Leaders Weigh Means for Darfur Peace

Diplomats, scholars, and activists clashed over peacekeeping troops and economic development in a star-studded conference on Darfur Monday.

David Phillips, a visiting assistant professor at Columbia’s Center for the Study of Human Rights, hosted the event in Lerner Hall, entitled “Towards Sustainable Peace in Darfur.” The list of speakers read like a “who’s who” of activists and scholars on Africa and Darfur. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. representative to the United Nations, opened the event with his keynote address, while a discussion between Jan Pronk, the former U.N. special representative for Sudan, and prominent author and activist John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group closed out the public portion of the conference. Columbia’s own Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, and anthropology professor Mahmood Mamdani, a prominent African studies scholar, also spoke.

Sachs, Mamdani, and many other speakers, made bold, controversial statements at the event on the reality in Darfur and the prospects for the future. Sachs proposed reallocating the $2.6 billion currently planned for a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force to funding things like roads, schools, and health care.

“The underlying problem is fundamentally a development problem,” Sachs said of the impoverished region, one of those hit hardest by climate change. “You could put the peacekeepers in there, but they won’t change one iota on the ground in terms of the harsh realities.”

Several panelists later disagreed with Sachs, stating their belief that infrastructure would be hard to develop amid ongoing violence, though many agreed that economic development should be part of the solution and would help make any resolution more sustainable.

Mamdani condemned the proposed U.N.-A.U. force, saying it would become “an occupying force.” He also attacked the international media and the activist community for their “message of continuing genocide” despite a dramatic drop in violence against civilians in 2005, drawing fire from the other panelists.

In closed-door meetings following the public conference, participants worked on what Phillips called a Dossier on Darfur Development Opportunities.

“We think that if we start envisioning it [post-conflict conditions] now, we actually have a better chance of getting a peace deal,” he said. The dossier “will look at projects that can be done immediately in areas of stability, ways that long-term development planning needs to be incorporated into the discussions about a peace agreement, and ways of envisioning an end state that’s going to prevent Darfur from slipping back into conflict.”

The conference included two different panel discussions involving activists, diplomats, aid workers, development experts, and Darfuri representatives who spoke about current conditions as well as development opportunities. Many panelists reiterated that the physical realities of Darfur continue to be harsh. One third of the region’s people remain displaced, living destitute lives in humanitarian aid camps, and aid workers are unable to reach beyond the camps because of threats to their own security.

Yet this means that two-thirds of Darfuris remain “more or less settled,” public health expert Maha El-Adawy said, providing opportunities for small development projects like the construction of deeper wells and latrines or centers that offer basic health services.

The conference was emblematic of University President Lee Bollinger’s vision of Columbia as a “global university.” Thinkers from around the world gathered to discuss an issue of international importance, and they did so at Columbia because of its prestige and location.

“There is extraordinary capacity at Columbia to work on these issues,” Phillips said. “Because Columbia is based in New York, it provides a venue for bringing U.N. personnel and representatives from donor countries with missions to the U.N. to contribute to the creative process.”

The final session of the conference was closed to students and the media, and Phillips declined to speculate on the results of the closed-door discussions. But considering the divergent opinions expressed by the panelists, consensus appeared unlikely.

But it might not have mattered. In response to a Darfuri man’s question of how the country should respond to conflicting development recommendations, engineer and panelist Gonzalo Pizarro remarked, “I think the best suggestion would be to stop listening to the experts.”

Laura Brunts can be reached at laura.brunts@columbiaspectator.com.