October 24th, 2009 
weldamfm 
Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, has appointed Woody Allen and Mia Farrow’s son Ronan Farrow as the liasion for nonon-governmental organizations working in Pakistan. Read more on Ronan Farrow below.
Representatives from several organizations including Save the Children, Church World Service, the International Rescue Committee, and Care met with Holbrooke recently to discuss what they are trying to do with humanitarian assistance in Pakistan.
A young man accompanied Holbrooke and was introduced as Ronan Farrow, who will be his special liaison to NGOs working in Pakistan.
This decision wasn’t taken well by some people who argue Ronan doesn’t have enough experience at the young age of 21.
“You have seasoned, experienced NGO officials dealing with some very sensitive foreign policy and humanitarian aid issues, whose main contact in Holbrooke’s office is a [21] year old whose experience has been traveling to southern Sudan with his mom,” the humanitarian official said.
Ronan Farrow was born in 1987, born Satchell Ronan O’Sullivan Farrow, and is the son of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow.
Ronan Farrow is considered a prodigy and has worked for Holbrooke since he was a teenager. Ronan was admitted to Yale Law School when he was only 16 years old. But Farrow deferred admission until 2006 because he went “to work as a Special Assistant to Richard Holbrooke, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations” and for additional work as a UNICEF spokesperson for the youth. Ronan recently graduated from Yale Law School.
A State Department said of Ronan Farrow:
“He’s very qualified for the job, and has already helped explain the current situation re: Pakistani procurements to key NGOs, including a meeting he organized today with InterAction and its affiliated NGOs.” “Kid’s a friggin’ genius,” another official said. “And a true activist for Darfur … Went to college at age 11 and then to law school at 16.”
Another associate of Farrow’s writes, on condition of anonymity: “I know and have worked with Ronan Farrow. … I can reveal that his actual title at State is as Special Advisor on Humanitarian and NGO Affairs … He has the policy chops. He wrote columns on human rights issues for the Wall Street Journal, LA Times and International Herald Tribune for years. Working for UNICEF – not just with his mother in Sudan, but in Eritrea, Angola, and Nigeria – is just a fraction of what got him hired. He was a human rights law guy at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, ran a research team for the CDC in Nairobi, and has testified as an expert witness before Congress repeatedly. … He’s young but he has a depth of experience that many people twice his age lack. ….”
Click Thumbnails for larger pictures
Images: wenn.com
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