President’s Corner: Go Gordon

Gordon Brown has only been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for a short while, but I am already a fan. He has begun to embrace an ambitious humanitarian agenda that ranges from ending the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan to reducing world poverty.

His rise to power comes at a time when both these campaigns need new energy and vision.

He brought up Darfur in his first meetings with President Bush on Sunday and Monday and during a joint press conference. European press reports have suggested that he and Nicolas Sarkozy, the new President of France, might go to Darfur together to highlight the violence there and to put new pressure on Sudan’s government to work aggressively for peace in Darfur, where some 400,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have been displaced during four years of brutal civil war.

In New York City on Tuesday Mr. Brown will give a major address on the reduction of global poverty, as called for in the Millennium Development Goals adopted by world leaders at the UN in 2000.

Both Tony Blair, Mr. Brown’s predecessor, and President Bush talked of taking leadership roles on these important issues, but Mr. Blair stepped down in June, and Mr. Bush’s attention has been be diverted by Iraq, immigration reform and other issues.

It is good to have Prime Minister Brown taking up these issues. I hope his attention does not wander.

--Ken Bacon

To Resettle or Not

A new report on the resettlement of Burmese refugees from Thailand has just been released, commissioned by the Committee for Coordination of Services to Displaced Persons in Thailand (CCSDPT). Since 2005, more than 5,000 of the approximately 150,000 Burmese refugees living in camps in Thailand along the border with Burma have been resettled to countries including the United States. The report, entitled Planning for the Future: The Impact of Resettlement on the Remaining Camp Population, outlines the concern that with the increasing departure of the most skilled and educated refugee staff, there will follow a decline in the availability of camp services provided by local and international non-governmental organizations.

Many non-governmental and community based organizations employ skilled camp residents to work in their health and education programs. However, since resettlement has become an option for Burmese refugees, some of whom have been living in the camps for more than two decades, the trend has been for more educated refugees to leave the camps. This has left the organizations providing services with a lack of experienced local staff.

While I was on mission with a colleague in Thailand in April, the issues surrounding resettlement were being widely discussed, particularly because of the impending report. On the one hand, resettlement offers opportunities for refugees who have been stuck for years in overcrowded camps. On the other hand, with the departure of more skilled refugees, the important services that organizations provide for the camp residents who stay behind are under threat.

Another issue we found is that some countries are only taking those refugees who are the most skilled and educated because of their integration potential, rather than resettling vulnerable groups, including serious medical cases or those affected by sexual and gender based violence. Not only does this contribute to the strain that the departure of skilled staff is putting on camp services, it also means that vulnerable refugees who most need assistance fall through the cracks.

While it is not feasible to slow down the resettlement process or hinder refugees from applying for resettlement, one solution would be for the Thai government to allow camp residents the chance to seek work and training opportunities outside of the camps. If refugees could better provide for their families it might make resettlement to third countries less necessary. It would also increase the number of skilled staff and could mitigate the departure of refugees who work for local organizations. In addition, those resettlement countries that are picking and choosing who to resettle must begin resettling refugees based on need, as the United States is doing, rather than on how well they will adjust to their new homeland.

Choosing to resettle to a completely different country where the language and customs may be foreign to you is a difficult decision for any refugee to make. Resettlement is one of the three durable solutions for refugee populations. The other two solutions, which are normally preferred, are to help refugees return to their country of origin or integrate in their new community. However, in the case of Burmese refugees living in camps in Thailand, the ongoing violence and targeting of ethnic minorities in Burma means that none of the refugees will be returning home anytime soon. And until the Thai government allows more freedom of movement outside of the camps, local integration is not an option. Therefore, although it is causing disruptions in the services to camp residents, resettlement continues to be the best option for Burmese refugees in Thailand.

President's Corner: President Bush, Protect Our Iraqi Allies

Two recent news articles highlight the misguided, ungenerous approach that the U.S. is taking towards our strongest allies in Iraq—translators and others who put their lives on the line to support the U.S. soldiers and diplomats there.

On July 21, The New York Times reported that Denmark “secretly airlifted about 200 translators and other Iraqi employees and their relatives out of Iraq to try to keep them from coming to harm” after Danish troops leave Iraq later this summer.

The next day The Washington Post revealed that Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, has asked the State Department to issue visas to all Iraqis employed by the U.S. government. Iraqis employed by the U.S. “work under extremely difficult conditions and are targets for violence, including murder and kidnapping,” Amb. Crocker wrote in a cable quoted by The Post. “Unless they know that there is some hope of an [immigrant visa] in the future, many will continue to seek asylum, leaving our Mission lacking in one of our most valuable assets.”

As of yet there is no sign that the U.S. has gotten the message. In the nine months ending June 30, the U.S. had admitted just 133 Iraqis. Military officers struggle, often without success, to get their translators, whom they come to regard as “battle buddies” who served on the front lines often under hostile fire, admitted to the U.S. as refugees.

While the Danes show compassion and loyalty to the Iraqis who supported their troops, the U.S. is showing suspicion and fear. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security, who must screen all refugees for resettlement to the U.S., continually warn of the risk of admitting Iraqi terrorists to the U.S. under the refugee resettlement program. In fact, the risks are low and manageable. Refugees applying for resettlement must sit through multiple interviews, background checks and finger printings. A terrorist would not choose to subject himself to such scrutiny. In addition, Iraqis who have worked for the U.S. government already have an employment record and extensive references.

It is puzzling to me that President Bush, who puts a high value on personal loyalty, does not see the need to show loyalty and protection to Iraqis who have worked for the U.S. Seeing how Iraqis who have risked their lives for the U.S. have been treated by Washington so far, why would any foreigner elsewhere in the world want to take a risk for the U.S.?

There are four reasons why the U.S. should offer resettlement to Iraqis who have worked for us. The first reason is humanitarian; without our protection, they could be killed if they remain in Iraq. The Danes see this clearly, why don’t we? The second is fairness and loyalty; the Iraqis who risked their lives to advance the U.S. cause should be honored, not spurned. The third is effectiveness; as Amb. Crocker points out, the U.S. is losing a valuable work force because it can offer no promise of future protection. The fourth reason is security; Iraqis fluent in English could be a big help to U.S. based government agencies struggling to find enough Arabic speakers and translators.

The administration may think that only people who oppose the war are working to bring Iraqis to the U.S., but that is not the case. Last week, Michael Medved, a conservative Republican, who supports the war, co-authored with Lanny Davis, a Democrat who opposes the war, an op-ed in USA TODAY arguing for the admission of Iraqi allies. Noting the country’s bitter diversions over the war, they wrote that “one issue should bring together all factions of the ongoing debate, and that is America’s moral obligation to open our doors—immediately—to Iraqis who face danger and death because of their assistance to our forces.”

David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservation Union, began making a similar argument after his daughter returned from a tour with the Army in Iraq and reported on the need to protect translators.

This is not a contest between Right and Left. It is a matter of right or wrong. Our current policy is wrong, and we should correct it.

Sadly, even if we resettled all the Iraqis who have worked for the government and their families, it would be just a small share of the 2.2 million Iraqi refugees who have fled their country to find safety elsewhere. As Refugees International has said repeatedly, the U.S. also needs a comprehensive and generous program to help them and their host countries. Host countries already are calling Iraqi refugees the new Palestinians and worry about the threat of destabilization. Until Iraq is safe and stable enough for the refugees to return, we must help resettle those Iraqis facing threats because they worked for the U.S. and help those who remain in the region.

--Ken Bacon

President's Corner: No Fly Zone Over Darfur: Keep the Pressure on Sudan

Omar al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, is famous for the “divide and conquer” strategy he uses to keep his opponents off guard. Now the U.S. humanitarian community seems to using this tactic against itself, as divisions arise over the wisdom of imposing a no fly zone over Darfur.

Since 2003, Sudanese air force planes and helicopters have helped government supported militias attack innocent civilians and destroy villages as part of what the U.S. Congress has called “Sudan’s genocidal policies in Darfur.” President George Bush, Sen. Hillary Clinton and many politicians in between have suggested that the West should be ready to destroy Sudanese aircraft used in the attacks. As Nicholas Kristof pointed out in his column in The New York Times Monday, one of the most authoritative promoters of a no fly zone is Roger Winter, who has worked for more than 20 years to educate Americans about the depredations of the Khartoum regime.

Several humanitarian organizations and commentators publicly oppose a no fly zone, saying that it would destroy the one international success in Darfur—the establishment of a humanitarian lifeline that is sustaining more than two million Darfurians displaced by violence.

Unfortunately, this debate is distracting and possibly destructive.

Most—maybe all—humanitarian workers believe in the Responsibility to Protect, a doctrine that calls for a series of actions, starting with humanitarian aid and running through diplomacy, economic sanctions, and, if necessary, the use of military force, to compel a country to protect its own people or allow the UN and its members to do so. Military force is a last resort, but the threat of its use makes all the other actions more credible. For the last four years humanitarian agencies have been urging the Bush administration and the UN to do more to end the death and displacement in Darfur, yet some are now afraid—against all evidence—that the U.S. might precipitously impose a no fly zone over Darfur. Announcing that we are unilaterally removing the threat of military action makes about as much sense as one team announcing that it won’t throw any passes in a football game.

In its 2006 report “To Save Darfur,” the International Crisis Group argued that it is premature to use military force in Darfur because the UN and its members had not yet exhausted all diplomatic and other nonmilitary options to bring about an end to the fighting. That is still the case. Military force is not an appropriate or acceptable response, even to genocide, until all nonmilitary measures have been tried, but it would undermine the Responsibility to Protect to remove military force from the table at the beginning or in the middle of diplomatic negotiations.

The Responsibility to Protect is a new and fragile doctrine that needs to be strengthened, not weakened. The humanitarian community will hurt itself in the long run--and perhaps prolong the suffering of the very populations it seeks to protect—by restricting responses under the Responsibility to Protect.

I believe the Bush administration, presidential candidates, the UN and the humanitarian community should take the following positions:

• Talk of establishing a NFZ or taking other military action is premature now because the UN and its members have not exhausted all non military options.
• If non military options fail, the UN and its members must weigh the costs and benefits of any possible military action; if the humanitarian risks are too high, force should not be used.
• Military force should always be a last resort but when properly used in the right circumstances, it can be an effective extension of diplomacy, as it was in the Balkans in 1995 and 1999.
• As long as the genocide continues, it is irresponsible to rule out any reasonable action to protect innocent civilians.

Efforts by the U.S. and the UN to end the fighting in Darfur have been unimaginative, inconsistent and unsuccessful. It will not help the humanitarian community if we appear divided and uncertain about how best to pursue the Responsibility to Protect. We need to support policies that make diplomats more effective, not weaken them further.

--Ken Bacon

RI in the News

In case you’ve missed some of Refugees International latest reports and findings, here are a couple news stories to help you catch up.

BBC’s The World recently interviewed an advocate and a consultant from RI. Jeb Sharp interviewed advocate Rick Neal in order to get a better understanding of why the political situation in the Central African Republic has continued to destabilize. In addition, Anchor Lisa Mullins interviewed RI consultant Adrienne Fricke in order to find out just how ineffective Sudan’s legal system has been in helping rape victims seek justice.

Adrienne’s new report on Sudan’s rape laws, Laws Without Justice, attracted other coverage as well.

NPR’s Farai Chideya interviewed Adrienne and RI President Ken Bacon a few days later for her show “News and Notes”. Reporter Nora Boustany wrote an article for the Washington Post focusing on the report and noting, “Sudanese laws discriminate against female victims, who face harassment and intimidation at local police stations if they try to report the crime.”

During his visit to D.C. for a debate at Howard University, Presidential candidate Bill Richardson also used the report to explain why exactly our next President must take the issue of rape in Darfur more seriously. The report resulted from the express invitation of the Government of Sudan after Richardson raised the issue of rape with Sudanese President Omer Al-Bashir during a January visit.

And don’t miss Nicholas Kristof’s powerful column in the New York Times, “Spineless on Sudan.” After accusing President Bush of reneging on his promise to stop genocide in Darfur, Kristof highlighted Adrienne’s report as evidence that issues such as the rape of Sudanese women also deserve our immediate attention.

And of course, we continue to get coverage of the Iraqi refugee crisis. RI advocates, Sean Garcia and Kristele Younes, just returned from the region where they pointed out to Matthew Lee of the Associated Press that Iraqi refugees are getting increasingly angry and that we need to increase the resources for Iraqis in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

-Madeleine McDougall

Still No Protection for the Displaced in Chad

Internal displacement in eastern Chad is a humanitarian crisis that continues to get little international attention. Resources and media attention have often been more focused on the Sudanese refugees who have crossed into Chad after fleeing the ongoing violence in Darfur, while people in Chad who have been displaced by violence inside their own country are regularly neglected. But as this recent report on internal displacement in eastern Chad by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre highlights, the situation for this vulnerable population is deteriorating.

In a press release issued today, IDMC describes what the displaced are facing:

Targeted attacks against civilians, mainly women and children, have included arbitrary killings, mutilations, and rape. Rebel and militia groups and the Chadian army itself are reported to be recruiting children in IDP sites to fight for them. Civilians have often had their houses, livestock and other property destroyed or stolen, while humanitarian workers have also been subjected to attacks and physical threats.

The situation in eastern Chad did get a nod recently in the press. In his latest column, NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof shares an account by the actress Mia Farrow, who has traveled many times to eastern Chad in her role as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. She told Kristof that eastern Chad is starting to look like Somalia (login required), with protection of civilians decreasing as the number of armed rebels increases.

Refugees International conducted a mission to Chad in March 2007. We found that there has been a lack of response by the government and international agencies to assist the more than 170,000 internally displaced people in the eastern part of the country. The internally displaced who RI spoke with are regularly at risk of attack and receive no support from the government - "security is elusive as the Chadian military is occupied elsewhere with its fight against rebel groups, leaving no one who can deter attacks and punish aggressors."

On a positive note, last month France began airlifting humanitarian aid to eastern Chad in order to assist the internally displaced. Refugees International urges the U.S. and other countries to add to these efforts.

RI's Consultant Gene Carlson: "My Dinner with Mane Yun"

Refugees International met Mane Yun, a Bunong woman from Cambodia, six years ago and has worked with her to promote more assistance for the Bunong people. (View our video of the Bunong here.) A few Bunong weavers were invited to Washington, DC to participate in last week's Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and Mane accompanied them. Refugees International consultant Gene Carlson first met Mane in Cambodia a few months ago and shared the following experience of joining Mane for dinner in a DC suburb last week.

Mane and I had dinner Friday night. Here’s what transpired in two and one-half hours.

I picked her up at the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel. The hotel in Arlington, Va., just across the Potomac River from Washington, has been turned into a multicultural boarding house, housing all participants in the Folk Life Festival.

Since Mane’s been working long hours and is feeling the final effects of jet lag, I opted for efficiency – a nearby restaurant serving something more or less Southeast Asian. Comfort food. I decided on the Queen Bee, a favorite Vietnamese haunt in years past. It took 10 minutes to drive to the restaurant and find a place to park. In that time, Mane took two cell phone calls.

The Queen Bee, to my surprise, had disappeared but we spotted an Indian restaurant in the same block. We parked a few blocks away and started walking. As we neared the restaurant, Mane suddenly stopped, looked at a cab driver parked across the street, waved and started talking. In Khmer. I looked puzzled.

“He came to the Folk Life Festival and I remembered him,” Mane replied.

The driver offered us a ride. We said we were headed for a restaurant in the next block, thanked him and moved on.

At the restaurant, we took a sidewalk table. Mane took another incoming cell call which ended quickly. She said she’d maxed out her cell card.

The food arrived and we started eating. Behind me, I heard someone cry, “Mane!” I looked over my shoulder. A young couple strolling by had stopped and the young woman started an excited conversation with Mane. We stood and talked for several minutes as our food cooled. The woman, a Khmer refugee, came to the U.S. in 1980. Her American husband, works for an insurance agency. They live in the neighborhood and were out for a Friday evening stroll. Like the cab driver, they met Mane at the Folk Life Festival and remembered her. We exchanged cards and promised to get together in the future.

Dinner concluded, we walked back to the car. Happily deep in conversation, I turned the corner.

"Gene," Mane said politely, pointing in a different direction. "I think your car's over there." It was.

Three conclusions:

1. Mane needs more capacity on her cell phone.

2. After 10 days in the D.C. area, Mane knows more people in Arlington, Va. than I do.

3. Refugees International couldn't ask for a better people-to-people ambassador.

When the Displaced Speak for Themselves

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has launched a new website called IDP Voices. In their press release IDMC says it will be "a platform for internally displaced people (IDPs) to tell the story of their lives before, during and after being driven from their homes by conflicts or human rights violations."

The first focus country of the new website is Colombia, which has one of the largest IDP populations in the world. Refugees International has long been following the situation of displacement in Colombia. Our last mission to Colombia was in early 2007. We found that despite laws established to assist the internally displaced, the Government of Colombia is failing in its commitment to help these vulnerable people.

On the IDP Voices website, in addition to reading testimonies, you can listen to audio recordings of the displaced people's stories. I think there is something very powerful about an individual’s story - it resonates with you more so than numbers and plain facts often can. When talking about displacement it is very easy to get caught up in the statistics, for example there are 24.5 million internally displaced people in the world, but that is almost too large of a number for most people to comprehend. Instead, learning about how being displaced has affected individual families and seeing images of the conditions they live in can leave a much bigger impression and hopefully prompt policy makers to work towards improving their situation.

In a related story, this recent blog post on AlertNet does a good job of explaining why it's important to present interviews of displaced people in a way that does not exploit their situation but rather allows the stories to be told from their own perspective.

Adrienne Fricke on Laws Without Justice, a new RI report

How can the problem of rape in Darfur be solved? The question resounds from all quarters, and while the widespread concern is heartening, the difficulty in finding an answer frustrates us all. But before we can address a problem, we have to understand it. I hope that Laws Without Justice will be a useful tool for activists both inside and outside Sudan, and will provide support to the brave Sudanese activists and attorneys who work so hard in very challenging conditions. I am humbled by the dedication and integrity of the Sudanese human rights community in the face of very real danger.

The extent of rape in Darfur has been well-documented in both the media and in human rights investigations. What has received much less attention are the voices of the human rights workers in the field who struggle against a legal system that all but forecloses prosecution of perpetrators. Unless we start to ask systems-based questions, little will change for women in Darfur. It is also vital for the international community to understand that Islamic law does not require rape to be defined in terms of the Shari'a definition of adultery. Rape is a violent crime, not an act of adultery, and this must be reflected in the law. The current law exposes a woman to a potential charge of adultery where she is unable to meet the impossibly high evidentiary standards invoked as a result of defining rape in terms of sex outside of marriage.

I hope that this report will help us all ask sharper questions as we adapt existing programs and develop new strategies for confronting the horrors of sexual violence in Darfur. By shifting the focus from the quantification of rape (which has been rendered impossible by the Government) to the laws that make it impossible for rape victims to prove they did not consent to intercourse, we may be able to push the discourse beyond the "numbers." The laws as written are problematic and must change, regardless of the number of people affected. The extralegal harassment of human rights advocates, whether by direct intimidation and threats, or by imposing burdensome and unnecessary regulations on NGOs, must end. I feel honored to have been able to work on this issue as a consultant for RI, and I hope our work will lead to more tailored strategies to help address the problem of sexual violence in Darfur.

To view more of RI’s work concerning Sudan, please click here.

-Adrienne Fricke

The Bunong visit D.C.'s Textile Museum

Earlier this week, an event hosted by Washington, D.C.’s Textile Museum featured the Bunong weavers of Cambodia. Refugees International (RI) helped to organize the event and turned out to support the program. Originally in D.C. in order to participate in the 2007 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the weavers agreed to use one of their days off to display the intricacies of their weaving tradition before a surprisingly large crowd at the Textile Museum.

In a small but elegant room the program started with a brief video that RI recently created about the Bunong. Then, as the two Bunong women set up their backstrap looms, Lionel Rosenblatt, President Emeritus of Refugees International, introduced the history shared between RI and the Bunong of Cambodia. Mane Yun, the third Bunong woman, who recently become the first Bunong to receive a law degree, went on to answer questions from the audience.

Everyone agreed that the event served as a pleasant alternative to the crowded and hot days spent at the Folklife Festival. The audience at the Textile Museum proved to be well versed in textiles, asking detailed questions about the style and method of the Bunong weavers. Anne Rowe, curator of the museum’s Western Hemisphere collections, carefully explained the way in which the weavers use their feet in order to create their looms. As it turns out, this method is unique to the weavers of Southeast Asia. In addition, the audience fielded thoughtful questions regarding the situation faced by the Bunong today. With continued hijacking of Bunong land by outsiders, everyone wanted to know what could be done in order to help preserve the Bunong and their way of life.

A brief reception followed and a substantial number of people purchased the colorful pieces of Bunong weaving that were available for sale. Mane is still trying to find a market for the Bunong weavings in the U.S., but until then, these types of small venues have proven quite successful. If you know of any possible boutiques or larger retail shops that may be interested in selling these unique shawls and bags, please email me at ri@refugeesinternational.org In order to find out more about the Bunong and their visit to Washington, D.C., click here.

-Madeleine McDougall

President's Corner: U.S. Resettlement of Iraqi Refugees Starting to Rise

It’s too early to cheer, but after months of delay and disappointment, the U.S. is beginning to admit more Iraqi refugees for resettlement here.

In June, 63 Iraqi refugees arrived in the U.S., bringing to 133 the number of Iraqis resettled in the first nine months of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. This is still a very small number compared to the State Department’s various announcements that it was prepared to resettle from 7,000 to 20,000 Iraqis this year.

The hold up has been the Department of Homeland Security, which has moved slowly to issue its security protocols for processing Iraqis and getting interview teams into the field.

But resettlement will deal with only a small corner of the Iraqi displacement problem. An estimated 4.2 million Iraqis have fled their homes to escape violence in Iraq. Of the total, 2 million are internally displaced in Iraq, and 2.2 million are refugees, living primarily in Syria and Jordan.

Yesterday, I appeared on a panel at the Middle East Institute with Nir Rosen, an author and analyst who has spent a lot of time in Iraq and surrounding countries. Earlier this year he went to Northern Iraq and Egypt as a consultant for Refugees International. Nir noted that countries throughout the Middle East fear that Iraqis will become another population like the Palestinians—displaced, disenfranchised and potentially radicalized. For video of the event on CSPAN's website, please click here.

The possible radicalization of Iraqi refugees would be a disaster for the U.S. Not only would we be blamed for contributing to another destabilizing force in the Middle East, the U.S., Israel and our allies could be targeted by a newly radicalized group. For this reason, the U.S. needs a better, more aggressive and more generous policy for dealing with Iraqi refugees.

First, we need to do much more to help Jordan, Syria and other host countries bear the burden of Iraqi refugees. The State Department is starting to help host governments build and staff schools for Iraqi children, but the program is limited. In Jordan, there are an estimated 250,000 Iraqi children of school age, yet by some estimates, only 14,000 are in school. How are the rest spending their time? What will they and their families think of the U.S.? We also need to bolster the infrastructure for medical care and provide food and other support, where necessary.

Second, we need to help meet the needs of displaced families in Iraq. Many are cut off from the Public Distribution System—the government food rations on which most Iraqi families depend—when they move. We should work with the Iraqi government to make sure that no displaced families are left out.

Third, we need to step up our resettlement program so that more of the highly vulnerable Iraqis—particularly those who worked for the U.S.—can be protected. Every year, the U.S. sets a goal for the number of refugees it plans to admit. This year’s goal is 70,000. At the end of the first nine months of the current fiscal year, the U.S. had admitted 24,536. This gives us 45,000 more spaces to fill in the next three months, and most of those should go to Iraqis. Then, next year, we should lift that goal.

If we fail to help Iraqi refugees now, we could be paying the price for years to come.

--Ken Bacon

RI Visits the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

A small sign with the Refugees International logo on it introduces the Bunong people of Cambodia to the tourists visiting this year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

As we stepped beyond the sign and introduced ourselves to the three Bunong women who sat before us, our small contingent of Refugees International staff couldn’t help but feel like we’d known these women for years.

Lionel Rosenblatt, Refugees International (RI) President Emeritus, became aware of the Bunong’s plight when he found members of the group going home in a UN convoy in 1999. As the last of the 250,000 refugees returning to their homes in Cambodia, the Bunong received far less assistance than those who were repatriated earlier.

Although very few RI staff members have been to Cambodia, our entire organization has worked to build a relationship of trust with the Bunong. This strong bond has allowed RI to focus its attention on specific areas that can help the Bunong maintain their ethnic identity while adapting to the realities of the 21^st century. This year, the Smithsonian decided that one of its three feature cultures would be that of the Mekong River, which runs throughout Southeast Asia. As one of the numerous indigenous groups supported by this watershed, the Bunong have been invited to display their weaving traditions at the Festival.

Nestled between potters from Thailand and silk weavers from Laos, two of the Bunong women sit on the floor of a makeshift hut, using both their hands and feet to work “back strap” looms. Deep reds, blues and greens are used to make intricate textile designs. Above the weavers, innumerable shawls, skirts and bags catch the attention of passersby. Mane Yun, the third Bunong woman, explains the intricacies of the Bunong weaving tradition to visitors. A natural leader, Mane caught the eye of then RI President Lionel Rosenblatt, when they met by chance along the road in Mondulkiri, Cambodia in 2001. Since RI arranged to underwrite her education expenses, Mane has become the first Bunong to receive her law degree. As our staff asked about her flight and her thoughts on D.C. weather, Mane reciprocated our feelings of familiarity and spoke to us like old friends.

After we left Mane and the Bunong weavers, I found myself wandering around the Mekong River exhibit for much longer than I originally intended. The folk music from Vietnam and the unique tea ceremony from western China fascinated me, not to mention swarms of small children, interns on lunch break and a host of senior citizens. In fact, I couldn’t help but notice that, in comparison to the crowds visiting the Northern Ireland and Roots of Virginia exhibits, the Mekong River exhibit was packed! And yet, I wasn’t surprised. While most Americans have already experienced the culture of Ireland and the history of colonial Virginia, the mysteries of Southeast Asia are often left unrevealed. Through delicious food, incredible art, and interactive performances, this year’s Folklife Festival has provided a unique forum for cross-cultural communication that visitors just can’t seem to get enough of. To find out for yourself, make sure to visit the Festival between July 4-8, or click here to learn about other upcoming events featuring the Bunong weavers.

-Madeleine McDougall