Clooney's Peace Plan

George Clooney has a message for countries seeking peace in Darfur: Put up or shut up.

By Josh Grossberg Jan 31, 2008 11:56 PMTags

George Clooney has a new pin. And it means more to him than a certain statuette tucked in his trophy case.

The Hollywood heartthrob got the VIP tour of UN headquarters in New York Thursday, as he received the abovementioned pin designating him as the organization's ninth ambassador of peace.

"I am very proud to be here as a messenger of peace, and the message is that the world is watching, and that at this point we cannot afford to fail," said the star, an Academy Award winner for Syriana. "There's a lot more responsibility with this one than with an Oscar, which all you really have to do is, you know, drink after the party."

Appointed earlier this month by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Clooney actually missed the Academy Award nominations (he picked up a nod for Best Actor for Michael Clayton) because he was completing his first UN assignment—a two-week tour of Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other war-torn areas of Africa.

Clooney, 46, pleaded for member nations to lend monetary support to cover the costs of new helicopters and trucks and on-the-ground staffers needed to halt the spiraling violence that has left some 200,000 dead in the Sudan province and thousands more living as refugees.

"Either give [peacekeepers] the basic tools for protecting the population and themselves or have the decency to just bring them all home," Clooney said. "Because you can't do it halfway. Bring them home, and shut off your TV and your radio and your phones and the Internet, and go back into the offices and wait until it's all over."

Clooney said that during his below-the-radar excursion, he witnessed many locals who began to "feel a new energy in the air" upon seeing the arrival of UN peacekeepers.

"They feel for the first time that this is the moment the rest of the world, all of the nations, united, are stepping in to help them," he said. "When I stood in the hospital next to women who had been raped and set on fire two days earlier, they looked up to me and said, 'Please send the UN.' Not the U.S., not China, not Russia, just the UN. You're their only hope."

The activist-minded star noted that "millions are homeless—not from famine or disease or acts of God but from a well-armed militia intent on ridding the land of its people"—a reference to the Arab-dominated Sudanese government and its proxy militia, which is responsible for most of the killings.

He also called on Sudanese officials to support UN efforts to quell the feud between the government militias and rebel groups and allow peace talks to get under way.

As a UN messenger of peace, Clooney, who cofounded Not on Our Watch, a humanitarian organization lobbying for an end to the Darfur genocide, will promote the world body's conflict-resolution work and attempt to focus public attention on the crisis.

"It seems as if at times celebrity can bring that focus," he said. "It can't make the policies, it can't change people's minds really, but you can bring a camera where you go, because they'll follow you, and you can shine a light on it. That seems to be my job."

Clooney's appointment follows his appearance in the documentary Darfur Now. Released in November, the film examines the atrocities in the region. He and his Ocean's Eleven pal Don Cheadle were also feted with the Summit Peace Award by Nobel Peace Prize laureates in Rome for their efforts to end the bloodshed.

Other stars appointed to be messengers of peace include Michael Douglas, celloist Yo-Yo Ma, Nobel Peace Prize winner and author Elie Wiesel, naturalist Jane Goodall and The Alchemist author Paulo Coelho.