Anti-Genocide
Paparazzi
how
it began
George Clooney
is joining Google, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and the United Nations
in an effort called the Satellite
Sentinel Project to monitor violence and human rights violations in
Sudan
George
Clooney, the actor, and John Prendergast, a human-rights activist with 25 years
of experience in Africa, had heard enough to know that a new round of
atrocities could follow the January referendum on independence. Why not,
Clooney asked, work out a deal to spin a satellite above southern Sudan and let
the world watch to see what happens?
precedent
In 2007, Amnesty International and
the American Association for the Advancement of Science launched “Eyes on Darfur,” a
satellite project that monitored developments on the ground in Darfur. As you’ll recall, mere months later, Darfur was
saved after millions of people updated their Facebook statuses with a link to
blurry photos of sand.
goal
The explicit
goal of the partnership is deterrence--Clooney and his partners want to make
sure that Sudan does not erupt in another civil war.
UNOSAT
the United
Nations Institute for Training and Research Operational Satellite Applications
Programme (UNOSAT) has done this before--their mission is to snap satellite
images in cases of natural disaster, but in the case of Sudan they've more or
less been on standby .. and will start snapping satellite images upon requests
from their field staff
what
set this project apart
one
difference this time around. Clooney has hired the satellites. That means .. more
freedom to snap away .. , as opposed to the U.N., which has certain rules and
guidelines to work within.
What is transforming
.. is the concept of leveraging Google Map Maker into a public human rights ..
early warning system to stop a war before it starts,
accomplishment
Based on data
from the Satellite Sentinel Project, the ICC compiled evidence of possible
recent war crimes along the border between the North and South, including the
killings of thousands of civilians.
Clooney's
satellites captured images of the results of bombing of villages in the Abyei
region in late May .. as well as pictures of the movement of northern artillery
and thousands of troops in Karmuk in Blue Nile state.
comment
"Clooney
has described it as 'the best use of his celebrity.' .. seems like he's trying
to recruit a mercenary for Ocean's Fourteen."
==
==
==
Google and George Clooney Aim Satellites at Sudan, Become
"Anti-Genocide Paparazzi"
BY JENARA
NERENBERG Wed Dec 29, 2010
Ahead of an
early January referendum, the two partners, along with Harvard and the United
Nations, want Sudanese rebels to know that they are being watched.
George
Clooney is joining Google, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and the United
Nations in an effort called the Satellite
Sentinel Project to monitor violence and human rights violations in
Sudan as the country prepares to vote on January 9 on whether or not to split
into two nations--North and South Sudan.
The explicit
goal of the partnership is deterrence--Clooney and his partners want to make
sure that Sudan does not erupt in another civil war. Some small pockets of
violence have already been reported and the employment of satellites is meant
to give war-mongers on the ground the message that the world is watching and
genocide will not be tolerated.
Clooney's
interest in Sudan is not new--back in 2007 he was featured in the documentary
film, Darfur Now,
co-produced by actor Don Cheadle. And he has maintained his interest in the
embattled country since then, paying a recent visit amidst preparations for the
upcoming referendum.
The
partnership pulls on the diverse strengths of the participating
organizations--Clooney and his organization, Not On Our Watch,
add star power--not to mention awareness power--and the United Nations
Institute for Training and Research Operational Satellite Applications
Programme (UNOSAT) will collect and analyze the satellite images. The Harvard
Humanitarian Initiative, meanwhile, will provide field research and Google is
setting up a web platform to provide public access to information with the goal
of pressuring public officials. (We profiled an independent, Ushahidi-backed
voting monitoring project just a couple of weeks ago--carried out by a Sudan-born
Texan.)
UNOSAT has
done this before--in fact it is their mission to snap satellite images in cases
of such disaster, but in the case of Sudan they've more or less been on standby
to see what happens and will start snapping satellite images as soon as they
receive requests from their field staff and partner organizations to do so.
"It's a good thing that we haven't yet had to take many images in
Sudan," Lars Bromley of UNOSAT tells Fast Company.
So the idea
is not entirely Clooney's alone (despite what a Time magazine
article suggests). I had spoken to UNOSAT several weeks ago, prior to
the announcement of Clooney's project, and, for them, this is essentially
routine work.
But there is
one difference this time around. It's Clooney who has hired the satellites.
That means there is more freedom to snap away in whatever geographical areas
and on whatever basis the group wants, as opposed to the U.N., which has
certain rules and guidelines to work within. Specifically, Clooney will monitor
the movement of troops, whereas UNOSAT's primary--and most
flexible--prerogative is the monitoring of natural disasters, not man-made
ones.
"We are
the anti-genocide paparazzi," Clooney told Time.
"We want them to enjoy the level of celebrity attention that I usually
get. If you know your actions are going to be covered, you tend to behave much
differently than when you operate in a vacuum."
The project
as a whole is a multi-layered approach and the programming and monitoring
capabilities of multiple crisis mapping tools, websites, and organizations are
being pulled together. The work of the Sudan
Vote Monitor--who we profiled earlier this month--will soon be incorporated
and the Google mapping component was actually built off the work of two
Pakistani-British entrepreneurs who built LOCAL,
a monitoring site for the Pakistan floods.
"What is
new and transforming is the concept of leveraging Google Map Maker into a
public human rights and human security early warning system to stop a war
before it starts," Jonathan Hutson of the Enough Project, another partner,
tells Fast Company.
"We'd
like to engage the worldwide, volunteer community of Google power
mappers," adds Hutson, "and combine their efforts with on-the-ground
field reports from the Enough Project and crowd-sourced, crisis response
information from groups like Ushahidi, analyze it, add context and concise
clear calls to action, and publish it all on a public platform to detect and
deter war crimes, including potential genocide."
We'll post
more details here as we get them, so check back soon.
Follow me,
Jenara Nerenberg, on Twitter.
[Image
copyright 2010 DigitalGlobe. Produced by UNITAR-UNOSAT]
===
Clooney's
'Antigenocide Paparazzi': Watching Sudan
By MARK
BENJAMIN Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2010
George
Clooney and John Prendergast slumped down at a wooden table in a dusty school
compound in southern Sudan. It was Oct. 4, and the two men were in the hometown
of Valentino Achak Deng, whose experiences wandering the desert as a refugee
during Sudan's last civil war were the basis for the best-selling book What
Is the What.
Clooney, the
actor, and Prendergast, a human-rights activist with 25 years of experience in
Africa, had heard enough on their seven-day visit to know that a new round of
atrocities could follow the January referendum on independence. If it did, the
likelihood was that no one would be held accountable. Why not, Clooney asked,
"work out some sort of a deal to spin a satellite" above southern
Sudan and let the world watch to see what happens? (See
photos of Clooney in Sudan.)
Three months
later, Clooney's idea is about to go live. Starting Dec. 30, the Satellite
Sentinel Project — a joint experiment by the U.N.'s Operational Satellite
Applications Programme, Harvard University, the Enough Project and Clooney's
posse of Hollywood funders — will hire private satellites to monitor troop
movements starting with the oil-rich region of Abyei. The images will be
analyzed and made public at www.satsentinel.org (which goes live on Dec. 29)
within 24 hours of an event to remind the leaders of northern and southern
Sudan that they are being watched. "We are the antigenocide
paparazzi," Clooney tells TIME. "We want them to enjoy the level of
celebrity attention that I usually get. If you know your actions are going to
be covered, you tend to behave much differently than when you operate in a
vacuum."
You don't
have to be a spook to have an eye in the sky anymore. Private firms with names
like GeoEye, DigitalGlobe and ImageSat International have a half-dozen
"birds" circling the globe every 90 minutes in low-Earth orbit, about
297 miles (478 km) up. The best images from these satellites display about 8
sq. in. (50 sq cm) of the ground in each pixel on a computer screen. That is
not enough granularity to read a car's license plate or ID a person, but
analysts can tell the difference between cars and trucks and track the
movements of troops or horses. "It is Google Earth on lots of
steroids," says Lars Bromley, a top U.N. imagery analyst. (See
pictures of southern Sudan preparing for nationhood.)
But you need
money for it. A hurry-up order of what Bromley calls a "single shot"
from a satellite covers an area of about 105 sq. mi. (272 sq km) and costs
$10,000. A rush job on a "full strip" image of land roughly 70 miles
(115 km) long and 9 miles (14 km) wide could run nearly $70,000. Sentinel is
launching with $750,000 in seed money from Not On Our Watch, the human rights
organization Clooney founded along with Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt,
David Pressman and Jerry Weintraub. Clooney predicted he won't have much
trouble raising more money once the project goes live.
Prendergast's
group, the Enough Project, is the human-rights arm of the liberal Center for
American Progress; it recruited Bromley's team at the U.N. and brought in
analysts from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative to pore over the images as
they arrive. "Generally, what we have done in the past is an
after-the-fact documentation exercise," Bromley explains. "This is
proactive, wide-area monitoring," he says.
Clooney, who
has made four trips to Sudan since 2006, believes Sentinel might have
applications in other global hot spots. "This is as if this were 1943 and
we had a camera inside Auschwitz and we said, 'O.K., if you guys don't want to
do anything about it, that's one thing,'" Clooney says. "But you
can't say you did not know."
==
George
Clooney's Satellites Build a Case Against an Alleged War Criminal
By MARK
BENJAMIN Saturday, Dec. 03, 2011
The
International Criminal Court is compiling evidence of possible recent war
crimes in southern Sudan, allegedly directed by Sudanese Defense Minister
Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein, the same man whom a prosecutor at the court wants
to apprehend for alleged crimes eight years ago in Darfur. An internal ICC memo
outlines the Darfur crimes and says Hussein is "currently central to the
commission of similar crimes," now along the border between the North and
South, including the killings of thousands of civilians.
The
ICC documents obtained by TIME show a significant portion of this new
investigation is based on data from the Satellite Sentinel Project, a network
of private spy satellites and analysts organized by George Clooney in
partnership with John Prendergast's Enough Project. The satellites have been
snapping pictures of northern Sudan since December of last year. "We are
the antigenocide paparazzi," Clooney told TIME then.
The ICC memo says Clooney's satellites captured images of the results of bombing of villages in the Abyei region in late May, which resulted in the displacement of 30,000 people, as well as pictures of the movement of northern artillery and thousands of troops in Karmuk in Blue Nile state. The memo also discusses reports from the Enough Project about the deaths of 211 civilians in South Sudan and documenting the North dispatching proxy militias to the South.
The ICC memo says Clooney's satellites captured images of the results of bombing of villages in the Abyei region in late May, which resulted in the displacement of 30,000 people, as well as pictures of the movement of northern artillery and thousands of troops in Karmuk in Blue Nile state. The memo also discusses reports from the Enough Project about the deaths of 211 civilians in South Sudan and documenting the North dispatching proxy militias to the South.
Is
George Clooney helping?
Posted
By Joshua Keating Monday, January 10,
2011 - 1:35 PM
George
Clooney's "anti-genocide paparazzi" seems
to be dominating nearly every transmission coming out of south Sudan
this week. Clooney, along with the Enough Project, Harvard researchers, and
some of his wealthier Hollywood friends, have hired satellites to monitor troop
movements along the north-south border, particularly the oil-rich region of
Abyei. Clooney, active for years in the Save Darfur movement, has also become
something of a celebrity spokesperson for the independence referendum.
Texas in Africa: "While John Prendergast,
George Clooney, and other advocates who don't speak a word of Arabic have been
raising fears about violence for months … the likelihood that a genocide or war
will break out immediately seems to me to be slim to none."
Wronging Rights: "Clooney has
described it as 'the best use of his celebrity.' Kinda just seems like he's
trying to recruit a mercenary for Ocean's Fourteen."
Troubling
as this
morning's border violence is, there seems to be good reason for
skepticism about the satellite project. The imagery the satellites provide isn't all that clear, showing about 8 square miles inches [Corrected.] per computer-screen
pixel, making it difficult to figure out just what's going on on the ground.
That level of imprecision can be dangerous when trying to assign guilt or
innocence in crimes against humanity. There's also the question of how much of
a deterrent this type of monitoring really is. Laurenist again:
In 2007, Amnesty International and
the American Association for the Advancement of Science launched “Eyes on
Darfur,” a satellite project thatmonitored
developments on the ground in Darfur. As you’ll recall, mere months later, Darfur
was saved after millions of people updated their Facebook statuses with a link
to blurry photos of sand.
But
what about Clooney's presence itself? The actor's use of the paparazzi and basketball as analogies for horrific human
rights violations might be grating to those who study these issues seriously,
but isn't it worthwhile to bring attention to an often overlooked conflict?
Here's UN Dispatch's Mark Leon Goldberg:
I
know some people (cough, cough, Bill Easterly, cough, cough) have
hangups about celebrity activism. But does anyone really think that
Sudan’s upcoming referendum would be covered on a National Sunday
morning broadcast without George Clooney’s handsome face to
greet viewers?
(Interestingly,
Bono-basher-in-chief William
Easterly doesn't appear to have weighed in yet.)
Clooney
has his own words for the haters:
“I’m
sick of it,” he said. “If your cynicism means you stand on the sidelines and
throw stones, I’m fine, I can take it. I could give a damn what you think.
We’re trying to save some lives. If you’re cynical enough not to understand
that, then get off your ass and do something. If you’re angry at me, go do it
yourself. Find another cause – I don’t care. We’re working, and we’re going
forward.”
This
kind of "at least I'm doing something" rhetoric drives development
scholars absolutely bonkers and for good reason. But for now at least, it's
hard to see how Clooney's presence as a cheerleader is really hurting. Once the
referendum is over however, I hope he heads back to Lake Como. In international
negotiations, a certain degree of obscurity can often be just as helpful as the media spotlight.
Making a new country is a messy business anywhere, and in Southern Sudan, it's
going to involve some very ugly compromises. (I wonder, for instance, what
Clooney thinks about the Southern Sudanese government expelling Darfuri rebels in what seemed to
be a conciliatory gesture to Khartoum.)
In
the difficult weeks and months ahead, Southern Sudan will certainly need
international help, but it should come from people with a slightly more
extensive background in the situation. Most of all, it's probably not helpful
for celebrities and the media to promote a narrative of the Juba government as
the "good Sudan." Even in the best-case scenario, it's bound to be
shattered pretty quickly.
For
more on Southern Sudan, check out Maggie Fick on the dangers of referendum
euphoria, view a slide show of Juba on the eve of
independence, and read Robert Klitgaard on how the region's
leaders are preparing to crack down on corruption.
