About one month ago, the ICC began trying former Congolese warlord, Thomas Lubanga, who is accused of forcing children to fight during the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) war that ended in 2003. He is accused of abducting about 30,000 children under the age of 15 and as young as 9, training them to become soldiers and using them as porters and sex slaves.  Today, the DRC continues to suffer from violent conflict and has been deemed by many as "the worst place to be a child."

On February 5th, a remarkable group of 60 friends of Refugees International gathered at a London reception hosted by Lord and Lady Malloch-Brown, two people who have been key supporters of Refugees International’s work throughout our 30 years.

London is full of hard-to-believe history.  I remember the first flat I lived in when I moved there in 1998 was over 300 years old!  All this history made me believe it would have been awe inspiring to hold RI’s first ever European event at Admiralty House-- the site of Winston Churchill’s former home and the location which played host to President Kennedy’s 1962 visit to the UK.  And it really was.  It seemed fitting in Refugees International’s 30th anniversary year to be surrounded by some of the great men and women of modern British politics, media, film, philanthropy, and business.

On Wednesday, February 11, Save Darfur hosted a discussion on "Violence Against Women and the Darfur Genocide." While I was all too familiar with the systematic murder of civilians in the western part of Sudan since 2003, and well aware of the latest buzz surrounding the warrant issued for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s arrest, I was admittedly unaware of the vast use of rape as a weapon of war by the government-backed Janjaweed, especially in the early years of the war. Unfortunately, too many people continue to share my previous ignorance.

After the bombing of the Samarra mosque northwest of Baghdad in 2006, a massive exodus and displacement of Iraqis began.  Refugees International called it, “the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis.”  Millions of Iraqi men, women and children fled their homes and country to escape the violence in a nation increasingly at war with itself.  They had no refugee camps to go to, where stark television images might have alerted the world to their plight; they were hiding in the slums of urban areas, nearly invisible.

The U.S. couldn’t have solved this problem alone, but we had a responsibility to do more than we did to prevent further destabilization of the region, relieve suffering and save lives.

Many of us tried to do more.  We organized a hearing to bring Iraqis before Congress.  They told chilling stories about being targeted by sectarian death squads because of their faith or their association with the United States.  We passed the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act to increase the number of Iraqis who could be resettled in this country.  We also provided hundreds of millions of dollars to help Iraqi refugees obtain food, education, shelter and health care.

Vice President Joe Biden visited Afghanistan just one week before the inauguration, indicating the new administration’s foreign policy priorities. It is clear that America’s “to do” list in Afghanistan is a long one. But the first order of business should be regaining the trust of Afghans.

After seven years of international presence, the country is still facing tremendous challenges: a weak government, a fledging economy, a serious humanitarian situation and a growing insurgency. As the Vice President himself said on his return, "The truth is that things are going to get tougher in Afghanistan before they're going to get better.”