Assistant Secretary Carson Lays Out U.S. Vision for Peace in the Congo
While much attention from the U.S. foreign policy establishment is focused on Mali at the moment, Washington’s top diplomat on Africa made a compelling case to a packed auditorium at the Brookings Institution this week for why the Democratic Republic of Congo deserves a higher position on the list of strategic U.S. national priorities ...
Life After the LRA: Grassroots Reconciliation in Northern Uganda
Often, our analysis of the fight to eliminate Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, stops with the act of defection. However, as this video from the Grassroots Reconciliation Group vividly demonstrates, for former child soldiers, the struggle for normalcy continues well after escape from the LRA ...
U.N.: ‘We Have Failed’ the One Million Sudanese from South Kordofan and Blue Nile
The U.N.’s senior operational coordinator for humanitarian assistance briefed the Security Council on Tuesday on the unfolding travesty in Sudan’s southern states: South Kordofan and Blue Nile. With unusual candor, John Ging, the operational director of the U.N.’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told the Security Council: "So far we have failed, […] we don’t need more process but more access, and we need it urgently and desperately." ...
Sudan: How the Death of Four Students Inspired a Nation Once Again
Earlier this month, four bodies were found in one of Wad Madani’s irrigation canals, just miles away from Sudan’s capital. The university town in the country’s breadbasket has been spared the endemic violence that has come to characterize life in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile. However, a fight over tuition fees at Wad Madani’s Gezira University and the subsequent murder of four students has put events in the town at the center of Sudan’s political future ...
What Blair’s Takedown of Gossip Girl’s Bart Bass Tells Us About Sudan Sanctions Enforcement
Tonight, the CW's long running drama on the secret lives of New York's Upper East Siders, Gossip Girl, will air its final episode. Over its six seasons on the air, the cult favorite has never shied away from controversy. Last season, ruthless billionaire Bart Bass came back from the dead. This season, we learned that he went underground to avoid FBI prosecution for violating United States government sanctions prohibiting oil trade with the Sudan ...
Policy Brief: Issues That Must Be On the Table at Eastern Congo’s Peace Talks
Representatives of the March 23 Movement, or M23, and the government of the Congo have been meeting in Kampala this week as a part of an International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, or ICGLR, mediated effort to bring the latest round of fighting to an end. We've seen this political theater many times before. In a report released today, the Enough Project's Senior Policy Analyst Sasha Lezhnev and Co-founder John Prendergast suggest an alternate way forward ...
The Congolese Armed Groups You Aren’t Hearing About
If you have been reading about eastern Congo lately, one name has been stealing headlines: M23. In a dramatic show of force, the Rwanda-supported rebel militia group led by ICC indictee Bosco Ntaganda took control of strategically important Goma in mid- November and then earned a place at the ongoing peace talks in Kampala by ending their 11-day occupation earlier this week. However, focusing on the M23 belies the complexity of the highly militarized politics of eastern Congo ...
Congo: ICC Will Investigate Crimes Committed by M23 and Others
In the aftermath of the March 23 Movement, or M23, seizure of Goma, the International Criminal Court, or ICC,Chief Prosecutor Fatoua Bensouda announced that her office is investigating "allegations of ICC crimes by members and leaders of M23, and by other parties taking advantage of the chaos in the region." ...
