Do-Gooders, Do No Harm: What Are the Best–and Worst–Ways to Help Those Mired in International Conflicts?

Jul 17, 2015 | Laura Seay and Alex de Waal, Washington Post
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In today’s hyper-connected world, it’s easier than ever for those who live thousands of miles away from a conflict area to learn about a crisis. When people of good will hear about a crisis, be it the plight of Burma’s Rohingya Muslims, women survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or child soldiers in the Central African Republic, we want to help. Since the end of the Cold War, numerous international advocacy efforts concerning global conflict sprung out of these good intentions. Yet the results of these movements are often, at best, mixed, and in some cases actually made a crisis or the plight of innocent civilians worse. In “Advocacy in Conflict,” numerous scholars (including me, Laura Seay) explore how and why conflict advocacy efforts around the world went wrong. I sat down with “Advocacy in Conflict” editor and Tufts University scholar Alex de Waal to discuss why well-intentioned advocacy efforts so often fail, the challenges of celebrity involvement in conflict causes, and how advocates can do better & more effective work.