Questions and Answers with Jane Olson! 

You asked, she answered!

Here are Jane’s responses from your questions at lunch!

• Have you ever been to or heard of Yemen?
• I certainly know all about Yemen and the current unrest there, but I have never been to Yemen.  I have been to the neighboring countries of Qatar, Egypt and Jordan.
• Do you have nightmares about the pains of war?  And how did you feel when you left the places?
•  Many times I have cried, even sobbed, when I board a plane to depart a place where I have witnessed the calamities, suffering and pain of war.  I am crying because I am free to leave, but the victims/survivors I have met are not.  They still have months or years of violence to endure while facing the long and difficult process of healing, rebuilding, seeking justice and reconciliation.  I have had bad dreams that I can relate directly to experiences in the field, but mostly I carry with me the faces and stories of individuals who are working so hard to end violence and achieve peace and justice.   I am committed to telling their stories since they were brave enough to share them.  They give me hope for the future!
•  As you said, you have heard  many horrifying stories. How do you get people to share such stories with strangers and how do you react?
• I find that women can understand each other across differences of life experience, ethnicity and religion, age, culture and other perspectives.  We are all more alike than different, and we have the same values.  I project an honest andopen aspect of caring deeply, of respecting my subject, and of the desire and intention to help with the hard work of healing.  Always I choose interpreters who are sensitive and wise.  The interpreter represents me, and her/his translation of my words, both in language correctness and in tone, really impacts how I am received.  Mostly I project warmth and understanding.  I don’t want to “pity” anyone, as that increases their sense of victimhood, but rather I want to support their survival efforts.
• How would you suggest for young girls in rural Montana to get involved in international human rights?
• The initial step is to care, and I feel that many of the girls at the conference were deeply moved to care.  The next step is to educate yourself on current events, domestic and global, that involve human rights issues or violations. Read good newspapers (The New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, etc.), follow broadcast media reports of world events on reliable sources like National Public Radio, CNN, etc., and follow informed blogs orpublications online.  I recommend the Huffington Post and Propublica, both of which cover international issues.
•  Of the places you have witnessed war crimes & atrocities, how many have addressed the wrongs through tribunals or somehow held the war criminals responsible for their actions? How important does this accountability see to the victims themselves?
•  This is a very important question.  As I mentioned in the talk, Justice is important to victims and key to stopping the cycle of revenge killings and violence.  It is critically important to identify and individuate the perpetrators of human rights abuse and war crimes so that groups or categories of people are not blamed and branded.  And it is important to identify the leaders who incited and/or ordered the violence.  Many times were told by men that they were “ordered at  gunpoint” to rape women, for   instance.  We need to know who issued the orders. Of the countries I have covered, three had separate war crimes tribunals:  Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda.   Rwanda and Cambodia both experienced major genocides.  The ethnic cleansing of Bosnia did not quite meet the legal definition of genocide.  In each case, a tribunal was set up to try war criminals.  Yugoslavia (Bosnia) and Rwanda tribunals were set up by the United Nations, in The Hague, Holland, for Yugoslavia and in Arusha, Tanzania, for Rwanda.  Cambodia established its own justice process, and it fell far short of international standards.  For all three, it took several years to establish the tribunals, to identify and hire prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges, and during that time many witnesses disappeared and evidence was lost. We now have a permanent war crimes court at The Hague, the International Criminal Court.  War criminals from many countries I have visited have been indicted to the ICC and will stand trial for the horrendous abuses they committed.  Most of those indicted to date are from Africa.  I hope you will look up the ICC on Google or Wikipedia and learn more about this important international system and process
•   What was the best thing about all the countries you went to?
• The best thing always is the people I meet and the information about their lives and experiences that is shared with me.  I have learned so much about many countries and regions of the world through my travels.  I like to call my global human rights and humanitarian work my “graduate school in life.”
•     What town in Iowa are you from?  
• Denison, Iowa.  It is a small town in west-central Iowa close to Omaha and Sioux City.
• When you first began humanitarian work, what were your long-term goals?
• I don’t think I ever had any specific goals other than to work hard, learn as much as I could, and help to support the staff working for the organizations for which I served as a volunteer.  I certainly did not ever think of or expect that I would become chair of Human Rights Watch.  I think that happened because I was so very committed and hard-working on behalf of that organization.  For Landmine Survivors Network, I was recruited in the early stages to serve as chair of theboard and set up good governance practices, raise money to support the work, and recruit good people to serve and support the organization.
•   How did you feel when you saw all those children hurt and abandoned?
• When I see children, especially those who are orphaned from war or perhaps HIV/AIDS, it breaks my heart.  I see the faces of my grandsons in all children and know how much they want and need to be loved and protected.  It is a natural instinct for a mother and grandmother like me to want to take all of them home with me, but it is very important for the children to stay in their communities.  They represent the future, the chance to rebuild, after so much suffering and death.
• What did you study in college?
• I went to the University of Nebraska and majored in journalism (so I could get a job that was not just for “girls” in the 1960s) and history.  I had double minors in political science and literature.  I think anyone interested in international work should study world history and  languages.  Many staff members at Human Rights Watch have law degrees.
• Have you ever not gone to a country because you felt it was unsafe?
• Yes.  I actually cancelled a trip to Afghanistan last spring because it was unsafe to travel without military security at the time.  I knew that being with the U.S. military would keep me safer but would greatly limit access to Afghani people. I am not interested in being there unless I can interview local human rights and humanitarian workers and also victims of the war.