Ronan Farrow

Ronan Farrow, 2009

Ronan Farrow (born December 19, 1987) is an American human rights activist, freelance journalist, Rhodes Scholar, lawyer and government official. He is currently serving in the Obama administration as Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for Global Youth Issues and director of the State Department’s Global Youth Issues office. He assumed his current role following two years as the State Department’s Special Adviser for Humanitarian and NGO Affairs in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. His writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal and other publications, focused primarily on human rights issues in the Horn of Africa. He has appeared as a frequent commentator on major networks and as an expert witness before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus. Farrow is a graduate of Yale Law School.

Much of Farrow's work has focused on engagement with marginalized actors such as youth and women’s groups. In recent public appearances, including a keynote address at Amnesty International’s inaugural Global Youth Summit at UC Berkeley and a commencement address at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, later selected by the Huffington Post as one of 2011's top ten commencement speeches, Farrow has emphasized his work with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to elevate youth engagement in US foreign policy, leading a US government taskforce on the same subject.

In 2008, Farrow was awarded Refugees International's McCall-Pierpaoli Humanitarian Award, for "extraordinary service to refugees and displaced people." In 2009, he was named by New York Magazine as their "New Activist" of the year and included on its list of individuals "on the verge of changing their worlds.” In 2010, Harper’s Bazaar named him their “up-and-coming politician" of the year. In 2011, he was named one of the top 99 most influential young professionals under 33 years old in foreign policy by The Diplomatic Courier.

On November 19, 2011, he was named an American Rhodes Scholar-elect for 2012.

Early life

Named Satchel Ronan O'Sullivan Farrow at birth, he is the biological son of film director Woody Allen and actress Mia Farrow. He was named in tribute to Satchel Paige and to his maternal grandmother, Maureen O'Sullivan. He was a subject of his parents' well-publicized custody dispute in 1992.

Farrow first came to prominence as a child prodigy when at age 11 he became the youngest student to attend Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Although Simon's Rock specializes in teaching "younger scholars," most of its incoming first-year students are age 16. After receiving his A.A. degree, Farrow transferred to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he moderated in the biology department and ultimately completed his senior thesis project in political science and philosophy. He went on to become the college's youngest graduate ever at age 15.

At age 15, Farrow was accepted into law school at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He deferred his admission until the fall of 2006 to work as an adviser to Richard Holbrooke, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, and also to work with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Holbrooke would later incorporate Farrow as a key member of his team upon his return to government as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009. Farrow was among the close staffers reported to have been present the night of Holbrooke's death in December 2010.[1]

During his time at Yale Law School, Farrow was a summer associate at New York-based law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell. In 2008, he headed a study for the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, focused on post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from Kenya's election violence.

Advocacy and humanitarian work

From 2001 to 2009, Ronan Farrow worked as a UNICEF Spokesperson for Youth in Nigeria, Angola, and Sudan. In 2001, he worked with youth groups and local leaders on the AIDS epidemic in Nigeria. In 2002, he traveled to Angola, assisting in fundraising and addressing United Nations groups on that country's needs in the immediate aftermath of decades of civil war. On June 1, 2006, Ronan Farrow hosted a summit at the United Nations headquarters on ensuring that children are included in the global movement for universal access to AIDS prevention and treatment.

Between 2004 and 2006, Farrow worked in the Darfur region of Sudan. His writings on the Darfur conflict, often focusing particularly on child soldiers he interviewed in the region, appeared in Newsday, the Boston Herald, the International Herald Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal. He appeared on MSNBC, ABC, and CNN advocating for the protection of Darfuri refugees. Following on his experiences in Sudan, Farrow toured the United States as a representative of the Genocide Intervention Network, helping to build the student advocacy movement against genocide.

In 2007, he served under the chief counsel of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs. In April 2008, he accompanied a congressional delegation to the Horn of Africa, during which he authored a column for the Los Angeles Times on Ethiopia's brutal counter-insurgency in the Ogaden desert. On October 4, 2007, Farrow testified before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus, advocating for increased funding for UN Peacekeeping efforts.

Obama administration appointment

At the State Department since 2009, Farrow has directed the US government's relationship with nongovernmental actors in Afghanistan and Pakistan.^{[citation needed]} His appointment was billed by late Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke as an unprecedented show of commitment by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the civil society and non-governmental actors playing a critical role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. At the time of Farrow's appointment, a State Department official speaking on condition of anonymity referred to him as "a friggin' genius," adding that "he’s young but he has a depth of experience that many people twice his age lack."

Pakistani daily The Nation praised the State Department for selecting Farrow, claiming that “with his undoubtable access to corridors in Washington, [he] is worth many Haqqanis” (referring to former Pakistani Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani) and projecting that he would revitalize efforts to combat poverty - “we have the expertise and the energy, and with people like Farrow to bring in business partners, we can do it.”

In his capacity as a State Department official, Farrow has spoken extensively, particularly at universities on the subject of youth engagement.

Writings and policy positions

Despite his own background within the U.N.'s humanitarian branches, Farrow has sharply and repeatedly criticized the U.N.'s political bodies, including the predecessor to its Human Rights Council, which he called, in the Wall Street Journal, "a cancer on the United Nations." He supported, but expressed skepticism regarding the U.S. decision to join the U.N. Human Rights Council in early 2009.

Farrow was a vocal advocate for international military intervention in Darfur, where he worked with UNICEF in refugee camps. He authored a string of columns on the subject between 2004 and 2007, interviewing U.N. Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno as early as 2006 on the need for troop contributions.

Farrow has written repeatedly on China's investments in the Horn of Africa, including a series of exposés on their alleged arming and funding of the Sudanese government's brutal offensive in Darfur. His writings on this subject, beginning with an August 2006 piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled 'China's Crude Conscience', were some of the earliest to publicly link Beijing to the Darfur genocide and are often credited with sparking advocacy on the subject.

He eventually pressed for diplomatic pressure on China, criticizing the George W. Bush administration's engagements with Beijing during the 2008 Olympics.

After working for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and accompanying a congressional delegation to Eritrea, Farrow authored an emphatic critique of Bush-era Ethiopia policy. Farrow highlighted atrocities allegedly committed by Ethiopian forces in the country's Ogaden desert and questioned what he described as a policy of "no strings attached" military support of the country.

Farrow publicly defended Obama's appointment of Harold Hongju Koh (a former teacher of his at Yale Law School) as State Department legal adviser, writing in Forbes that Koh had been the victim of a campaign of "preemptive discreditation" based on Koh's putative Supreme Court candidacy.

Selected bylines

• "Beware of the U.N. Human Rights Council", by Ronan Farrow, published in Wall Street Journal, 6 April 2009
• "No Olympic Medal for Bush", by Ronan Farrow, published in the Wall Street Journal, 11 July 2008.
• "Ethiopia's war on its own", by Ronan Farrow, published in the Los Angeles Times, 25 February 2008.
• "The U.N.'s Human-Rights Sham", by Ronan Farrow, published in the Wall Street Journal, 29 January 2008.
• "Darfur's Forgotten Rebel", by Ronan Farrow, published in the Wall Street Journal, 21 June 2007.
• "The 'Genocide Olympics'", by Ronan Farrow and Mia Farrow, published in the Wall Street Journal, 28 March 2007.
• "International Community Paralyzed By Khartoum", by Ronan Farrow, published in the Washington Post's PostGlobal blog, 26 September 2006.
• "China's Crude Conscience", by Ronan Farrow, published in the Wall Street Journal, 10 August 2006.
• "Yahia's Question: Who Will Protect Darfuris?", by Ronan Farrow, published in the International Herald Tribune, 4 July 2006.
• "Darfur needs follow-through", by Ronan Farrow and Rebecca Hamilton, published in the Boston Herald, 26 November 2005.
• "The Cries of Darfur Fall on Deaf Ears", by Ronan Seamus Farrow, published in Newsday
• "Mia & Ronan Farrow Report from Darfur", published on the Genocide Intervention Network website

Coverage

• "Live From Second Life: Crisis In Darfur Ronan Farrow, Mia Farrow, John Heffernan and photojournalist Ron Haviv, Jan. 9, 2007, Second Life (posted on ummyeah.com on March 12, 2007)
• "Mia and Ronan: Like Mother, Like Son", by Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts, The Washington Post, 11 August 2006.
• "Chilling Permanency", interview with Ronan and Mia Farrow, by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience "Voices on Genocide Prevention" podcast, 10 August 2006.
• "UNICEF Youth Spokesperson Ronan Farrow heads call for universal access to HIV treatment", by Rachel Bonham Carter, UNICEF, 1 June 2006.
• Discussing Darfur, on Hardball with Chris Matthews, May 13, 2005
• "Ronan Farrow: A prominent voice advocating for children in Darfur", by Kun Li, UNICEF, 20 December 2005.

External links

• Biography on the The Washington Post website.
• United States Department of State: Biography of Ronan Farrow