“‘All of this is for you. We die for nothing.’” Samantha Nutt, a professor at the University of Toronto, one of Canada’s 25 leading activists named by the Globe and Mail, and both founder and Executive Director of the international humanitarian organization, War Child, said this quote to the gathered students in Rutherford Physics 112 on March 18. Her talk was the inaugural event of the David A. Freedman Speaker Series hosted by the McGill Debating Union.
Dr. Nutt recounted the story of a young woman in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo named Nadine. “It is a hard story to hear,” Dr. Nutt warned before beginning. Nadine had been on her way to town, on a road full of people and donkey carts, to get medicine for malaria. Three boys that she knew from a neighbouring village had surrounded her, pinned her down, and took turns raping her. When she got up to run, one pulled out a hunting knife and cut off the soles of her feet. “And then they raped her again,” Dr. Nutt said.
Samantha Nutt began her own story when she was given an opportunity to combine her thesis research – on women and war – with research being undertaken by UNICEF in Somalia. “Somalia forced me to confront my own arrogance and ignorance surrounding the threads that bind us to human misery all around the world”, said Dr. Nutt. She talked about many issues from – like Nadine’s story above – the horrific and widespread rape in the Congo, to the issue of small arms, to how we are implicated in conflict around the world every day, to what we can do to actually help the developing world.
To the issue of small arms, Dr. Nutt began by describing what became clear to her in Somalia.
“International humanitarian aid would never and could never be enough,” she said. She explained her statement by saying that the dilemma is not about slowing the tide of death, disease, and starvation—that is the straightforward part—but that none of the interventions were possible in the face of “drugged up, trigger happy, adolescent boys, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, who sabotage progress at every turn.” Guns. Dr. Nutt described the accessibility of small arms as an epidemic. Roughly 90% of all weapons sold come from the five permanent members of the Security Council and 70% of those are sold to developing countries. “It is a very very sad commentary on our world that in unstable regions, where children die of dehydration, automatic weapons are more readily available and accessible than clean drinking water.”
Thus, Dr. Nutt spoke of the necessity of the Arms Trade Treaty. “Small arms do not ever recognize borders,” Dr. Nutt said, emphasizing her point that a weapon’s first stop will not be its last. “[They] threaten civilian well-being everywhere in the world.” The Arms Trade Treaty, which was 10 years in negotiation, last July failed to reach an agreement, largely due to American domestic concerns. According to Dr. Nutt, these American domestic concerns seem to be “fairly short sighted. . .in wake of the Newtown tragedy in December.” But moving beyond what happened last year, according to Emmanuel Jal, a former child soldier turned hip-hop artist, has joined with Amnesty International to support the Arms Trade Treaty. He assures, along with a powerful network of lawyers and legal scholars, that it will not affect the rights of gun owners in the United States. “You don’t have a choice when you’re 8 years old and an AK-47 is forced into your hands at gunpoint. Not a day goes by where I do not think of the horrors I witnessed as a child soldier in South Sudan,” Emmanuel Jal said on the petition put out by Amnesty International. “The Arms Trade treaty needs to get back on track and I encourage you to make your voices heard on this,” Dr. Nutt said.
On a different note, Dr. Nutt told the gathered students how they are implicated in conflicts. To all of you Canadians reading this, you pay CPP deductions on your paycheques. Well, the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) investment board has more than 200 million invested in the world’s top 100 arms manufacturers, as does every teacher’s pension fund in this country. “Certainly we need to support a fulsome humanitarian response in order to protect and promote the lives and well-being of civilians in some of the most volatile places on earth, but that response must do more than simply plug the gaps while these structures such as the global arms trade and who profits from it remain insufficiently regulated and unexamined.”
“We interact with [that] conflict every single day in the form of tin, tungsten, coltan, and copper, all of which are actively mined in the eastern Congo and all of which can be found in our cell phones, computers, [and] video game consoles,” Dr. Nutt said. Well what can we do to actually help? Build a school? Work in a hospital? Dig a well? “Those are the stories [we tell] that make us feel better about ourselves,” Dr. Nutt said. “I can assure you, I am no longer seduced by those tales of heroism and altruism.” It is called voluntourism, an ego-booster that wastes the money that could have been put to actual development initiatives rather than an individual’s own self-serving need for recognition. Samantha Nutt described how we are focused on short term interventions and how they fuel dependency. Instead, she suggests that we invest in programs that support skills training, employment, the strengthening of civil society groups, and legal infrastructure. “Change in war torn countries is a multi-generational task,” Dr. Nutt said, admitting to falling victim to cynicism at times. “Too little, too late, and too often.”
But then Dr. Nutt described another story. Nadia was about 22 years old and had a young son. She was forced to watch her husband, mother, and father be killed by militia while she was hiding in the bushes, trying to keep her child quiet so they wouldn’t be killed as well. The militia set fire to her home and stole the livestock. Nadia walked for two days, traumatized and afraid, and to make matters worse, she was illiterate. Because she was illiterate, she was unable to buy the supplies she needed.
This experience helped her decide to join the War Child’s literacy program.
One night, Dr. Nutt was wondering if “humanitarian action [was] a myth that we sell to people to make ourselves feel better about all the horrible things that are happening in the world.” She was succumbing to that cynicism when she asked Nadia, “After everything that you have been through, has anything actually helped you?” Nadia leaned forward and wrote her name in the sand.
“Now that I know how to write my own name, I am going to learn how to write my son’s name.”
What can you do to actually help? Dr. Nutt had four suggestions:
1. Take the time to read or watch or listen to one piece of international news once a day. Educate yourself!
2. Donations really do matter but knowing what and to whom donations should be made is important. Break the cycle of dependency and think longer term. You are much better off giving a small amount of money to a cause you really believe in for a sustained period of time, rather than throwing money at a problem and walking away. Even just $1 a month can help.
3. Think about how you spend your money and how you shop. Don’t buy products from companies who manufacture or invest in cluster bombs or land mines. Visit sipri.org to see an annual publication of the top 100 arms manufacturers.
4. And remember, aid is not about what we do for others. It is not about going overseas and volunteering in a hospital or building a school. The best type of humanitarian aid is about the space that is created for those who are living with war and poverty.
Want to learn more?
· “Damned Nations: Greed, guns, armies, and aid” by Samantha Nutt
· www.projectploughshares.ca
· www.controlarms.org
· www.sipri.org
· visit @SamanthaNutt on twitter
· http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emmanuel-jal/saving-childrens-lives-by_b_2885124.html
· http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kyoKcZ-jyis#
Want to take action?
· http://www.amnestyusa.org/emails/W1303EAATT3.html (please sign Amnesty International’s petition!)
