the African Union that that force needs to be replaced by an United Nations force but in some ways strengthening and putting resources into the African Union seems to be a distraction from moving toward the UN force.
Sarah Margon: I would actually argue the opposite. I think discussions about a United Nations force are really important but I don’t think it should deflect from attention about the immediate protection needs. The African Union is there now. They need to be strengthened and bolstered and made more robust so they can do their job now. Any UN force that does go into Darfur would not go in until the start of 2007 at the earliest and possibly a lot later. It seems to me that if we bulk up the African Union, we’re doing justice for now and for the future.
Jerry Fowler: In terms of practically speaking on the ground, how do humanitarian organizations interact with an armed force like the African Union force and with other armed groups that are roaming around?
Sarah Margon: Humanitarian organizations are supposed to be independent. We try to do our job regardless of the situation on the ground. Depending on the situation, some humanitarian organizations will elect to take armed escorts for protection, or military escorts as they’re often called.
Jerry Fowler: And these would be military escorts, in the case of Darfur, from the African Union?
Sarah Margon: From the African Union for protection and OXFAM does not do this. This is a decision we made about the importance of remaining independent. We also do not carry any guns; we carry absolutely no weapons. We’re there to do our job which is providing basic services and helping individuals live in as much dignity as they can given the circumstances and so we feel it is in our best interest to remain as independent and neutral as we can.
Jerry Fowler: And in terms of the actual situation of people on the ground, you mention you were there in November in North Darfur, can you maybe relay some of the stories you heard and people that you saw?
Sarah Margon:Sure. I visited three or four camps. I was really blown away, I mean I would have to say I was floored by our programs. They were so amazing and so interactive and they were so locally driven in that we worked very closely a lot of times, particularly on the Public Health programs, with women and children. OXFAM has been working in Darfur since the 1980’s and we went there long before any conflict; we went to do development work. So we have a particularly interesting relationship with the community because we’ve been there so long helping them drill water holes and get a bit more developed. So we worked both in the camps and outside the camp. We try to really be a local capacity building organization so that if and when OXFAM does leave we don’t leave anyone behind dry that is the last thing we would want to do. One of the things I found so interesting was when, I can’t actually remember what camp it was, but security was a concern and we’ve had to adapt our humanitarian practices based on security. We had dug a new bore hole and put up a water tank and it was as we learned form the community leaders, mostly men, it was too far outside the camp and the women, who are traditionally the ones to go get water, were concerned. They were afraid as they would go and get water that they might be attacked. And what I thought was so phenomenal was that OXFAM was so incredibly ready to work with the leaders and bring the women into the fold to talk about how to work that problem; was it possible to move the water pump so that it could be closer? How could we distribute it properly so that they felt comfortable going to get the water? And I talked to a lot of the women who said “yea, we were afraid to come out here.” It’s two kilometers which is incredibly far and watching them carry the Jerry cans back and forth was mind blowing because they’re so heavy and it’s so hot, but this is what they do. So last I heard we were working to move the tank a lot closer to the camps so that the women didn’t have to walk as far. It was amazing; it was really amazing because when we had started to construct the water pump the security situation was so different.
Jerry Fowler: And what would be some other examples of adapting humanitarian practices to the security situation?
Sarah Margon: Well I think, as I said before, a lot of it has to do with how we work with delivery for example. The 24 hours I spent in West Darfur, we were not very far from the camps we were working in but we couldn’t go to see them because the roads were too insecure and because we were doing all our deliveries by helicopter, which meant they had to be scheduled a day or two in advance. We’ve had some situations where we couldn’t get reservations on helicopter and the water generator was almost out of fuel so we were rushing to figure out how to get it there. But one of the ways in which we had started to adapt to that was by putting up solar panel around some of the water generators, which is not strong enough to so the job on their own, but in serious or urgent situations the solar panel can be used instead of fuel to keep the generator moving.
Jerry Fowler: And how do you protect this property from being looted? Obviously one of the characteristics of the violence in Darfur has been the looting of property of civilians and I would think that things like solar panels and generators would be particularly ripe targets?
Sarah Margon: Yeah, I would expect them to be as well and I think it’s incredibly difficult to protect everything. We are very clearly marked with flags that say we’re OXFAM and we have stickers all over and we have tertiary levels of security, but we can only do so much. Because we don’t have weapons, that’s not what we’re there to do. We hope and in fact assume that because we’re trying to provide these services, that people will by pass us but obviously that hasn’t been happening and that’s part of the problem and when you’re there as a neutral entity to try to provide services and you become increasingly attacked, it’s incredibly tough.
Jerry Fowler: One issue that often comes up is the role that humanitarian assistance may inadvertently play in fueling the conflict by putting resources into the area that armed groups can take and use for their own purposes. And also, as something of a south to the conscience of international actors who feel that if they can throw humanitarian aid at the situation that they’ve done enough so that they don’t actually resolve the underlying politics. Do you encounter those issues?
Sarah Margon: I don’t encounter those issues all that much in Washington; I know that they do exist. I think what we see is the urgent need, urgent needs of people who have been displaced from their homes, who have fled with absolutely nothing, and it’s our job as a relief organization to provide relief services to provide them with things so that they can find a modicum of dignity when your living in circumstances that have removed them in general and overall. It’s definitely a complicated situation, but we’re not there to get at the root causes of the problem with our humanitarian assistance. We do with our development work try to deal with some of the long term changes. One thing that we do to try to equal the playing field of all parties involved is that we work with the host communities in Darfur and the displaced camps so that there is no competition between individuals, so that the people who are in the displaced camps aren’t the only ones getting clean water. That wouldn’t make any sense, that would fuel any existing tensions and so we provide services to both communities if they don’t have them already so that we don’t escalate any potential tensions.
Jerry Fowler: Sarah, there seemed to be a tremendous mount of attention on Capitol Hill and in Washington devoted to Darfur especially in April leading up to these rallies across the country and on the national mall at the end of April, is it your sense that since then there has been something of a let down?
Sarah Margon: I don’t know if I would say exactly that there is a let down. I would say that there is unfortunately a little bit of “Darfur fatigue;” people aren’t exactly sure what to move and what to push and what to pull to make the situation on the ground better. I would like to see a little bit of infusion of the leadership on the both sides of the Senate and the House. I know that people are very dedicated Senators and Congressmen, they’re very interested in seeing this conflict and crisis resolved, but I think that in some cases they are just as perplexed as others as to how best to move forward.
Jerry Fowler: Sarah Margon is policy advisor of Conflict and Humanitarian Response at OXFAM America in their Washington, DC office. Sarah, thanks again for being with us.
Sarah Margon: No problem. Thanks a lot.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the Museum’s Committee on Conscience, visit our website at www.committeeonconscience.org.
