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Darfur refugees are criticizing US envoy Scott Gration for reportedly downplaying the scope of the crisis in the Sudanese region. Anchor Marco Werman finds out more from human rights lawyer, Rebecca Hamilton, who accompanied Gration on part of his tour through the region this past weekend.

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MARCO WERMAN: We go next to another East African trouble spot.  Darfur, a region in Sudan.  Darfur became the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in 2003.  That’s when rebels there took up arms against the Sudanese government.  An estimated 2.7 million people were driven from their homes and many still live in camps.  U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration visited some of them over the weekend. He was not always welcomed. Human rights lawyer Rebecca Hamilton accompanied Gration.  She’s in The Hague at the moment.  So General Gration was appointed by President Obama, who was seen as kind of a champion of Darfur during last year’s election campaign, even using the word genocide to describe what happened there.  So what kind of reception did General Gration get, Rebecca?

REBECCA HAMILTON: Among the displaced population in the camps there was, I think, it’s said it’s a very strong reaction against Gration coming to visit.  There was one gentleman in the room who had this U.N. paper luggage tag effectively taped to the one eye.  And at first you looked at him, and you were thinking, “This is someone we need to get medical care urgently because this is what he’s using for an eye patch.”  But in actual fact it was a protest.  When he stood up, he said, “I’m wearing this on my one eye because I cannot look to you, Scott Gration, with both eyes after what you said.  And this is due to a set of misunderstandings and miscommunications over the testimony that Gration gave recently before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

WERMAN: What was the misunderstanding?

HAMILTON: Yeah, well, it’s over some statements that he made.  So he basically spent 85% of the first day there saying three points to all these groups that he spoke with.  He said, “I never said Sudan should be removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.  I never said that sanctions should be removed from Khartoum, and I never said that the displaced had to leave their camps now.”  And the displaced listened to this.  They were sort of ranging from polite to moderately receptive in these groups, but a lot of the times afterwards, I had women come up to me and say, “You know, we heard him apologize but we don’t accept it because we simply don’t believe him.”  They at this point perceived him as being … not acting in the interests of the displaced.

WERMAN: Now we should clarify that.  You were not there as a member of the special envoy delegation, correct?

HAMILTON: No, and yeah, that’s an important clarifier. I’m writing a book on Darfur policy and the impact of advocacy, and I was really just getting to be a fly on the wall to see the special envoy in action on the ground.

WERMAN: This was his first trip to Darfur, correct?

HAMILTON: No, it’s actually, I think four …

WERMAN: I mean, under the Obama Administration.

HAMILTON: … it’s his fourth trip into Darfur.  He’s been extremely active as a special envoy and that’s something that is … I mean, this man is 200% committed to the job, and I would say that having had off-the-record conversations with him, he has a much more nuance of understanding of the government in Khartoum than I perhaps had given him credit for, and that he perhaps gets credit for in the media.  So there’s a lot of positive things that you can say, but the fundamental take-away that I got from this trip this weekend was about this really disconnect between him and the displaced population at the moment.

WERMAN: And so with this rather sort of bumpy trip to Darfur, I mean, how does that actually taint the White House policy regarding Darfur at this point?  How do the Darfuris feel about, you know, Obama’s policy?

HAMILTON: Well, I think it’s a huge challenge because there was, as you mentioned, so much hope with the Obama Administration coming in.  People said very specifically we had a lot of hopes that the change in administration would deliver results for us on the ground in Darfur, and we’re feeling that our hopes are being dashed.

WERMAN: Human rights lawyer, Rebecca Hamilton, is writing a book about the Darfur Advocacy Movement, and she’s just back from a trip to Darfur with U.S. Envoy Scott Gration.  Thank you very much for your time indeed.

HAMILTON: Thank you.

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