Journal Letter - Crisis Action - November 2009

Crisis Action - Pia Dawson

Dear Friends,

Starting work here at Crisis Action was something of a culture shock for me. Less so than my fellow Peaceworkers going to Burundi, I’m sure – but a culture shock nevertheless! My past experience of peace campaigning has very much been at the grassroots level, but Crisis Action operates at the other end of the scale. A working day here typically involves sitting at my desk in our smart central London office, firing off email after email with the occasional break to join a conference call. It’s different, to say the least. I’m learning a whole new way of doing campaigning.

I hadn’t heard of Crisis Action before I learned I was to be stationed here for a year – though this was not without reason. Crisis Action is rather unusual in that it works on often high-profile campaigns from behind the scenes. It doesn’t put its name to press releases, publish reports or newsletters, or seek to rally the general public behind a cause. Instead, it pinpoints a specific armed conflict (actual or potential), assesses what pressure needs to be applied and where, and brings together the expertise, resources and creativity of a very diverse group of organisations and individuals in order to make it happen. I suppose if you could characterise some charity and NGO work as ‘fluffy’ and feel-good, Crisis Action is the opposite: it doesn’t do anything without a clear strategic imperative.

All of which goes some way to explaining why I find it very difficult to tell people what I actually do! Many of the high-level governmental and intergovernmental machinations are still quite new to me (I think I spent the whole of my first week googling the hundreds of acronyms that now form part of my vocabulary), and frankly, I still find myself somewhat intimidated by the professionalism and immense expertise of many of the people I am dealing with. But my colleagues have been great at bringing me up to speed, and I am becoming more and more integrated into the core work of the organisation.

So what do I actually do? Well, my role here is to help coordinate Crisis Action’s global and national campaigns on Sudan. Again, this is a new area for me; my previous work has largely focused on Israel/Palestine and Southeast Asia. But, daunting acronyms aside, Sudan is a fascinating country at a crucial moment in its history. For most of its post-independence existence, Africa’s largest country has been devastated by civil war. The most recent war between north and south lasted for 22 years, finally ending in 2005 with the painstakingly-negotiated Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Now, deterioration of north-south relations, tribal clashes within the south, destabilisation by violent militias and the increasing targeting of women and children are exacerbating the violence: the UN estimates that over 2,000 people have already been killed in south Sudan this year. If Sudan should return to war, according to the UN emergency relief coordinator John Holmes, what we witnessed in Darfur will be a mere ‘sideshow’.

A central problem is the breakdown of key provisions of the peace agreement. Without settling disputes over borders, making sure that elections happen on time and devolving power outside Khartoum, grievances cannot be addressed. It is also increasingly likely that the south will vote for independence from the north in a referendum scheduled for 2010. Without adequate preparations, this is sure to spark further conflict. And all the while, the international community is doing very little to stop it.

In response to this, we are coordinating a global coalition with major humanitarian and activist organisations – Oxfam, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Christian Aid, and so on – as well as faith leaders and Sudanese diaspora groups. One of my tasks, as part of this, was to coordinate a joint NGO lobby letter to foreign ministers and Sudan envoys of several key countries, asking them to take urgent action to reinvigorate the peace process in Sudan. This was much more complicated than I had expected and taught me a great deal about inter-NGO politics and the different political sensitivities of various organisations, but I pulled it together in the end and sent it off to David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and the like. The letter helped us to secure meetings both with Miliband and with the UK’s special envoy to Sudan.

All that, however, was just a hint of what's to come. We’re now planning a whole package of activities to centre around 9 January 2010 (both the 5-year anniversary of Sudan’s peace agreement, and the 1-year countdown to the aforementioned referendum), including high-level meetings, a Sudanese-led demonstration outside parliament, letters to MPs, and an eye-catching public stunt synchronised with partners around the globe. You’ll have to wait until my next journal letter to find out how this all pans out, but for now, rest assured that I have plenty of work to get on with!

**
I think that many people involved in peace work are naturally drawn to the grassroots side of things. The commitment to strive against injustice – whether it comes from faith, duty, compassion, love, or any combination of those things – often expresses itself in our daily interactions and compels us to do what we can in whatever time we can spare. Crisis Action is different: it operates at the macro level, and this can take some getting used to. The effects of our work are not immediately apparent, and we are detached from the people we seek to protect.
And yet it is rewarding, in a different way. I have always been frustrated by how our protests and statements of solidarity so often fall on deaf ears; how we so often preach to the converted. Now I’m learning how we can make those deaf ears listen. As for the effects on the ground - well, we'll have to wait a little longer to see.

In peace and friendship,

Pia Dawson

November 2009