The Double Edge of Celebrity Interest in Darfur
The Nigerian minority rights activist and insurgent leader Ken Saro-Wiwa said, “It’s one thing being an issue, another achieving our aims.” Two years afterwards he was hanged””he fatally misjudged the power of western publicity in the face of a thuggish government. His Ogoni people have won only a marginally better deal. Darfurians may come to a similar conclusion. They couldn’t have asked for more celebrity endorsement. But they haven’t got what they need. The facts of Darfur lead to a depressing conclusion: celebrity moral hyperventilation hasn’t helped and probably has hindered. But who needs empirics when there is a good story to tell?
Read my essay, “The Humanitarian Carnival,” in World Affairs online, here.
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“celebrity moral hyperventilation hasn’t helped and probably has hindered”.
I understand your cynicism. But all in all, still less than 1% of the people in the UK remembered there was a conflict in Darfur, Somalia, DRC according to a UK Red Cross survey.
Don’t we need all the help we can get, including from celebrities, to raise awareness?
Alex: an illuminating article.
Peter: the key point is that Hollywood ‘literati’ have moved way beyond just raising awareness about the Darfur conflict – and then getting out of the way – to actually exerting strong control and direction over US government policy on Darfur. As Alex points out, that was exemplified by the mistaken front-loading by the US government of the UN peacekeeping issue following the Darfur Peace Agreement of May 2007, rather than focusing on the obvious next step: not allowing rebel leaders like Abdul Wahid al Nour and Khalil Ibrahim to walk away from the peace talks until they had signed on the dotted line for peace, which they still haven’t done over two years later…….
An important article on an aspect which is often overlooked . In their lack of expertise the celebrities become like the blind leading the blind. One dimension which they do not know is the argument that the conflicts in Sudan are ALSO between modernity and underdevelopment .In the largely detribalised Centre political parties , civil socitey organisations and political parties were formed on a National basis since the 1930’s and 1940’s . In Darfur-for example- tribalism was kept in a freezer .As a result JEM fought in Chad to save the president there because he belongs to the Zaghawa tribe; it then crosseed the border to Sudan to attack Omdurman in last May!The Nation State means nothing to them.They see the whole Sudan through their tribal perspective .
Even some politicians of great probity like Anderw Natsios repeat the mantra that Sudan is governed by certain ethnic groups. No wonder Louis Moreno-Ocampo has fallen in the same trap .
Very nice article and I commend you for not dismissing Bono or Geldoff out right. However, I do agree he’s gotten a bit too wrapped up in the RED campaign especially with the fact that the corporations involved have had shady pasts (Gap and the sweatshop debacle for instance), another issue is how much Bono lets Bush get away with promoting abstience in Africa.