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One of the world's challenges that disturbs me the most is genocide. Perhaps it is because my generation was raised reading The Diary of Anne Frank and watching dozens of movies about the Holocaust. Over and over we were told, someone should have said something. Someone should have done something. If it happens again, you need to do something.
But what can you do about a problem that seems so overwhelming? Can one person really make a difference? On April 15, 2008 I talked with Janessa Goldbeck, the Director of Membership at the Genocide Intervention Network, about what we can all do about genocide.
Below is an edited transcript of our conversation on the Big Vision Podcast.
Janessa Goldbeck: My name is Janessa Goldbeck and I am the Director of Membership at the Genocide Intervention Network. The mission of the Genocide Intervention Network, or GI-Net, is to empower individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide. Our members envision a world in which the global community is willing and able to protect civilians from genocide and mass atrocities.
As part of the anti-genocide moment, we raise both money and political will for civilian protection initiatives around the world. Some of the programs that we have currently running are the Sudan Divestment Task Force, which is leading up the campaign to divest state pensions from companies doing business in Sudan on a recently passed Federal legislation to ban future state contracts.
We also have a student division: STAND, which has more than 850 chapters around the world, and the students in those chapters actively organize and mobilize their communities and schools to pass legislation, to fundraise, and to really make more noise about genocide in Darfur and genocide in general.
As part of the Genocide Intervention Network's general membership, the student division is very vocal piece, and we also have our adult and community members who are out there in the field, in the weeds, organizing their elected officials to do more work on genocide.
Britt Bravo: Why should people care about genocide? If someone asks you, what is my connection? It is all so far away, it doesn't really affect me, it is very sad, but there are a lot of problems that affect me more. How would you answer that? Why is it something that everyone should care about?
JG: I had the opportunity to spend some time in Rwanda when I was in college, and what really struck me about that experience was the willingness and openness of the survivors, who are both victims and perpetrators, to heal their country and to move on. I was really moved by the humanity of the people there. People wanted to ensure that genocide never happened again and they were willing to forgive and try to heal to make that happen.
I thought that if people who have been through that kind of horror can display such depth of human understanding and compassion, when genocide happens in Darfur or anywhere, I feel it is my moral obligation to do everything in my power to stop it. I know it sounds cliché, but as Martin Luther King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
I think from a practical perspective, genocide and instances of mass atrocity really are a threat to people everywhere. Genocide and genocidaires, people who commit genocide, are destabilizing to their country and to the world at large.
If the US acted early on to prevent instances of genocide from occurring, we would save ourselves millions of dollars in relief and peacekeeping equipment. For example, since 2005, the US has allocated over $4 billion in humanitarian and peacekeeping and development assistance to the people of Sudan and Eastern Chad.
Instead of being reactive, we can be proactive, and work to be a government that prevents genocide. It is in our best interest, and in the interest of those who are victims or suffering in places where their states or governments have failed to protect them.
BB: Can you give an example or tell a success story of how an individual, or a small group was able to make a positive impact to prevent, or to work against a genocide that was happening? It is such a large issue and people I think often feel paralysis and
