Grandson of Holocaust Survivors Rallies Support for Darfur

Swarthmore College’s idyllic Pennsylvania campus is thousands of miles away from the violence that erupted three

years ago in Sudan’s Darfur region. But Mark Hanis says that, as he learned about the crisis, it began to hit home.

The grandchild of four Holocaust survivors, Mr. Hanis, 24, started an organization during his senior year in 2004 to end the conflict in Darfur and prevent violence aimed at destroying groups of people based on their national, ethnic, or religious identities. Called the Genocide Intervention Network, the charity has recruited 1,700 members who attend its educational events, and has signed up 12,500 people for e-mail alerts. It has also raised more than $1.6- million.

Mr. Hanis’s group is among several newly formed organizations that are working with religious and advocacy groups to generate awareness of the issue and pressure policy makers to take action. The Save Darfur Coalition, an alliance formed by the American Jewish World Service and other organizations, counts more than 150 members.

The advocates’ collective successes to date include persuading 18 universities and 21 states to divest their holdings in companies that do business with the Sudanese government, and organizing a rally that brought more than 50,000 people to Washington in April to demand a stop to the fighting.

College Rallies

The activism of young people, in particular, has helped push the U.S. government to respond more forcefully to the Darfur crisis than it would have otherwise, say some foreign-policy experts.

“I really have to go back to the South Africa anti-apartheid movement on campuses to think of the most recent parallel in terms of its breadth and intensity,” says William G. O’Neill, an international lawyer and a consultant to the Brookings Institution-University of Bern Project on Internal Displacement. Particularly given that the United States has few strategic interests in Darfur, he says, “it’s been to the credit of a lot of these people — but especially students and youth activists — who kept it on the front burner.”

Mr. Hanis first captured the attention of some public-policy luminaries with an unconventional fund-raising idea: He wanted private citizens to donate money not just for humanitarian aid but also to help the beleaguered African Union forces who are trying to protect the civilian population in Darfur.

“It’s a huge problem to look at Darfur as if we were looking at a Katrina or a tsunami,” says Mr. Hanis. “What if we’d responded to the Jews in the concentration camps with bags of rice and said, ‘That’s it, that’s our response.’ It could have fed them for another day or week but they were still going to face the gas chambers.”

Mr. Hanis and a friend, Andrew Sniderman, began sending e-mail messages to scholars, public-policy experts, and anyone else they could think of who might help them get their idea heard. They eventually found an ally in Gayle Smith, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council.

Ms. Smith met with officials from the African Union peacekeeping force to broker an agreement by which the troops, who are typically supported by governments, could receive money from private donors.

Today, Genocide Intervention Network has raised more than $250,000 specifically for peacekeeping troops, which it hopes to distribute by the end of the year. Mr. Hanis and his colleagues are considering different ways to use the money, including training female officers to help protect civilian women against rape.

But Mr. Hanis, who runs the organization out of an office in downtown Washington, sees his mission as also creating a permanent “anti-genocide constituency” to prevent future genocidal violence. Politicians have not taken action to stop genocide in the past because they don’t feel pressure from voters, he says. Mr. Hanis’s anti-genocide constituency would put continuous pressure on politicians the same way that environmentalists or firearms advocates do.

“In the face of every genocide the American constituents get concerned and they rally,” he says. “After every genocide, it dissolves. But the NRA [National Rifle Association] is still there. AARP, Sierra Club, they’re all still there.”

‘Engaged Citizenry’

Mr. Hanis has already succeeded in winning over some prominent grant makers.

Anne Marie Burgoyne, portfolio manager at the Draper Richards Foundation, in San Francisco, says she was struck by his unusual approach. “There were people doing tremendous on-the-ground research. There were people supporting different kinds of negotiations. But no one was actually sitting around in the United States saying how can we gather an engaged citizenry to focus on this topic,” she says.

The foundation, which typically supports organizations that provide services rather than advocacy efforts, broke that tradition in supporting the Genocide Intervention Network and has committed $300,000 over three years. Other supporters include the Omidyar Network, in Redwood City, Calif., which has pledged more than $700,000; Bridgeway Charitable Foundation, in Houston, which committed $300,000; and Echoing Green, in New York.

Mr. Hanis’s use of technology to build his membership and educate people about the conflict also caught Ms. Burgoyne’s eye. When Mr. Hanis first started recruiting members, he tried a variety of tactics, including the use of social-networking sites like Facebook, Friendster, and MySpace. The sites allow members to create customized profiles, and Mr. Hanis encouraged his supporters to include links to the Web site and updates on advocacy activities.

Today, Mr. Hanis and his colleagues look for new ways to educate people online and provide them with advocacy tools.

The Web site features a “Sudan Divestment Do-It-Yourself Starter Kit” designed to help students lobby their universities to divest, as well as weekly summaries of news from Darfur and legislation related to the conflict. Two weeks ago, the Web site concluded a weeklong diary from Ronan Farrow, a representative for Genocide Intervention Network, and his mother, the actress and Unicef Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow, on a trip to Darfur to raise awareness about security concerns.

That online outreach has translated into some big attendance at events held by the organization.

In April, the Genocide Intervention Network brought 800 students to Washington for two days of training on how to lobby Congress.

Mr. Hanis says one of his approaches is to make it easy and fun for people to get involved. Young people across the country can contribute to Darfur simply by turning ordinary social activities — like soccer games or salsa dances — into fund-raising events. He also provides young people with simple ways to send messages to members of Congress involved in pending legislation on Darfur.

“If you can’t get someone to do something in five minutes, you’ve failed in a key way of organizing,” he says.

Mr. Hanis is also reaching out beyond students and likely supporters, such as Jews, Armenians, and other victims of past genocides, to increase the diversity of his membership.

He speaks at synagogues, churches, college campuses, and other places that attract large numbers of people on a weekly basis, and when he meets with people, he tries to determine what argument against genocide might appeal most to them. Some people see genocide as a moral issue, others are drawn to it because of national-security concerns, while still others might be most affected by the stories of rape and abuse of women that often accompany genocidal violence, he says.

A Merger

With the success of Genocide Intervention Network has come rapid growth, and Mr. Hanis is working to deal with the challenges that growth brings. Months shy of its second anniversary, his organization has already experienced its first merger, with Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, an organization with chapters at 200 universities and high schools.

And on a recent Friday afternoon, Mr. Hanis is preparing to interview candidates for four newly created positions, which will bring the staff size to nine people.

The job interviews cap a typically busy week. Mr. Hanis has been reading about nonprofit governance and board responsibilities — “I’ve never done that before” — in preparation for his first board meeting to be held next month, as well as training an intern to take over some of his duties. He also spent two days in Boston where he spoke at Hebrew College, discussed strategic planning with the director of Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and met with a major donor.

The frenetic schedule, however, befits Mr. Hanis’s sense of urgency.

“This is my life’s passion,” he says, ticking off a list of places like Chechnya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Myanmar, where he says early warning bells for genocide have already begun to sound. “There is plenty of work for me to be here in 50 years.”