TO THE RESCUE
THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE TAKES ON CONFLICT AND CHAOS ACROSS THE WORLD

You often hear people say: “You can't save the world.” Well, we here at THE FAMILY
GROOVE beg to differ. Case in point: The International Rescue Committee (The IRC),
a group of people from around the world who give their time and resources to
rescuing people in crisis.

The IRC was founded, at the request of Albert Einstein, in 1933 to help people fleeing
persecution in Nazi Germany during World War II. At that time, there was a European
organization called the International Relief Association. Einstein suggested that an
American branch be created to help Germans suffering under Hitler. This branch became the International Rescue Committee, an organization whose scope quickly broadened to assisting victims of war and persecution the world over.

Here we talk to IRC representative Tina Susman about the state of our  world today and how her organization works to make change.

THE FAMILY GROOVE: What is The IRC's mission?
Tina Susman: Our mission is quite simple: to help people who have been victims of conflict, such as the war in Darfur, or victims of natural disaster, such as earthquakes or the tsunami, get back on their feet and to provide them with security, medical care, education, and essentials that they have lost. We do this in three ways: we respond to crises on the ground; we help resettle refugees who are coming to the United States (we have 23 resettlement offices across the country doing this sort of work); and we advocate political leaders for policy changes. For instance, we have spoken out against some aspects of immigration law that we feel work against people trying to enter the United States. We speak out frequently on the need for more international support for the peacekeepers in Democratic Republic of Congo, and we’ve joined other organizations in demanding better funding for the African Union troops patrolling the Darfur region of Sudan. This involves more than just talking to policy makers. It also involves going on TV and radio when we have the opportunity to make the public more aware of what is happening and to urge them to also pressure policy makers to take action.

TFG: What do we need to know about the crisis in Darfur?
TS: I think the most important thing people should know about Darfur is that things are not getting better. A peace accord was signed in May by the Sudanese government and one rebel group, but this has done virtually nothing to stop the war there, which has killed at least 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes. Fighting continues, because there’s really nobody on the ground in Darfur who can stop it. The African Union peacekeeping force is too small, and too under-funded. Darfur is a huge region, and you need a lot more than just a few thousand troops sprinkled across the desert to adequately patrol it. The worst part about the Darfur war is that the victims are overwhelmingly civilians who have nothing to do with this conflict. They just happen to be in the way and there is nobody there to protect them. This is why we are so insistent on the need for a strong security force to be deployed across Darfur—so that innocent people are no longer murdered, raped, and left homeless.

Since May, a particularly sinister trend has occurred: the targeting of humanitarian workers. At least a dozen have been killed in Darfur in the past five months, including a Sudanese nurse who worked for the IRC. This link takes you to our Sudan page, and if you scroll down a bit you’ll find (under News and Multimedia) some links to more specific things in Darfur, including press releases we issued when our nurse was killed and when we reported on growing rapes in Darfur:
http://www.theirc.org/where/the_irc_in_sudan.html

TFG: Tell us about your gender-based violence programs.
TS: These programs are aimed at providing both medical and psychological assistance to women and girls who have been victims of sexual violence. It’s important to note that sexual violence takes on many forms. It includes rape being used as a weapon of war, as we saw in the Balkans and as we now see in Congo and Darfur; it includes forced marriage and domestic violence; it includes sexual slavery, a common element of war. During the long civil war in Liberia, for example, a lot of women were forced into sexual slavery by fighters who would force them to provide cooking and cleaning services, and demand sex as well.

IRC has some really innovative programs around the world to help women and girls. Across Darfur, for example, we have women’s centers at some of the displaced camps designed for women who have been victimized to essentially have a comfortable place to come and talk with each other and really just hang out and relax. It’s a little oasis from the drudgery of camp life. We offer counseling in addition to medical services to them.

We also provide educational services that are aimed at helping women and girls to avoid becoming victims of sexual violence and to understand their legal rights IF they become victims of sexual violence. One of the biggest problems is that a lot of women are stigmatized if they become rape victims and they can be ostracized by their own families and their communities. We try to help them overcome this by giving them vocational skills, by educating them, and by counseling them.
Take a look at the following links, which involve various sexual violence-related programs that we have under way:

http://www.theirc.org/news/latest/congo-helping-women-heal.html
http://www.theirc.org/news/page-28381259.html
http://www.theirc.org/news/latest/healing-chicken-soup.html
http://www.theirc.org/resources/video.html

TFG: What's happening today on the human rights front that Americans need to pay attention to?
TS: Americans should be aware of the violations of human rights that occur on a daily basis in much of the world—rapes, torture, pillaging in places like northern Uganda, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance. The only way these atrocities can be stopped is through pressure, and much of that pressure needs to come from the international community. The best way to get policy makers to apply pressure is if regular people, including regular Americans, make themselves aware of what is happening and demand that their lawmakers intervene in some way.

TFG: What's happening today on the public health front that Americans need to know about?
TS: Something that most Americans do not realize is how adversely conflicts and wars can affect the overall health of millions of people, even if those people are not involved in the conflict. For instance, the IRC has conducted a study in the Democratic Republic of Congo and found that since the war began there in 1998, about four million people have died. And most of these people did not die as a result of war-related injuries. Nearly all of them have died as a result of the collapsed public health sector, which has denied people basic medical care. Children die of measles, malnutrition, and malaria—all ailments that could be easily cured if people had access to decent medical care. In Darfur, the malnutrition rates increase each time fighting increases, because people are unable to get access to adequate food supplies. Even common colds can turn fatal when you have no shelter, a common problem in places where war has driven people from their homes. This is one reason why so many children and elderly die in these conflicts—they are the most vulnerable to begin with, and when they become ill and can’t get decent treatment; therefore, they have a far greater chance of never recovering.

TFG: How can we help?
TS: The best way to help is to become aware of what is going on, to apply pressure on policy makers to change things, and to contribute to organizations that are active on the ground in conflict and disaster zones. You can contribute by volunteering your services, or by donating money; no amount is too small. You can also help by telling other people what is going on and by making them pay attention to problems that are far away. When you meet some of these victims of war, you quickly realize that they are just like you and me—they all want security, food on the table, and education for their kids. When you realize that, it makes it a lot easier to want to help them.

For more information, go to www.theirc.org

THE FAMILY GROOVE donates a percentage of each issue to its charity of the month.