MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Award winning actress and UNICEF ambassador, Mia Farrow, and her son and UNICEF youth spokesperson, Ronan Farrow, speak about their first hand accounts of the Darfur refugee camps. They describe the ceaseless struggle of the refugees that they met on their trips to Darfur in November 2004 and this past June, and they express fear of refugee settlements becoming permanent.
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 guests today are Mia Farrow, the award winning actress and good will ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund; and her son, Ronan, who is a youth spokesperson for UNICEF. They recently visited Darfur for the second time. Mia and Ronan, thanks for joining us.
MIA FARROW: Our pleasure.
RONAN FARROW: Thank you so much for having us.
JERRY FOWLER: You went to Darfur in June, and this was your second trip there. You had been there in November of 2004. Could you briefly compare and contrast the two visits? How does the situation today compare to your first time?
MIA FARROW: There is a terrifying permanence now to the refugees camps, in that when we were there eighteen months ago, we would see, as we flew in by World Food Programme helicopters a sea of tents, plastic sheeting, just literally latched to the desert floor, and this time people have built walls of grasses and wood and whatever they could get hold of, and the tarps are latched to the wood walls.
RONAN FARROW: That is really, as much as anything else, a sinister illustration of how the world has dropped the ball; that what should only have ever been an emergency solution for these people—sheltering, desperately seeking safety in deplorable squalid camps—has turned into a way of life for years now.
MIA FARROW: Yes, and we spoke wherever we went, we listened, asked questions, and had the great privilege to speak to—I spoke to a lot of women, and for obvious reasons, Ronan spoke to a lot of young people—and we came away with so many very, very, very vivid impressions, and direct pleas from the inhabitants of the camps, the internally displaced persons, somewhat more easily called than refugees, because they are certainly that. The despair now, where before it was hoped that these circumstances would be temporary, there is a kind of despair that has settled in. There were so many things to ask. We were anxious that the African Union be supported, and yet when I asked the women across Darfur on this occasion, “Do you feel safer when the African Union present?” because I heard that was so, and yet there were rousing disclaimers of, “No, no, they do nothing; they just write things down,” and one woman said, “What do they do with the paper?” I could not answer, but I knew that at this point the presence of the African Union, though it had increased in numbers, the security situation has also disintegrated.
RONAN FARROW: We are finally seeing the African Union leadership admitting that, and Kunare coming out and openly saying, “We need to pass the baton on to the United Nations; even we admit we cannot handle this job anymore.”
MIA FARROW: He said that on June 7th of 2006, and for sure that is the truth. Everywhere we went, also, where they could put together signs; women were holding signs, “We need protection, we need water,” and a child was holding a sign, “I need an education.” The biggest thing is protection, of course, then and now, protection, protection, protection, because the camps are continually invaded. You can google that even now, attacks are incessant. We were at Guereda Camp where 126,000 IDPs, up from 50,000 in, I believe, October of 2005; so people have been fleeing in large numbers to Guereda Camp, and yet the attacks on Greida Camp continue.
JERRY FOWLER: People are attacked even when they are in the camp?
MIA FARROW: Even in the camp, yes.
JERRY FOWLER: Let me ask you this about Guereda in particular. This concept of 126,000 people kind of huddled together in a camp is really a little hard to get your mind around. Describe what it is like to be in the middle of this. What are your impressions? What do you hear? What do you see? What do you smell?
MIA FARROW: First of all, flying in because the roads are too dangerous—there are so many inicidents of banditry, murder and everything else; atrocities of the worst kind. We flew in by helicopter; again World Food Programme, and just seeing a refugee camp from the sky, it stops your heart. It is an ocean of these flecks that are dwellings of white and pale blue, or blue bleached by the sun. It was blue eighteen months ago, and I think since then the sun has pounded on them so that they have lost all color, and you see just as far as the eye can see. When you see 100,000 pieces of plastic sheet just on the desert, not a tree, nothing, just these plastic sheets laid out, sprawling and extending as far as the eye can see, you just think, I have never seen or imagined anything like it, and nothing I can say now can adequately describe how horrifying, and your helicopter comes down into this, and there are human beings—four and five and six and eight—clustered under these pieces of sheeting. Now they said that people have tried to build walls; before it was literally that they were under the tarps, but the walls, as Ronan said, there is something chilling about the very fact of this permanency, but it must have been 120 degrees—I do not know what the temperature was—but the sun is ceaseless and the heat is overwhelming, so I guess they get a little air circulation underneath. The only thing that has improved is humanitarian access to the camps.
RONAN FARROW: Which is still far from ideal. There is a large percentage of people; there is also a large percentage of the people of Darfur that are completely inaccessible.
MIA FARROW: At any given time hundreds of thousands are inaccessible.
RONAN FARROW: As she just mentioned, the one thing we heard consistently after people would plead for safety and protection was, “Water, water, water!” There is no access. The terrain there—it is hard to get the sense from pictures even—this is a place where it would be hard to eek out a survival in the best of times, and with this one just wonders how people have managed to survive at all. The water access in camps is abysmal, and what little water there is is often dangerous; now a cholera outbreak is spreading which has the potential to claim tens of thousands of lives.
MIA FARROW: The big, big epidemic hit Ottash Camp, and with the rainy season, people are now drinking water that is not clean when it comes. There is that and also the fact that they are not getting enough food. While the World Food Programme air drops have sustained close to four million people—the two million in the camps and then others who are in make shift camps and in communities that are stranded where they are unable to plant, people who are displaced who have gone into other communities. People are very much on the move in Darfur; running from one area of safety or perceived safety or hoped for safety to another. There are almost two million people being sustained by humanitarian agencies. You may have read that the food rations were cut to fifty percent at one point of what is needed to sustain human life; this is now 85 percent, but 85 of the minimum required to sustain human lives. They are not getting sufficient food, but we are not yet seeing what we saw in the Ethiopian famine—children in excruciating stages of malnutrition, but this could happen tomorrow if the humanitarian agencies have to withdraw which is a likelihood. I think the overwhelming impression that I would come on in the political arena is the humanitarian workers as Jan Egeland has said, he would have to begin withdrawing them, they would have to come out if the violence escalates.
RONAN FARROW: His own estimate is that in the event of that happening, we could see hundreds of thousands of deaths every month.
MIA FARROW: Yes, in the next month we would begin to see this for sure because this is an entire four million people, a population sustained artificially by humanitarian workers who are themselves in terrible danger. Another humanitarian worker was killed just last week. There they are in difficult and dangerous circumstances, keeping people alive and if they are withdrawn, one can scarcely dare to imagine the fate of the people of Darfur then.
JERRY FOWLER: We had Jan Egeland on about a month or so ago, and he was making these warnings in very chilling terms.
MIA FARROW: He has been the most outspoken, and he is very good at projecting what he knows to be true and what he, himself, of course, witnessed. Yes, I do not know where we would be without Jan Egeland.
JERRY FOWLER: Right, and he was actually one of the first people who alerted me to Darfur back in 2003 with his very forthright and blunt statements.
MIA FARROW: Good that he did.
JERRY FOWLER: Let me ask you about the humanitarian workers, since we are on that subject. How is their morale? It is a very, very tough environment to work in.
MIA FARROW: It is hard for them to sustain hope themselves. We got such a sweet e-mail. E-mails are rare and difficult, but out of El Fasher, a lovely and heroic—they are all my heroes—young, humanitarian worker for UNICEF thanking Ronan for his piece, and thanking us for getting these photographs into People Magazine, which was magnificent of them to give four pages of my photographs to the people of Darfur. They just ran it and maintained the integrity of the piece and I am grateful to them on that account. She said very movingly in her e-mail, “It gives us hope.” They are working in the face of hopelessness and everything else.
RONAN FARROW: We have seen humanitarian workers being killed of late too, which is obviously a disturbing trend.
JERRY FOWLER: Did you have any contact with Sudanese government officials?
RONAN FARROW: Not this time around.
MIA FARROW: We did with governors in North and South Darfur, but we were supposed to meet with—I forget his name—in Khartoum. He is really responsible for having held up some of the access for humanitarian workers, and also there is the issue of the sorghum that is being held and the only sorghum they were giving was not edible because it was so rotten. We were all set—
RONAN FARROW: This is food from the national grain reserve.
MIA FARROW: Which they were sort of cajoled into giving, but they donated twenty tons of rotten food that would not be edible, so we were all set to bring the truth into the room, but there was a press conference when we got to Khartoum, and we had to prioritize. It would have been a waste of time talking to him anyway.
RONAN FARROW: We did, however, last time meet with various ministers in Khartoum, and what you hear again and again is just an outright denial that anything is wrong in Darfur. I am not sure to what extent that has changed at this point, but judging from the quotes that have been released to the press, it seems very little. We would hear things like, “There are no rapes going on in Darfur. The people are happy in the camps. They are well fed.”
MIA FARROW: I spoke to the governor of El Fasher and he said, “Your news is old news; this is not current. Your statistics are not current.” There was sort of no talking to him. Of course for UNICEF, the priority is to maintain the access, so while there and now I am not speaking as a UNICEF representative but as a person who has witnessed these things because I do not want any of this to fall back on UNICEF whereby the government of Khartoum would suddenly deny access, but it is important that the truth be told. They were very much, in Khartoum, trying to give us the picture of happy campers; you are familiar with the term. The happy camper problem which we saw during the Holocaust, the Nazi Holocaust. There were pictures of people in the camps, the famously happy camper pictures. We were deeply offended by this sort of attempt to depict what can only be described as deplorable, unacceptable, tragic—one could go on—the situation that exists for the IDP population and the refugee population across the border in Chad, and there are no happy campers there.
RONAN FARROW: Of course, another thing that came out talking to government officials, and which we hear again and again in the press from Khartoum leadership, is denial of any kind of attempt to stop the genocide that they have outright refused to admit any robust peacekeeping force. They first dragged their feet before the African Union was admitted, as you know. Now they are doing the same with trying to kill the possibility of a United Nations force come in.
MIA FARROW: This is the biggest issue right now. Everywhere we went to across the Darfur—
RONAN FARROW: People cheered for the United Nations.
MIA FARROW: There was a sign that was up when we went to rebel held territory. Both sides of the faction—the Minnawi and the Wahid supporters who were against the signing—
RONAN FARROW: These are two splinter groups of the SLA which is the largest rebel group.
MIA FARROW: Those against the signing are far more numerous within the camps.
JERRY FOWLER: Again, the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement?
MIA FARROW: Exactly. It was a much heralded document, and people welcomed it as a “first step,” but the time we reached Darfur it was apparent that the Darfur Peace Agreement had only brought further violence to the region in that it had caused factions in the group. You cannot have a peace agreement where only one party signs and three major rebel factions did not sign.
RONAN FARROW: People were always aware that it was an imperfect agreement, but the hope was, at least, because Khartoum had prior to the signing of the peace agreement made it conditional that peacekeepers would be admitted once there was a peace agreement.
MIA FARROW: And the Janjaweed would be disarmed and they gave a date. Of course that did not happen. I do not know what the date was, but it came and went.
RONAN FARROW: The hope was, with the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement, however flawed we would see them finally relenting this, admitting peacekeepers and, of course, as we know, that has not happened, and the statements from the Bashir, the President of Sudan, you think would have triggered some action. He has come out and said, “Nothing is happening in Darfur. It is concocted by liberal, Jewish activists in the United States,” and that he will lead the fight against any peacekeeping force. We are up against a lot, but the world has to do something in this case. We cannot allow this to happen to these people.
JERRY FOWLER: Let me ask you this, Ronan—you have been very involved in this issue now, as we said since 2004. You have been involved with the organization called Genocide Intervention Network, which was started by students, who have now graduated from Swarthmore. I have seen all across the country there are students at college campuses and in high schools who are deeply involved in this. They are really the backbone of the movement.
RONAN FARROW: I am really glad you mention that. One thing that I really have been humbled by is the grassroots movement in the States, especially by young people.
MIA FARROW: And encouraged; it is the young people who we are hearing most from.
RONAN FARROW: They have really been the moral voice crying out for action.
JERRY FOWLER: Why is that? Why is this resonating with young people so much?
RONAN FARROW: I think it resonates universally. I have told people about what is happening in Darfur. That was my promise to the people that I met there. They said, “Bring back our stories. Tell people what is happening.” I am doing that, and everyone that I tell and the response that I have gotten to the articles that I have written, universally it resonates with people, and people want to do something. Across America, people have been wonderful about this; and young people have been particularly pro-active. I am not sure; I think it because it is the people that are eager to be active in the world, and it is the people who are together in the context of schools. For whatever reason, there has been a tremendous moral conscience, and as you say, they have gotten universities to divest, and groups like Genocide Intervention Network have sprung up. I am proud to work with them.
MIA FARROW: They have a clearer perception of what the world should be, and they have not lost their idealism, nor should they, but it seems that my generation which was the generation that marched against the Vietnam War—it was the sixties and things were very clear—I do not know where the voices of my generation went. Did people become discomplacent and uncaring? It is unclear, but it is encouraging to see that young people care to the extent they do, and if anything happens now, it will be hugely motivated by the fact that it is young people who are making their voices heard.
RONAN FARROW: I think one thing that has been an obstacle to action in Darfur is that people often forget—they see it as a distant and abstract conflict—and they forget that there are tangible ways that they can do things, that they can help to generate action. Just writing to your Senators and Congressmen alone would make a tremendous difference.
MIA FARROW: It should not be an e-mail. People should actually call or write a letter. If 100 people in every district did that, the late Senator Paul Simon said, the Senate would take action.
RONAN FARROW: Perhaps in that sense, young people are more willing to believe that their efforts will actually amount to something, where as, I do not know, maybe adults have just grown weary and skeptical of the usefulness of that. We have seen that it does make a huge difference. Much of the funding that has come out of the United States for the African Union and for Darfur in general has been motivated by call-ins and rallies organized by Genocide Intervention Network, STAND and these other Darfur—mostly student—groups.
MIA FARROW: Nevertheless, in Brussels this week, the African Union was given 150 million dollars short of what they need to continue, so while the whole world tossed this in the lap of the African Union and just said, “Phew, we do not have to worry about that; African solutions to African problems; leave it to the African Union,” they have failed to support the African Union in all the significant ways across the board, all the significant ways. Now the African Union are themselves on the verge of bankruptcy, and pleading, they too, pleading for the United Nations. What we saw across Darfur is people pleading for the United Nations as their last hope. We see the government of Sudan refusing to admit the United Nations peacekeepers. We do not see enough in the world of us saying, “What! This has to happen! There are sanctions. There is stuff we can do. What about the International Criminal Court? What about last September when the United Nations World Summit unanimously committed itself. I think the quote was, “Be prepared to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.” Well, where is the action? The bottom line here is a Chapter Seven mandate is required from the Security Council, and China and Russia sit on the Security Council and both, especially China though, have huge oil interests in Southern Sudan. That is the sorry fact of why there has not been a Chapter Seven mandate.
RONAN FARROW: We have seen every attempt at substantive action on the Security Council blocked by China and Russia essentially, and not enough has been said about that.
MIA FARROW: It comes down to oil again.
RONAN FARROW: But this is one area, because Sudan is dependent on them for that oil business, this is one area where I think the United States really could take action, where diplomatic pressure could make all the difference to ending that obstruction.
JERRY FOWLER: Mindful we are running short on time, but one final question I wanted to ask you, Mia, is since you have come back from this trip—well, both of you, but I wanted to direct it to you Mia—you have gotten a lot of publicity. As you mention, there is a spread in People Magazine with its stunning, remarkable photographs.
MIA FARROW: I am happy to send them to you, by the way. If any of them you want on the web site, I would be happy to share them.
JERRY FOWLER: That would be great, and we will definitely use them. One thing that kind of bothers me is that in some ways these outlets generally are not covering Darfur, and the story they cover is that Mia Farrow goes to Darfur—
MIA FARROW: It is pretty pathetic, and I am of course aware; that is why I went. I did not go for a sightseeing trip or to shatter myself and plunge myself into despair. I went there because we brought newspapers with us, and I brought my own camera which I think is pretty forbidden, and I went there so I could bring the word out when, yes, so much of this is under the radar—not for those who watch Sudan and not for those that care about Darfur—but for the general population. Just before we left, Ronan and I were going to the dentist and he said, “Where are you going?” and I said, “Darfur,” and he said, “Oh, Safari?” That gives you a pretty good idea; and this is an educated person. People did not know, people do not know, so I felt it was the very least I could do, was try to bring what little I could do in terms that of if I have a public profile that I could apply in that way.
RONAN FARROW: I think the media perhaps underestimates people. As I have said, it is something that I have found that it is not an easy subject, but it does resonate with people. People do care and people are in a sense, when they hear what is happening, they want to do something.
MIA FARROW: They want to know what to do.
RONAN FARROW: I think more attention is merited and could make a tremendous difference if the world’s focus was there.
MIA FARROW: People ask their local press, “Get on to this. What are you writing about?” People ask their local representatives, “Where do you stand on this?” Ask your Congressperson, “Where are you on this? I want to know before I cast my vote.” You will see some action maybe.
RONAN FARROW: It is an uphill battle, though, and increasingly so. With the writing I have done on Darfur, I hear again and again from editors, “We have done Darfur. We did that six months ago.”
MIA FARROW: I just submitted a piece to USA Today and they said, “We covered this topic some time ago,” and then I resented hearing Darfur referred to as a “topic.” The fact that is was some time ago did not make me feel good either because this is a gaping wound now and it is hemorrhaging. I have written another piece and I have submitted it. I will probably not write another. I feel compelled to tell people what I know and what I have seen. I have a moral obligation to do this and more.
JERRY FOWLER: Mia Farrow is the award winning actor and good will ambassador for UNICEF, and her son, Ronan is the youth spokesperson for UNICEF. Mia and Ronan, thanks so much for all the work you are doing.
MIA FARROW: Thank you.
RONAN FARROW: Thank you so much. Take care.
MIA FARROW: Bye.
JERRY FOWLER: Bye.
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.
