At this year's Iraq Action Days, EPIC supporters like you came to Washington DC to urge the Bush administration and Congress to do more to help innocent Iraqis affected by the war. Among the hundreds who participated was Kevin Murphy, an Iraq War veteran and Rutgers law student who has been a passionate advocate for Iraqi refugees since his return home.
Following Iraq Action Day, Kevin Murphy went back to his campus and got to work. Today, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Kevin and his colleagues at Rutgers, we are proud to announce the next step in bringing the urgent humanitarian crisis to the center of our national discourse on Iraq:
IRAQ AT THE CROSSROADS: Protecting Refugees, Rescuing Our Allies, and Empowering Iraqi Law A National Symposium at Rutgers School of Law, Newark, NJ October 24th, 2008 (Friday), 8:30 am - 5:30 pm http://lawrecord.typepad.com/
This important conference will explore the plight of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons, the unique dangers faced by Iraqis who helped the U.S., and how existing Iraqi law can be empowered to create peace in the country. Learn from and network with fellow activists, knowledgeable experts, and organizations taking humanitarian action for peace in Iraq.
We hope you will join us on October 24 for this powerful symposium on the Iraqi Crisis. For more information please visit: http://lawrecord.typepad.com/
If you listen to the mainstream media, you might think the country has nothing going aside from violence, hatred, corruption, squabbling and failure. But the reality on the ground is that several institutions - including Depaul University's International Human Rights Law Institute (IHRLI), CHF International, and the American Development Foundation's Iraq Civil Society and Independent Media Support Program (ICSP) - are seeing success in helping Iraqis strengthen civil society, improve their economy, and advance human rights and the rule of law. On Friday, May 11th, EPIC joined representatives from over 20 distinct NGOs for an Open Society Institute-hosted event titled, "Overlooked Successes in Iraq: Rebuilding communities, strengthening civil society, and advancing human rights despite the violence." We'll be releasing a summary later this week detailing the specific programs and qualitative success stories described by conference participants, but for now, I'd like to highlight a few particularly interesting points from the discussion.
First, talented, educated Iraqis are never in short supply in the work of the NGOs reporting. Iraqis all over the country are excited about justice reform, improving infrastructure, and playing an active role in their communities. Only a very small percentage of people participate in violence, and many more take huge risks to be involved in change. They are passionate and dedicated despite the dangers of being associated with a U.S.-funded venture. They are ready to identify and throw out the corrupt, and they aren't rooted to a single position. They want and are willing to work for change.
Second, several conference participants questioned accountability measures determining which programs receive U.S. funding. Right now, our government seems to throw money at organizations with the sole mechanism for accountability being a return of numbers. But does it matter how many people you can claim to have helped if what you're doing doesn't result in sustainable development, or build the capacity for lasting change once you're gone? The most successful programs are those paying attention to the needs of Iraqis and giving them a vested interest in the process. But to truly determine what works and what doesn't, we need the kind of evidence we can only get after a program has been around for years and had a chance to take root, not meaningless numbers and statistics just because they're easily organized into talking points.
In the final Q & A period, the participants engaged in a heated debate over U.S. funding priorities. What are Iraqis most in need of: civil society, economy or government reform? You have to have a middle class in order for civil society and government to function; you have to have civil society in order for government to be representative and an economy to function; and you have to have some level of government security in order for economic development and civil society to approximate stability. So what comes first - the chicken, or the egg?
At the conclusion of the event, I realized from the important points made by all the participants that it won't do to focus on any one component more than the others. Iraqi government, economy and civil society are like three points of a triangle, each one essential to the integrity of the whole.
We must equally fund programs in all three fields, and use the experiences and advice of successful programs to determine future funding.
Hope everyone had a good holiday. Here are some of the stories from the past few days that caught my eye. For a more complete account I would go check out Today in Iraq. My commentary is in italics.
District by District, Shiites Make Baghdad Their Own- As the United States debates what to do in Iraq, this country’s Shiite majority has been moving toward its own solution: making the capital its own. (Bush is apparently going to announce his grand new strategy for Iraq in the new year, but Iraq isn't waiting. Each indecisive day hundreds more Iraqis and American soldiers are killed or injured, and militias further cement their power.)
Iraqi Court Says Hussein Must Die Within 30 Days- An Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence against Saddam Hussein and ruled that the man whose brutal reign began in 1979 and ended with the American-led invasion in 2003 must go to the gallows within 30 days.
Hundreds Disappear Into the Black Hole of the Kurdish Prison System in Iraq- The entire inmate population had either been denied trials or had been held beyond the terms of their sentences, they said — lost in legal limbo in the Kurdish-controlled region of Iraq. (The legal system in all of Iraq, not just Kurdistan, is a joke. Usually, the accused are granted a farce of a trial; they are provided with an underpaid lawyer who rarely even meets with the accused and who generally fails to mount any sort of defense. The trials last on average about 15 minutes after which most defendants are found guilty. Please read this article for more. But how can we expect the Iraqis to hold just court proceedings if we can't?) U.S. Says Captured Iranians Can Be Linked to Attacks- The American military said Tuesday that it had credible evidence linking Iranians and their Iraqi associates, detained here in raids last week, to criminal activities, including attacks against American forces...Iraqi leaders said last week that the site was the compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite political leaders... A spokesman for Mr. Hakim said he had not heard of a raid on the compound. (While al-Sadr has refused to have any sort of relationship with the United States, al-Hakim has met with Bush at the White House and it appeared as though the U.S. would be backing al-Hakim in order to undermine al-Sadr. But with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's rejection of the U.S. backed plan to build a coalition across sectarian lines, it seems that the U.S. has decided to apply some pressure on al-Hakim and SCIRI.)
Marines Charge 4 With Murder of Iraq Civilians- Four marines were charged yesterday with murder in the killings of two dozen Iraqi civilians, including at least 10 women and children, in the village of Haditha last year, military officials said at Camp Pendleton, Calif. (For related blog entries go here, here and here.)
At this year's Iraq Action Days, EPIC supporters like you came to Washington DC to urge the Bush administration and Congress to do more to help innocent Iraqis affected by the war. Among the hundreds who participated was Kevin Murphy, an Iraq War veteran and Rutgers law student who has been a passionate advocate for Iraqi refugees since his return home.
On Friday, May 11th, EPIC joined representatives from over 20 distinct NGOs for an Open Society Institute-hosted event titled, "
