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Policy Doctors Provide Early Warnings, Prescriptions for International
Crises
By Nora Boustany
Wednesday, June 6, 2001; Page A22
They see themselves as policy doctors without borders.
If government officials and opinion makers wanted an early read on how
Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid was headed for disaster by
alienating his uneasy coalition partners, how Burundi was sliding
toward civil war and what to do about it, or challenges ahead in the
Balkans, the International Crisis Group could offer an informed and
analytic preview.
The group, founded by high-powered former government officials and
diplomats, think tank specialists, journalists and academics, sees its
mission as putting meat and flesh on the idea of conflict prevention
. . . to influence opinion makers and those who influence them,
according to ICG President Gareth Evans, a former foreign minister of
Australia.
The group, a global functional equivalent of a foreign office,
relies on analyses of hot spots and conflicts, as well as advocacy, to
forestall crises, Evans said. The group aims to sow the seeds for
long-term efforts in places such as Kosovo with concepts such as
conditional independence, he explained to a group of Washington Post
editors and reporters Monday.
The group's concerns, he said, are the poor, the oppressed, the
huddled masses, while our targets are policymakers, governments on
the ground -- if they exist -- and the world's 10 or 12 movers and
shakers, as well as large intergovernmental institutions such as the
United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund.
Evans listed 18 ICG field projects: in Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo,
Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia in Europe; Algeria, Burundi, Rwanda,
Congo, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe in Africa; and Burma, Cambodia,
Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in Asia. The group's
$7 million annual budget comes from governments, foundations and
individuals.
Evans said governments and even think tanks are usually crisis-driven,
focusing on one problem at a time. The urgent always drives out the
important, he said.
He is eager to broaden ICG's base of operations and increase its
funding. To this end, he sometimes makes presentations in person, as
he did last week in U.N. corridors. I got very exercised talking
about another catastrophic eruption in Burundi . . . and I succeeded
in energizing some of the guys there, Evans said.
Australian observers and diplomats have said that after the Labor
government lost in the 1996 election and Evans ended up as part of the
opposition in Parliament, he felt he needed a larger arena in which to
work. He is best known internationally, among other achievements, for
his role in developing the U.N. peace plan for Cambodia.
Movies to Soothe, Educate Refugees
Until some of the world's worst conflicts are resolved, however,
refugees can languish in camps for decades -- and many have, including
Palestinians, Afghans and various Africans.
When American film producer Caroline Baron worked in Kosovo and
Macedonia, she was struck by the boredom of the displaced, who had
nothing to distract them from their traumas.
Baron dreamed up a project she thought would bring hopeful
entertainment and laughter to children and exiles recovering from the
horrors of war. She contacted groups including the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees and CARE, as well as actress Julia Ormond,
and put together a group to send projectors and films into the camps
for Kosovo refugees in April 1999. Now her project, FilmAid
International, is taking wing. She will be in Washington today with
Ormond to raise money and goodwill and to meet with representatives of
nongovernmental organizations and U.S. officials at the State
Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
FilmAid's library has expanded from Charlie Chaplin movies, cartoons
and Titanic to include educational material on AIDS prevention and
other health issues, as well as sexual and gender-based violence and
conflict resolution. The group hopes to raise $350,000 by the summer
to purchase more projection equipment and mobile screens.
The project is about psychological problems caused by refugee life
and about feeding the soul, she said in an interview Monday. By
simply giving a little, you get so much back.
Ormond added, If refugees have no reprieve, they start to obsess over
their problems, harboring anxiety and anger, and it becomes harder for
them to break that pattern. FilmAid wants to provide something that
mitigates and alleviates refugees' trauma without in any way
trivializing it, she said.
Entertainment like cartoons and Chaplin movies pulls the audience in,
and then education becomes easier. If refugees are repatriated
without education, they have nothing to sell back to their country,
Ormond said. Education puts the emphasis of rebuilding on their
shoulders; that is the missing piece.
