In the past months, two of my fellow PROOF board members, David Garrison and Paul Levitz have written eloquent blogs on why they are involved with PROOF. Now it is my turn.

I first met Leora Kahn, PROOF’s founder and executive and therefore PROOF through a mutual friend almost three years ago. Leora was looking for someone to help with grant writing and fundraising for PROOF. That’s what I do for a living (write grants, raise money for nonprofits).

We met; I was hooked.

Leora’s passion, brilliance, and commitment to justice and peacebuilding were palpable and inspiring and I had to figure out a way to participate and support her vision for PROOF.

I have worked in the nonprofit sector for a long time. I have seen passionate, smart folks unable to get great ideas off the ground and I have seen well-established nonprofits lose sight of the passion that led to their opening their doors become soulless well-oiled machines. When I met Leora and now that we work together on the board to grow PROOF, I see my role to guarantee that PROOF never loses its passion as it grows into a well-established and a go-to nonprofit promoting peacebuilding.

PROOF is still a young organization and we—board members, volunteers and staff—are deeply engaged in the work. There is a lot to do when you are working for a young nonprofit. We have governance issues to contend with, staffing, and all sorts of systems to put into place. This is not what you will see at a Rescuers’ exhibit, nor should you. Our behind the scenes work is the small-bore stuff of nonprofits to ensure sustainability while inching toward fulfillment of our mission.

In the nonprofit sector, the unspoken mantra is that we should be working hard with an eye to putting ourselves out of business. That child protection agencies will end child abuse, the employment programs will find everyone meaningful work. This type of thinking keeps us all focused on delivering services and programs that are great.

Of course, as we all know, and as David and Paul reminded us in their blogs, we are not naïve enough to think that PROOF, small, nimble, focused and impactful will alone end Genocide. Nevertheless, for myself, I keep that idea tucked in my mind as we sort through financials and board meeting minutes. I am here, I am part of PROOF, and I give my money and my time because I want to be part of something that intends to solve big problems. I want to be part of something that will chip away at hatred and offer solutions and peace.

At this point, the fundraiser in me tells me I should ask you to join PROOF, to make a donation or volunteer your time. (Okay, I can’t help it, please, do all of the above.) With that important aside, I encourage you to find your passion and engage in the nonprofit mantra…work hard, change the world, then tomorrow, work hard, and change the world.

(Part Two of Two)

In 2011, a trio of cases have tested the concept of genocide prevention.  In Libya, Mohamar Qaddafi did himself no favors by explicitly threatening a segment of his own citizenry with destruction, and using the Rwanda-evoking epithet “cockroaches” to do so, to boot.   The response of the United States, the United Nations, and NATO began with a commitment to protect those whom Qaddafi had threatened, and culminated in the fall of the Qaddafi regime.  In Côte d’Ivoire, supporters of the defeated-but-recalcitrant incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, organized youth wings to patrol the streets of Abidjan.   Their seeming readiness to defend the capital from supporters of the presidential victor, Alassane Ouattara, whom they denigrated as non-Ivoirian, also elicited parallels to the Rwandan experience – although in the latter’s case it was a negotiated peace agreement rather than an election that gave the predominantly Tutsi RPF [Rwandan Patriot Front] a claim to at least a shared seat in the government.   The United States appeared to defer in its Côte d’Ivoire policy to France, which interceded on behalf of Ouattara and eventually captured Gbagbo.  Although mass violence against civilians did occur in the west of the country, similarities between Gbagbo supporters and the interhamwe [a Hutu paramilitary organization] stopped well short of organized killing sprees in Abidjan.  (Nevertheless, the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Gbagbo, who now sits in the Hague awaiting trial).

Government-organized violence against civilians in Syria, meanwhile, has continued throughout the year.  The United Nations’ current estimate is that over 5,000 government opponents have been killed.  Objections and outrage have been growing.  Although a number of western envoys have condemned the Syrian government, international protests from within the region (i.e., Turkey and the Arab League) have been more strident than those from outside of it.  As the violence continues, almost literally on a weekly basis, and as the death toll rises, the time for a concerted, robust international response from non-regional actors may soon be at hand.  It is an as-yet-unanswered question as to whether Syria’s hand in international politics resembles that of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, replete with trumps and face cards, or those of Gbagbo and Qaddafi.

Another question is what lessons we can take for the enterprise of genocide prevention.  Although there may be many reasons to find fault with the international community’s handling of the conflicts in Cote d’Ivoire and Libya, it may nevertheless be true that the aggressive interventions on the part of France and NATO, respectively, helped to avert genocide.  Yet, if that is true, both episodes also reveal a high cost of genocide prevention.  Popular sentiment turned against both for being heavy-handed, overly militaristic, and possibly illegal.  Many, whether gleeful or doleful, see in the ventures the end of the Power-esque genocide (and mass atrocity) prevention doctrine known as ‘the Responsibility to Protect.’

2012 may not give the prevention community much time to draw back and take stock.  Border conflicts between Sudan and South Sudan threaten to assume the form of the worst of the Darfur conflict and the Sudanese Civil War.  The recent elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo might exacerbate, rather than abate, the ongoing oft-ethnicized conflict in the east of that country.  Syria and Yemen may escalate further, with co-ethnics of the current respective governments becoming increasingly at risk.  Likewise, Libyans (along with immigrants from the south) identified with Qaddafi have already faced threats on grounds of ethnicity alone.

Each of these cases continues to challenge the notion of genocide prevention, as well as the playbook developed to put the concept into operation.  They should also challenge the temptation to conclude that a doctrine put in place to prevent genocides is in some way misguided.  The risk is that just as a fixation with fascism and anti-Semiticism failed to prevent genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, and as over-attention to popular mobilization at home failed to prevent genocide in Darfur, the denigration of robust and multilateral operations will contribute to a failure to prevent the next genocide.

(Part One of Two)

Note:  I am a lecturer at Yale University in the Department of Political Science.  Among the topics on which I focus is the Rwandan genocide, and the politics of post-genocide Rwanda. I also have served as consultant for the UN Office of the Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide (OSAPG).  In this two-part post I reflect on the enterprise of “genocide prevention” in light of the tenth anniversary of the seminal work of Samantha Power, as well as the tumultuous events of the past year.

It has been almost a decade since Samantha Power wrote her influential, Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.  Power demonstrated that the American foreign policy apparatus was essentially designed not to respond to genocide in any meaningful way.   A Problem from Hell proposed two sets of sets of correctives.  First, genocide must be recognized as such when it occurs.  In order for genocide to be recognized, one must be able to imagine that genocide can – and does – occur, something that for many involves shedding illusions that genocide only involves fascists and gas chambers.   For Power, though, it is the devious temptation to avoid responsibility to react, more than a lack of imagination, that has hindered Americans’ capacity to recognize of genocides.  With respect to Rwanda, one of the cases of non-intervention in the 1990s that presumably inspired Power to write the book, State Department officials infamously dithered when asked whether the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi civilians constituted a “genocide.”

Power’s second corrective arises because stopping genocide is rarely a matter of national interest writ narrowly.  Accordingly, a concerted effort is required to prompt a robust response.  Namely:

 • policy makers must prioritize responding to human tragedies even when realpolitik offers no counsel to do so;

 • citizens must put pressure on policy makers to do so; and

 • media and social entrepreneurs must inform and motivate the public to press for action.

Meanwhile a generation of genocide scholars, such as Barbara Harff and Gregory Stanton, developed something of a pathology of genocide.  Taken together, this scholarship and Power’s recommendations seemed to open up the possibility that genocides could be anticipated – and prevented – before they began.   Out of the tragedies of Rwanda and Bosnia arose an optimism that through a combination of attentiveness and political will, genocide prevention could really happen.

The (almost) ten years that have passed since the publication of A Problem from Hell have given us, unfortunately, several opportunities to put the emergent genocide prevention formulation to the test.  The first and most obvious case was Darfur.  Superficially, all the lessons were learned and implications applied:  In 2004, experts (including New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof, the UN’s Rwanda peacekeeping force general Romeo Dallaire, and Power herself) inspired a grassroots movement that succeeded in injecting “Darfur” into the national discourse. The American President, the Secretary of State, and Congress responded, using the hitherto dreaded “g-word” in describing the situation.  But efforts to prevent genocide then stalled.  While Power’s formula might have been enough to prompt a robust response had it been applied to Rwanda, Darfur was not Rwanda.  Sudan’s place in politics and the global economy (an emerging oil exporter and a member of the Arab League) complicated the response, which is to say it limited the United States’ options to bluster and half-hearted efforts at coalition-building.

Next, Part Two: Applying the genocide prevention concept in the current situations in Libya, Cote D’Ivoire, and Syria, and what that means for emerging conflicts from the Sudan, DR Congo and Yemen.

Most of us sit at home, and our imaginations stay there with us. Occasionally, we allow ourselves to daydream of vacations to the beautiful spots on the globe…the lights of Paris, the ancient ruins of Angor Wat, or even the plans of the Serengeti. But it is the rarest of us that even think about the hellholes of the world, where death and misery are being brought about by man’s hostility to man. And if we do, we shake our heads in bewilderment, a little sympathy, a little puzzlement, and return to our lives. Even if we could help, with problems this large, what can one person, or worse, one check do?

PROOF makes it possible for us to do something. The power of the camera to document, to inform, to teach…and even, to shame…is an awesome weapon that PROOF wields well. Assembling exhibits, documentaries, and programs that use the captured images of genocide and other human rights crises, PROOF has gone out to demonstrate that ordinary people make extraordinary differences in crisis situations. People cross ethnic cleansing lines to save strangers, and become The Rescuers…children walk across a continent to reject being the Child Soldiers of Africa, and forge new lives…and simply listening to their stories inspires others to help heal the world.

Not all of us are born with the courage to do these things…I wasn’t. I’m a storyteller, comfortable at a keyboard in my home, sending my mind’s eye abroad to roam. But my imagination isn’t vivid enough to conjure the pictures that PROOF takes. I’m a teacher, at ease in a classroom of diverse young people. But my skills don’t extend to figuring out what I could teach children living in such challenging conditions. And I’ve been an executive, used to devising plans to create change. But I never had to face such adversity and try to improve it.

So when I met Leora Kahn, and her small band of photojournalists, documentarians, and impossibly brave travelers, I was moved to enlist, and do what I could. Standing in the lovely lobby of the U.N. General Assembly, looking at photos of the child soldiers that were simultaneous beautiful and more horrifying than anything in my life’s experience, I wanted to help.

I made out a check.

I showed up at an auction, and wrapped pictures.

I wrote a few words to help communicate PROOF’S mission.

I connected Leora with other decent people.

It’s all good, and it’s all not good enough. I’ll never do the amazing things she does out in the field, or that people she’s inspired do every day as a result, in the impossible places I won’t even visit. But I’m doing what I can.

Try it. You can sit at home and still help heal the world, by empowering the people who are willing to go out and bring back evidence of the world’s calamities, and of the heroes who help lessen them. If we are to stop the tragic human rights crises that dot the globe, we must first understand them, and rally ordinary people and governments to action. You may not be the field soldier in this war on injustice, but you can still serve the cause by donating a few dollars or a few hours.

I once had the pleasure of being told by a Bosnia mayor that he had watched a comic book I had worked on save a child’s life, by keeping them out of a live mine field. I played a small role in the creation of that particular comic—others had literally bounced through mine fields in armored cars, or jousted with governments and NGOs alike to produce it—but it was still one of the proudest moments of my life. Play a small role in making the world a better place through PROOF’S good work…I recommend the feeling.

Few can boast credentials such as this: seventy five plus countries covering civil unrest, poverty, violent conflict and social injustice; photographs exhibited all over the world and published in National Geographic, Adventure, Geo, Newsweek, Time, Smithsonian amongst other international magazines and news sources; global recognition including the Photographer of the Year International Award, the Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism, Lucie awards, the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding  Reporting, and the Magazine Photographer of the Year award by the National Press Photographers Association.  As a career photojournalist, Ami Vitale, backed by her impressive work and awards, embodies the dynamism of journalism in today’s world.

And yet there is a deeply compassionate and humanitarian side to her work that is rare in an industry driven by headlines and increasingly hashtags.  This is immediately apparent from many of her works that convey the subtle and surreal beauty of humanity that is often muted by mainstream media sensationalism.  See for example her photographs of rickshaw pullers in India.

More recently, Ami has ventured into film-making.  After getting her Masters at the University of Miami’s School of Communication, she has been working with Ripple Effect Images, an organization of scientists, writers, photographers and filmmakers on a mission to create powerful and persuasive stories illustrating the very specific problems women in developing countries face.  Her most recent documentary, “Bangladesh: A Climate Trap,” centers upon an issue that has largely been ignored by most of the developed world, namely, climate change-driven migration in the world’s most impoverished countries.

You’ve travelled and lived in so many places, your work is incredible and covers a wide range of topics.  Why do you do what you do—what drives and motivates you?  What inspires you?  And what do you ultimately hope your photographs will achieve?

I began my career covering some of the most horrific dramas that were playing out at that time.  I went to the Balkans, Angola, Palestine and lesser known places like Kashmir, Gujarat in India or even places you may really never have heard of likeCasamance in West Africa.  All of them were equally nasty and my reason for going was to show the au dience the brutality that was going on.  You might expect me to say that the world is full of tortuous places and as journalists, our role is to expose those dark corners of the world. Yes there is a role for that, without a doubt, but I believe that we have a greater responsibility, an obligation, to also illuminate the things that unite us as human beings rather than simply emphasize our differences

How do you choose what type of topics and issues to cover?  What prompted you to go into filmmaking and documentaries?

I lived in India for almost 6 years and nearly 4 of those years were spent primarily in Kashmir. It was not an assignment but after my first visit there, it captured my heart and each year I found ways to fund my work there. I received several grants and it became a very important piece of my life and my understanding of the world. I feel the only way to understand the complexities that exist in all of our cultures and conflicts is by staying for a long period of time. The problem with most mainstream media, as I see it, is the ephemeral nature of it. Journalists never stay long enough to show the multitude of viewpoints that exist. Parachuting in and then leaving is simply not an option to me. I think that only contributes to stereotyping and sensational coverage of these very complex histories and stories.

The medium I work in is changing and video is now playing a much bigger role in what we do. Cameras like the one I carry can shoot hd video and it can enhance our abilities as storytellers.  This is already playing a big role in my future but I don’t think I would have had the courage to take the leap into shooting video without one small fib, to Nikon, when they called and asked if I knew anything about making videos.  “Yes of course”, I replied instantly, knowing nothing about moving images or how to even operate the camera. I assumed I’d have time to learn before the shoot but was surprised when they sent the D300s camera only the night before my trip to India began. I frantically studied the manual on the 28 hour long journey and arrived terrified and wondering if I had just made the biggest mistake of my life. This is the film I made there, an homage to India.

If I had not had the opportunity, I probably never would have made the leap but I’m so grateful I did. In a time when media is struggling and searching for a new path, I’m finding that I am busier than ever telling meaningful stories in new ways for a variety of outlets.

Last year, I went back to school to study film and created my first documentary film which just premiered at the Jackson Hole Film Festival. I also am doing a variety of short films for new clients. It’s an exciting time to be a photographer and journalist and this new skill can create more opportunity for all of us.  The old models of business are in crisis, but opportunities lie ahead. We must redefine ourselves as technologies create more opportunities.

As someone who has witnessed and documented so many social injustices, what are the major lessons or insights that you take away from your experiences?

We cannot afford to view the world through an optic of fear and hate because if we only tell stories through our own paradigm of values, we justify the existing divisions in our world. I truly believe that change will never happen unless we have empathy for those who have a different viewpoint than our own.

What advice can you give to aspiring journalists and photographers?

In the beginning of my career, I had a choice whether to take every assignment that came my way or to be thoughtful about the kinds of stories I worked on. I realized it was more important to build up a body of work rather than to make more money shooting assignments that I was not necessarily passionate about. Now I can look back, and see that it was important to take that risk. It allowed me to create a body of work and content that defined the issues and subjects that I cared about. Whether you’ve been in this one-year or ten years, I believe it’s very important to commit to one story or issue or place. There are a million great photographers and the technology is there to make everybody feel like a great photographer. However, the challenge is to be consistently good and to be able to reveal more than everyone else on the subject you are working on.  I think many people mistake taking pictures of exotic and beautiful places as being committed but it’s not enough just to travel and take pretty images. You have to go deep and show something original and unexpected, something that teaches and surprises.

With technology and social media, how do you hope to see photography and photojournalism and other forms of media evolve so that it can play a more active role in promoting social justice?

My hope is that people will be able to contribute to telling their own stories rather than outsiders speaking for them. Right now we are just speaking at each other, not with each other but this could change when people are empowered to write their own stories. Look at recent events in the Middle East; they used these tools of social media to tell their own stories but it was the people, not the technology, driving those demonstrations.

What are you working on right now?

Currently, I’m editing two films I just shot in the sub-Arctic Northwest Territories and another in West Africa. In two weeks, I’ll be in India teaching a workshop and then making a film for Ripple Effects Images on climate change in India.  I also am teaching more workshops for National Geographic on multimedia and finally, I’m starting a project in Montana which will be on exhibit in 2012.  I’m also writing a book about the stories behind the headlines.

WELCOME to our new site. PROOF intends to so move you with authentic images and compelling stories that you act with fresh resolve and think with renewed empathy.

A UNIFYING VISION

Our vision for this organization centers on observing, sharing, and inspiring: using visual media to share stories of Great Works in the face of great suffering. Our initiatives directly engage the communities most in need of inspiration. And we are focused on tangible outcomes from our activities. We aspire to visual Satyagraha.

Civil, non-violent resistance is often associated with group actions. It is a signal of the resolve we see in the public rallies led by great leaders of recent generations. These are powerful and important actions. But the idea of Satyagraha is as much a personal one as a societal one. It works on any scale. Much as we raise social consciousness through marches and protests, in taking individual action, we signal to the world and our selves something of our mind and spirit.

“With senses freed, the wise man should act, longing to bring about the welfare and coherence of the world. Therefore, perform unceasingly the works that must be done, for the man detached who labors on to the highest must win through.”

     - Satyagraha

THE NEED PROOF FILLS

This is the power of PROOF: our means is the images we use to tell real stories that motivate us as individuals and as nations; moving stories that look beyond current conflicts and cause us to share further; histories that force us to reflect on our relationship to the world around us.

We’re not naïve enough to think we can stop the violence that occurs in the world. Rather, we’re bold enough to think that, through the power of visual images and the stories they convey, individuals and nations will act sooner, faster, and with more strength to positively transform people’s lives.

This is the need we answer: to bring awareness, dialogue, and positive action to the depths of conflict through images and stories of great soul and great beauty. This is also the way we look to touch your hearts and the hearts of those in conflicts. We believe that, through photography, dialogue, and great acts, we can change the way people think and relate in this complex and difficult world.

MY BELIEF IN PROOF

PROOF is evolving, and growing things is something I love to do. I joined PROOF’s team a few years ago to help grow an idea. By day, I’m part of the senior team at Edelman Consulting, the management strategy arm of the world’s leading Communications agency. There, I develop teams and knowledge to grow and realize our clients’ ideas. Here, I develop our team’s strategy to realize a collective dream of peace, respect, and empathy.

PROOF inspires me for three reasons. First, the group’s mission has potential, not just in its existing form, but in what it promises to be to the world. PROOF’s role is observer, moderator, facilitator, educator, and catalyst. Individually, these activities are difficult to do consistently and across different types of conflicts. Addressing these collectively requires something that connects them; a narrative, if you will. This is the gap that PROOF fills.

Second, the team inspires me. From the talent of some of the most renowned photojournalists and photographers in the world to the dedication of the staff and the board itself, the team that we’ve assembled is unique in its perspective, its drive, and its ability to combine resources in new ways that impact societies around the world.

Finally, PROOF’s impact is both global and local. Many organizations see the world through a single lens that revolves around the places they are present. When there, a group’s impact is intense and real. When they leave, the memory of that impact gradually fades. It is rare that it remains. In contrast, PROOF’s activities center on engaging communities, fostering storytelling, and developing a society’s leaders, expanding the momentum PROOF builds – not by installing continued programs, but by changing the way societies engage with themselves. That is a great power of visual imagery: that through it we see our world differently.

As Chair of PROOF’s board, I’m proud to point to the impact we’ve had in the past year. Not just the activities we’ve done – although the exhibits and lectures and community initiatives are incredible – but the lives we’ve changed and the conversations we’ve started. When leaders like Hillary Clinton point to PROOF as an example of the tangible impact organizations can have in the world through images, stories and local programs, I am proud of the work this group does. By the same token, when we give a single Rescuer a way to share their story and begin to rebuild a sense of community, I’m proud of the impact we have.

WHAT WE ASK

Explore this site. Enjoy the images. Absorb our mission. Come to an event. Donate. Regardless of how you got here or what you do next, support this shared story.

It has been a very busy and interesting week in Cambodia as I travel around with Youth for Peace and the American Embassy.   The opening of the Rescuers exhibition at the Meta house attracted over 150 people with a great mix of Cambodians and Non-Cambodians. The launch of this Rescuers project comes at an important time in Cambodia because of the controversy surrounding the next set of trials of the former Khmer Rouge.

Picture this: In the middle of a hot room at a university in Battenbong, Cambodia with over 100 students listening to me speak through a translator about moral courage. I used the photos of the Rescuers from other genocides but of course they were really interested in the Cambodian stories. We talked about what it means to stand up in a very difficult time. Like in the time of Pol Pot. How can one do that? How can they as students do similar kinds of things?

Because the first set of students at another university that I visited the day before didn’t ask questions, I wasn’t going to ask if they had any questions but they bombarded me with questions.  It turned out that translator was the vice president of the school and had a degree in philosophy.  He was very interested in the idea of moral courage, and  so with his help facilitating, we had a very lively discussion.

Warmly,

Leora

Quick update from Phnom Penh:  Yesterday, Youth for Peace led a workshop with 26 college and high school students using PROOF’s “The Rescuers: Picturing Moral Courage” exhibition as the basis of talking about compassionate behavior. It was really exciting to be a part of this!  One of the rescuers, a former Khmer Rouge who is featured in the exhibit, talked to the students about his story of how he saved people by giving them extra food and medicine.  Truly inspiring and the PROOF team here on the ground cannot wait to share more with you all.

More updates to come!

Exhibition examines heroes amid genocide

Picturing 7 Billion

Picture this.

The United Nations Population Fund estimates that the world’s seven billionth person was born on Monday, most likely in India. There is no way to know precisely who or where that baby is. So we took a few liberties.

We asked the Delhi-based Times freelancer Lynsey Addario — who is seven months pregnant — to photograph some of the babies born on this day. These babies are coming into a rapidly changing world. While we can’t predict what it will be like when they are grown, we can show them what the world was like when they were newborns.

This is a visual time capsule.

Here’s where you come in. We want you to take a photo that will show these children what the world looks like today. We’ll publish a selection of the submissions on Lens. Before you take your picture — only one from each of you — think about what you’d like to tell them about your world. When they turn 20 years old, what will help them envision he world into which they were born?

This is not the only project of its kind. Valerie Belanger has been working on a similar effort, the 7 Billionth Person Project, for more than two years. And The Guardian asks, “What would you say to the world’s 7 billionth person?”

We’ll share your photos with the babies photographed by Ms. Addario. Each of them will receive a keepsake box containing 100 selected images. We’ll look for a range — scenes from different regions, focusing on different subjects, shot in different ways. We’ll ask their parents to show them the collection in 20 years.

We don’t know what will change between now and then. All we can do at this point is paint a picture of our world at seven billion. Please join us.