In Conversation - Darfur
Friday, 09 Nov 2007 16:22
The suffering continues in Darfur
In Focus
Keeping the peace in Africa has always been difficult – as the "increasingly desperate" crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo shows. Full Story
Ms Hodgkin believes the next year will be a crucial one for Darfur. The clamour for a peacekeeping force has been successful, but there are no guarantees it will make a real difference.
"I suppose the best-case scenario is that Unamid [the UN force] is deployed and that it manages to protect civilians… that the people in the camps feel security so they can go back home and start to cultivate their lands…. and that as a result of that a peace agreement which recognises the human rights of the people has the space to come about," she says.
"The worst-case scenario? In the conflict which is happening now the arms increase, the infighting between different groups increases and the camps become increasingly militarised. And that what is happening in Darfur spreads more to Chad and to other parts of Sudan."
Making a difference
While monitoring the day-to-day developments, Ms Hodgkin appears to view the latest news with a little distance. She is not impressed by the latest peace talks in Libya – "to what extent have human rights been helped by plenty of ceasefires which have not been kept?" – and instead is concentrating on the latest news from one of the many refugee camps in Darfur.
"My day at the moment is being taken up with phoning people and trying to find out what's happening.
"For those who have been arrested, I'm trying to find out their names and see what's happened to them – whether they've been taken to be interrogated or taken to the police. I have to raise this."
As she has raised many, many cases before. But what is the point? Will it make a difference?
"What we do here [in London] is packaged and translated into different languages and is used by the mass of people to work," she explains.
"There may be a press conference in Mali, a demonstration in Ghana… all of these places can bring pressure to bear on both their government and the Sudanese government."
The organisation has a researcher and campaigner for each major project. When they decide to launch a campaign publicising a specific event they can mobilise their 1.5 million members in over 50 different countries around the world - letter-writing campaigns, embassy visits, raising the issues in their own governments.
"The world listens to Amnesty - we're the voice of the people who think they have a right to human rights."
The bottom line
But is it always easy to get the world to listen? Ms Hodgkin remembers with more than a little personal pain the frustration of her early days working on Darfur – that "nobody seemed to be paying much attention".
She admits the self-doubt this lack of interest engendered, with the "perhaps you're failing" suggestion constantly at the back of her mind. Ultimately, though, the slow realisation that "the English people really did care about what is happening" came as a big relief.
"There is natural feeling of the people in England for reaching out to those who are suffering in other parts of the world," she insists.
As to the wider contribution of Amnesty's own work, Ms Hodgkin remains adamant that such calculations are "unquantifiable".
"Amnesty International helps in telling the world about a country's human rights violations. But in the end, it's local activism which is going to change Sudan, not Amnesty.
"Human rights activists in other countries put pressure and show solidarity. But it's people within the country who are going to make the change. You can't get human rights in a country without the local people and civil society speaking for themselves."
To help them on the way, however, she has to research the violations themselves – following in the aftermath, talking to the victims. Despite many of those she has talked to not being able to read or write, Ms Hodgkin is struck by their extraordinary memory of those who died.
"One woman couldn't read or write, but knew the name of the 300 killed from her village. That's interesting – because 1,000 people die we shouldn't forget that these are 1,000 individuals."
Their commitment to the importance of each person is reflected in her own, driving desire to see each case achieve the justice they deserve.
She reveals that, in the early days, she began keeping a list of all those who had been killed. But eventually – inevitably – it became impossible to maintain.
"I did have a big booklet full of names which I used to wave at meetings but, it's true, we've stopped taking them down now," she finishes.
"I hope that, some day, someone will make a list of everyone."
Alex Stevenson