Intern'l Correspondent Bec Hamilton visits OHIO

By Amber Skorpenske
IIJ Ambassador

Additional Reporting by Rachel Ferchak

The Institute of International Journalism (IIJ) proudly presents a prominent international correspondent, Rebecca Hamilton, to Ohio University from Mon., Feb. 28 to Wed., March 2. Ms. Hamilton is a Special Correspondent on Sudan for The Washington Post. She will give students a series of presentations and lectures on Sudan, the promises and perils of citizen engagement. The main event is on Tues., March 1 at 5:10pm in Scripps Hall, Room 111 (Anderson Auditorium). She will also hold a forum for the "African Studies at Noon" series on Wed., March 2, at Yamada House, in Yamada Seminar Room (009).

(Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of State)

Hamilton’s book, Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide, is a multi-year investigation into the formation of U.S. and international policy on Darfur and the impact that the U.S. citizen outcry for Darfur has had. She has conducted over 150 interviews with policy-makers on Sudan within the previous and current U.S administration, within the UN, and within the Arab League. She has interviewed those deployed to Sudan with the Africa Union and has spoken to both the survivors and the perpetrators of the atrocities in Darfur.Hamilton has also been published in prestigious outlets such as Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, Slate, Newsweek and The International Herald Tribune. She has also done work as a lawyer at the International Criminal Court.

Hamilton told the IIJ in an interview that her work in Africa started out of genuine curiosity. Hamilton had been a part of the “Save Darfur” movement when she was a student and had great expectations about what citizen-driven advocacy could achieve. “But traveling back and forth to Sudan, it was also clear that those expectations were not translating into results on the ground. So I wanted to understand why that was,” said Hamilton.

Hamilton attempted to reconstruct that process in an attempt to allow advocates here in the U.S assess the impact of the activism they were pursuing. She says that this would help in “working out how to do better in future situations of mass atrocity.”

The IIJ encourages students of all majors and disciplines to attend the two important public lectures: Tues., March 1 at 5:10 p.m. in Scripps 111 and Wed., March 2, at Yamada Seminar Room (009).