This material belongs to: Variety.
George Clooney has announced the Clooney Foundation for Justice gave $1 million to tackle war crimes and corruption in Africa.
The initiative kicks off the Sentry’s Making War Criminals Pay fundraising campaign to increase its production of dossiers focused on war criminals and their financial networks. Co-founded by Clooney, the Sentry is a team of policy analysts and financial forensic investigators pursuing war profiteering networks in Africa.
“Our focus is to make sure that war crimes don’t pay,” Clooney said in a statement. “We want to make it more difficult for those willing to kill en masse to secure their political and economic objectives. When we’re able to go after the warlords’ wallets and bankrupt those who choose the bullet over the ballot, suddenly the incentives are for peace, not war; transparency, not corruption.”
The Sentry also announced donations from Don Cheadle, Carl Allen, Ruben Vardanyan, the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, and three major donors who wish to remain anonymous. In all, the gifted grants total $3.45 million of its $6 million goal.
“The Sentry is pursuing a new strategy to counter mass atrocities that would utilize the tools of financial pressure normally reserved for countering terrorism, organized crime, and nuclear proliferation,” Sentry co-founder John Prendergast said. “We aim to undermine the pillars of the war economy and disrupt the financial flows that fuel conflict. Unless the links between conflict and corruption are confronted, peace will remain a distant dream.”
