Human-Rights Expert to Head Global Conflict Group

Louise Arbour first became acquainted with the International Crisis Group by reading its reports on instability in the Balkans, when she worked as chief prosecutor at the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. A dozen years later, she joins the think tank as its president.

Ms. Arbour enters the nonprofit world after a legal career that took her, most recently, to Geneva, where she held the United Nations’ top job for promoting human rights around the globe. In that position, she was known for a willingness to criticize governments and politicians, including the Bush administration, for their positions on human rights.

Ms. Arbour, who was born in Canada, says she is looking forward to leaving behind the diplomatic dance of the United Nations for a nonprofit organization, which she sees affording her greater freedoms.

“At times I felt very envious of the quality of the megaphones NGO’s could use,” she says. “As a U.N. official, the message often had to be much more subdued or cautious. It’s called, at times, diplomatic, but that’s a very polite way of expressing the limitations.”

She joins the Crisis Group at a difficult time. Established in 1995 with the goal to prevent war and other violence, the think tank has undergone significant growth under Gareth Evans, its president since 2000 and a former foreign minister of Australia. The think tank, which maintains headquarters in Brussels but has offices in the United States, is widely respected for its reports on brewing conflict and unrest, which are produced by 130 staff members who work in countries around the world. It has also had some success at using those reports to influence policy.

But the economic crisis has taken a toll. In the past year, the Crisis Group has been forced to trim expenses and lay off some employees. A plan to double its roughly $20-million endowment is now on hold, says Thomas R. Pickering, co-chairman of the organization’s board and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Ms. Arbour lacks experience raising money from private supporters, who will be key to sustaining the organization’s work.

“It’s a large, complex organization, and she’s coming in at a time when the global financial crisis will undoubtedly impact the scope of its operations and its ability to perform,” says James G. McGann, director of the think tanks and civil-societies progam at the University of Pennsylvania. “That’s a tall order for anyone.”

But Ms. Arbour’s supporters note that she grew her budget at the United Nations because of her skills raising money from governments, and that she is already familiar to many of the Crisis Group’s donors from serving on the organization’s board during the past decade. They say she is a respected figure who will be able to make the group’s case to policy makers and donors alike.

“She had the right combination of background experience and public persona,” says Mr. Pickering. “The fact that she was so widely known made a great deal of difference for us in making the final choice.”

Ms. Arbour says her first task upon joining the organization in July will be to determine what goals are realistic given the new economic climate. Another objective could be to raise the organization’s visibility beyond the wonkish world of foreign policy. “But I’m very wary of doing that in a way that will not trivialize the complexity of the product,” she says.

The Crisis Group’s new president, who has lived in Toronto since leaving the United Nations last year, will move to Brussels for the job. The organization’s board will not decide on Ms. Arbour’s salary until later this month. Mr. Evans earned $225,882 in 2007, according to the organization’s most recent informational tax form filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

Ms. Arbour discussed her new job in an interview with The Chronicle.

Why did you want this job?

It’s an organization that I’d seen in its early stages and throughout this recent 10 years of growth, both in quality and in the reach of the organization. It has positioned itself in a quite unique situation of doing this kind of work — very ground-based, analytical, and prescriptive work — that’s been, in my view, of great relevance and quality. From my own point of view, it offered me for the first time in my entire career the chance to work in a nongovernmental institutional framework. So it has tremendous appeal for the fewer constraints that it imposes on one’s thinking and directions.

But will you also be losing a megaphone that you had at the United Nations?

It’s a different one. You’re right, what high U.N. officials have that NGOs must work a lot harder to develop is access, access to the highest levels of government. But Crisis Group is quite uniquely positioned in large part because of three things. They are Gareth Evans himself, who came as an international player who had already a good base of access, and also because of the composition of the board and the quality of the staff who work in the regions.

Are you concerned about your lack of nonprofit fund-raising and management experience?

I’m never intimidated by this kind of challenge. I find it quite appealing. I like things that are very strategic, so I like the idea that I’m going to have to figure out what’s out there, how does it work, and how can we position ourselves there.

As the high commissioner for human rights, I had to raise about 30 percent of my own budget. That was overwhelmingly from governments, but that still requires having your own house in order, being able to articulate intelligently what it is you do, and describing your work in a compelling fashion. So I’ve done a considerable amount of what goes around fund raising, but a lot less so in the private sector. We had a handful of foundations who supported us, particulary for defined, specific projects. So I had a bit of a taste of this entire world of private nongovernmental philanthropy and certainly the taste I got was very receptive to me. I’m looking forward to it. I understand times are probably more challenging than they have been in a very long time to access funding, but you take your hand as it’s played out.

How will you measure the organization’s success?

You have to be very attentive to it; you have to look at the tools that are already well known to be of assistance in measuring your performance; you have to be able to articulate it. It cannot be exclusively anecdotal or impressionistic. But on the other hand, it can’t start devouring all the energies of the organization that then becomes totally self-centered and spends all its time looking at itself rather than the world.

What is your view on the situation now in Darfur?

It will take decades until we have a better sense of where accountability will find its proper place in the arsenal of intervention. From what we know so far, it’s pretty clear that the indictment against the president of Sudan will not disappear.

If we look at how others — [the former Serbian President Slobodan] Milosevic, [Liberian warlord] Charles Taylor, and many in Rwanda who are less household names — have been brought to justice, the reality is they have been. In many cases — Milosevic is a good example — it’s through an erosion of the power base in his own country, not through some dramatic international consensus for some flamboyant action. And that takes time.

There are two ways to look at the pains that are occurring in the meantime. The first is to ask ourselves, What would have happened if nothing had been done?

We never measure the cost of inaction as accurately as we think we can measure the reactions to action. For years accountability was not put in place and frankly it hasn’t been a very happy story for the people of Darfur during that entire period. And we have to put the responsibility for this increased suffering where it belongs. It’s very revealing that in his effort to retaliate against the international community, the president [of Sudan] actually takes measures that affect the most vulnerable of his own people.

How will the economic crisis affect the organization’s work?

If you are in the conflict-prevention business, all this signals more dangers of civil unrest and political unrest as the effects are felt by societies that are a lot less well equipped than Western countries to deal with it. For those in this line of work, it’s not going to be hard to start measuring the impact. What is hard is developing policy prescriptions.

For an organization like ICG, the challenge will be to measure it country by country and not just to make the general case that as times get harder for everybody, it will be harder in the poorest countries.