The interview
1. Introducing Dr. Samantha Nutt2. Canada at War
3. Getting Attention
4. War Child’s Activities and Message
How much has changed? We still read about collateral damage, staying the course, supporting the troops and—in a phrase Orwell mocked sixty years ago—standing shoulder to shoulder with whichever ally is politically expedient.
Dr. Samantha Nutt has devoted her life to breaking through this fog, through her work on the ground and insistence on telling the human stories of war.
Founder and executive director of War Child Canada, Dr. Nutt delivered the 2008 Hancock Lecture at University of Toronto’s Hart House, on the themes of social justice, social responsibility in a global context, and the impacts of war. She has spent over a decade doing humanitarian work in war zones and raising awareness about the impacts of violence back home, work for which she has been widely recognized.
Chosen by Maclean’s as one of “12 Canadians Making a Difference”, Nutt is also the recipient of “Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 Award” (as featured in the Globe and Mail), has been profiled by Time as “One of Canada’s Five Leading Activists,” and celebrated on CTV News as a Canadian “Success Story,” among many other honours.
War Child Canada (www.warchild.ca) is operational in ten war-torn regions around the world, including Darfur, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it partners with local organizations to do innovative humanitarian work supporting women and children affected by war.
I sat down with Dr. Nutt on March 25 for a wide-ranging Q&A; about her work, as a complement to the Hancock Lecture. We talked about the emotional consequences of working in war zones, the missing debate about Canada at war, the difficulties and rewards of getting people’s attention, and War Child Canada’s message and activities. Talking with Sam was like leaving the city, hiking up a tall mountain, breathing in the fresh air, and being overwhelmed by the view.
This interview reflects Dr. Samantha Nutt’s personal views and experiences and not necessarily those of War Child Canada.
1. Introducing Dr. Samantha Nutt
Daniel Aldana Cohen: How did you come to found War Child Canada?
Dr. Nutt: I started War Child Canada in 1999 with two other people, Frank O’Dea, who helped found Second Cup as well as Street Kids International, and Dr. Steven Hick, a professor of Social Work at Carleton University. By this point in my life, I had already spent a considerable amount of time living and working in war torn countries, including Somalia (my first experience in a war zone at the age of 24), Liberia, Burundi, and Iraq.
It became apparent to me, from these experiences, that there was a growing need for an organization dedicated specifically to the cause of war-affected children. In founding War Child Canada, we wanted build an organization that moved beyond traditional concepts of charity. We wanted to create something that would support and sustain excellence at the field level, working with local partners to meaningfully engage them in the process of rebuilding and rehabilitating their communities. We wanted to stay clear of setting up large administrative offices staffed with foreign personnel—it had to be grassroots and it had to be participatory at the local level. At the same time, we wanted to encourage public discourse around war, to bring global issues to the fore through education and awareness-building initiatives, as a means of fostering and promoting a more just, more sustainable, and more equitable world.
But the title of “founder” to me is something that many people deserve when it comes to War Child Canada. There are those of us who had our names on the first registration papers, but there are also those over the years who have brought their talent, their wisdom and their experience to the organization and have helped it grow and evolve. It’s an organic process, and it’s a title that many people are worthy of.
Why did you choose to work in the NGO (non-governmental organization) world instead of politics or government?
I think you can make a difference in a myriad of ways. Some people are better suited to the corridors of politics. But for me, the challenge of politics is the politics. To succeed in politics you have to be prepared to compromise. And at that point in my life, when I was starting War Child Canada, my field experiences made me very passionate about these issues; I was twenty-eight, and compromise was not part of my vocabulary. I was focused on effecting change through the most immediate, direct, and transparent means possible. For me that meant the NGO route as opposed to a larger organization, a multinational agency, or government.
I have read in a couple profiles that you are often so busy you do not have a lot of time to sleep. You have also spent a lot time with people who have suffered so much violence and despair. Were there moments when this made it hard to sleep?
There are many times when I’ve had a very hard time with all of it—never mind sleeping. I would be lying if I said I don’t live with a lot of ghosts. I think that anybody who does this work feels the same way. You think about the people that you cared about that you’ve lost to war; the people you wanted to help and knew that you could help but were prevented from doing so because of circumstances within that country or circumstances within our own country where you just didn’t have the resources. People I have been close to have paid with their lives as a result of the work they were doing and it can be really tough.
I have spent a lot of time in Iraq, starting in 1996. I was there in 2003 just after the fall of Saddam’s statue and within eighteen months of that I had lost two close friends in very brutal, brutal ways. One, Aquila Al Hasheimi, was gunned down in front of her home. She was one of three women appointed to the interim governing council in Iraq. And the other was Margaret Hassan who was the head of CARE (an international relief and development organization) operations in Baghdad, and who had lived and worked in Iraq for thirty years. She was taken hostage on her way to the CARE office and eventually executed after she literally begged for her life in a video that aired on every major news channel for about a month. I remember, during that period of time—and it was just after we had lost Aquila—turning on the news and watching Margaret. I just felt sick. I was full of sadness and rage—how was this possible? Thousands of protestors in Iraq filled the streets demanding her release. A few months later she was dead.
With Margaret’s death I was forced to confront the inescapable reality that everything that I had always believed in—in terms of what it means to be a humanitarian, what it means to operate within a humanitarian space, that you are outside of the political process because you’re helping, because your intentions are good—these rules no longer applied. I mean, Margaret was a brave woman doing the kind of work that I fervently believed in—engaging local communities with a high level of receptivity—and within Iraq she was a hero, she helped thousands and thousands of kids, she stayed during both aerial bombardments, she was married to an Iraqi, she was a dual Iraqi-British citizen, and if anyone should have been protected from that kind of violence, it should have been Margaret. And it didn’t matter. She was targeted anyway. So everything that I believed up until that point in time about what it means to be a humanitarian died with Margaret. That was a really difficult period. There have been other really difficult times but that was one of the hardest.
We are in a new reality now and we have to be mindful of it. The lines between military and civilian humanitarian operations have become increasingly blurred in recent years. That changes the way aid workers are viewed on the ground, and it has profound implications for the humanitarian movement whether we want it to or not.
Does it get easier? Do you get used to these situations?
No. What you get used to is how to contextualize it. You get used to the transition between here and there, between your life here and your life there, between your work here and your work there. It’s the ultimate paradox: You’re here in your office in Toronto and on your computer, making plans for dinner and spending time with your husband and son, and then you are in the field and you are with people who have had their kids ripped from their arms—and in some cases thrown into fires, and tortured —their husbands shot in front of them, after the women were raped so that this would be their last living memory. And it is always horrible to know that this exists in the world—that never gets easier. For a long time, I found the transition back to my life here to be very frustrating. In my case, I eventually learned to appreciate everything I have instead of railing against it and being obnoxiously self-righteous (which I suspect I was for many of the early years).
You have clearly come across desperately difficult situations, where “solutions” are by necessity partial and provisional. How do you maintain a balance between critical realism and the optimism you need to do your work?
Well, as an organization we are actually pretty good about that. We spend a lot of time, particularly if we are launching a new program, participating in the evaluation process so that when we go into an area, we are reasonably confident that our programming is going to succeed. But you can never be confident about the risks. Even if a situation is okay for us to be programming in—Darfur is a perfect example—it changes on a dime, it is very, very volatile, and particularly when you have staff that are deployed, there are implications too. You have to constantly be on top of security, of other changing political and economic conditions, what impact these might have, and you have to modify your programming accordingly. Sometimes you scale up, sometimes you scale down. When we go in, we are in it for the long haul. When you work in war zones, you have to think about the long term. There is no context, at least not in a war zone, where it is bad for two months then everything is hunky-dory. It does not happen like that. If it is bad for two months then usually it is bad for twenty years.
The programs always make me extraordinarily optimistic because I know that what we are doing works. What makes me pessimistic or disillusioned is the feeling you get sometimes that you are just beating your head against a wall. Change is very slow—not on the ground, but back here—I’m talking about the bigger picture, the political process, trying to convince people to care, to donate. These are the types of things that take a very long time. For example, there are times when we will be short-listed for a major grant or a major donation and yet in the end we may not get it, for reasons of policy or popularity or expediency—you name it. And the reality of those decisions is life and death. I hate having to make those phone calls, I hate having to say to our partners, “Look, we’re going to have to scale it right back because no one wants to support AIDS orphans in Ethiopia right now and we’ve tried, we’ve exhausted every means possible, I’ve been on my hands and knees for eight months and everybody said no.” That is what kills me. It is not the lack of change, it is seeing the opportunities that are wasted.
You have referred to a “paradoxical sadness and joy that inevitably come with a ‘calling’.”
There is that sort of excitement and peace of mind that comes from knowing you are trying to change things. I get up every day and I think about the people that we have lost to war and the people we are trying to help overseas and I can get through my day because I know we are trying to do something about it. That’s the joy. The sadness comes from feeling like you are being pushed down, that you are being sidelined or marginalized, or passed over because of politics or disinterest or apathy. The reasons why people do not want to get involved are plentiful and, unfortunately, the reasons why they do are often very few. And it is intensely rewarding and intensely frustrating. Sometimes it’s intensely rewarding and intensely frustrating all within the same hour.
And are the people around you at risk of burning out?
Oh gosh, yeah. You are always at risk of being burnt out. You sometimes feel like you just don’t know where the energy is going to come from. I have wrestled with that myself. It’s a real risk for people who work in our office and those who work on our field projects. It’s tough. You have to know when to say, “I need some time,” though sometimes the moments when you really need that time are the moments when you are least able to take it. This is the reason why, as an organization, we have very strict policies around overtime and vacation—we’re trying to ensure that staff don’t get to that point because the risk is very real. But for me, again, the only thing that does make me get up everyday, even when I am feeling like that, is that I know that I am lucky, I am lucky to be here, and I am lucky to have the opportunities to do what I am doing. I have adored people who no longer have those opportunities, who have died in the process of doing this work, so I also wrestle with the knowledge that it’s self-indulgent to say, “Well, poor me, I can’t face my day today.” Seems pretty pathetic.
Do you consider yourself to be a pacifist?
I consider myself to be a peace activist. I think there is a difference between the two. I think that there are times when pacifism is the appropriate response. I also think there are times when you need to refuse to be pacified, to use everything at your disposal in terms of the voice that you have and maybe some of the public opportunities that you have to bear witness to human rights abuses that are taking place in other parts of the world. And that doesn’t mean shutting up and taking it on the chin, it means being prepared to stand up and be a voice for what you believe is right and fair.
Are there thinkers or historical humanitarian actors you look to as an inspiration?
Absolutely, there are lots of them. Roméo Dallaire has been a very, very powerful voice urging us to critically examine how we protect and respond to the needs of civilians in other parts of the world. Stephen Lewis, Nelson Mandela, Graça Machel—who has done a lot of work on war-affected children globally. Lloyd Axworthy is someone I have a great deal of respect for. Dr. James Orbinski, who is a great guy, chairperson of our board, and the past President of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Ursula Franklin. And of course my husband, Dr. Eric Hoskins (President of War Child Canada). Actually, I look around me and I see a lot of people committed to change and who have been very active in raising the level of awareness and understanding of Canadians, as well as raising our level of support for global issues. I have a great deal of admiration for all of them.
What about Bernard Kouchner, one of the founders of Médecins Sans Frontères?
Over the course of his career he has generated considerable debate around humanitarian action. That kind of public discourse is always a positive thing.
But he’s also made the jump into politics (currently he is France’s minister of foreign affairs). What do you think about making the jump to politics?
I don’t think I could stand to be that unpopular (laughs). It is not being a politician that is the obstacle, in my mind, it is the political process. I don’t think I am ready for that at this stage in my life. My husband was Lloyd Axworthy’s Senior Policy Advisor for four years when we were living in Ottawa so I saw what they went through. At this point, I am really happy to see the immediacy of our actions. We do a proposal, we raise some funds, we have a program, and it is making a difference. It’s immediate. I do not know that I have the patience or the tenacity to be one step removed from that change at this point in my life. But maybe this will evolve, you never know.
2. Canada at War
As Canadians, we tend to think of ourselves as a peacekeeping nation and I think many of us assume that when it comes to war and peace our government is on the right side and there is no need to fret. You do not see things that way.
I do not see things that way. We are more than 40th in the world in terms of our contribution to peacekeeping globally. We are at .29% of our GNI (Gross National Income) in terms of our contribution to ODA (Overseas Development Assistance) annually—14th in the world. The UN target of 0.7% was set by Lester B. Pearson in 1969. Thirty-eight years later we are still not standing by the very principles that we laid out. So we rely a lot on our history as it was taught to us, but it is history, it is not a reality. If we want to have that role in the world again, if we want to be seen as the honest brokers, if we want to be seen as the middle moral power, if we want a place at the table brokering peace agreements and being seen as a reliable, trustworthy partner, then we need to—and there is no other way around it—we need to step up and be more Canadian. Because particularly in the last seven years we have been less Canadian, I believe, than at any time in our history.
I read your dispatch from Afghanistan for Maclean’s magazine a few years ago. Are Canadians getting enough of these stories—thorny, human stories that are told without an overweening patriotic undertone? Why is it important for Canadians to know these stories?
You absolutely need to get the human story. I say this all the time: War is not about who wins and who loses, but about who lives and who dies. Whether you’re talking about soldiers, whether you’re talking about civilians, whether you’re talking about peacekeepers, it is the human side of the war that is, in my mind, the most important story to be told. And unfortunately, that is often the story that gets sidelined in favour of stories presenting bigger, strategic kinds of analyses. Now we need some of this, but we also need to humanize war, or at least the impact of war, so we can fully appreciate the cost of it. Only then will Canadians be able to make legitimate and informed decisions about whether or not it is worth that price.
I do think there are some amazing Canadian reporters who have done remarkable things, Stephanie Nolan, Brian Stewart, Tom Kennedy, Mark McKinnon Stephen Puddicombe— we’ve crossed paths with many of these journalists overseas, even shared dodgy flights, bad scotch, and war stories with more than a few of them. They are extraordinarily courageous and they represent a legacy of honesty and compassion in Canadian journalism. I should also mention Paul Watson who wrote the book Where War Lives, which was an extremely powerful and provocative book. I applaud their efforts. The difficulty is, we are such a pop culture-obsessed society, and increasingly so. I remember that the same week Kenya was imploding, Britney Spears was going back into a psychiatric hospital and that was what was on Larry King. My husband and I sat there together dumbfounded, asking ourselves how it could be possible that there is so little opportunity for real news.
And the excuse from media networks is always the same—and I am touching on this very superficially—that, well, “We give the viewers what they want and this is what brings in the ratings.” But sometimes you also have to give them what they need to know, not just what’s titillating. That is the responsibility that you have as a broadcaster. But as the media has become more and more consolidated, there is less room for those divergent points of view and for those interesting reflections and commentary. I find that to be very disappointing, at least for the mainstream media. Now a lot of plugged-in people are engaging alternative forms of media but you really have to seek it out and that makes our job, as an organization that much harder. It means that you when you get in front of an audience and start talking about Africa, there’s very little awareness. You find yourself having to go further and further back just to impart a very baseline level of understanding of the areas and the issues that you’re trying to tackle. If people have no concept at all of the countries in which you are working or the issues you are tackling it is that much harder to convince them to support your efforts.
Right now there is a debate about how long Canadian soldiers should be in