George Clooney and Darfur
“In the case of Darfur, it’s been the greatest failure of my life.”
- George Clooney (2010)
.
George Clooney has been advocating for a resolution to the Darfur conflict for over five years. He has smuggled cameras into Darfur refugee camps with his journalist dad to film an expose, set up the group Not On Our Watch, worked with the UN, and even had a private meeting with President Obama, all in an attempt to stop ‘the first genocide of the 21st century.’
.
There are a lot of people that would agree with Clooney that his involvement has been a failure. And not just the usual suspects that simplistically label any celebrity involvement in politics as merely a PR stunt. Several activists and writers have said that the problem with George Clooney and the other celebs who have gotten involved (eg. Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Mia Farrow) is that they pitch Darfur as a place that needs to be ‘saved’ by the international community and that urgent intervention on a large scale is needed. Clooney et al believe, therefore, that they can help by providing a giant spotlight on the problems of Darfur to garner the world’s attention and outrage.
.
The problem with this is that Darfur would probably better be served with quiet diplomacy and patient mediation rather than UN troops and calls for arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court (ICC). What’s going on in Darfur is culturally specific and messy with multiple players and lots of competing interests. A bunch of troops from the United States forcing themselves into the middle of the conflict only flares up local hostilities and adds to the messiness. Alex de Waal, for example, discusses how US officials conceded in private that vast rallies in 2006 calling for the US to ‘save’ Darfur led to an ‘over-hasty attempt to impose UN peacekeepers on Sudan’s government. This, in turn, inflamed Khartoum’s suspicions, emboldened its enemies, and undermined slow-maturing efforts to find a compromise that would end the war.’
.
I’m not an expert on Darfur. Maybe there are some great counter arguments that back what Clooney et al are doing. I definitely think that Clooney’s heart is in the right place. But I do wonder if the concept that they’re entitled to intervene in another country’s affairs comes a little too naturally to these celebrities as Americans/Westerners. What’s less natural is the idea of staying out of it, or focusing attention on providing the people in these countries with the things they need to better their situation for themselves. I think something like Bono’s fight for Third World debt-relief, which frees up money for these countries so they can make their own decisions on how to spend it, is more effective.
.
In short, I believe that in most cases celebrities’ motivations to help the Third World are sound. It’s how they help that can be the stumbling block. A spotlight isn’t always a good thing. A desire for immediate action isn’t always a good thing. And our white Westerner sense of entitlement in intervening into other countries’ affairs isn’t always a good thing. The problem, I guess, is that spotlights, immediate gratification and the presumed nobility of white saviours are an embedded part of Hollywood’s DNA.
