Author: David Sullivan

Horrifying news out of Guinea this week, where military forces gunned down pro-democracy activists during a peaceful demonstration on Monday. Local human rights groups put the death toll at 157 people, and Human Rights Watch has reported eyewitness descriptions of soldiers raping female protesters in the streets ...

This week, Newsweek announced its environmental rankings of the 500 largest corporations in America. Commanding four of the top five rankings, the electronics industry appears to be leading the way in environmental sustainability. These companies should be commended for their leadership, but they cannot stop there ...

Big news on conflict minerals today, as Thaisarco, one of the largest tin smelters in the world and a subsidiary of the multinational metals giant Amalgamated Metals Corporation, announced that it would suspend purchasing tin from Congo. Thaisarco was identified by the U.N. experts as purchasing minerals from sources connected to the notorious FDLR militia ...

Today, the Center for American Progress hosts a public discussion with U.S. Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke and his Interagency Team. Check out the list of panelists who will be joining Holbrooke and moderator CAP President John Podesta: Paul W. Jones, Deputy to the Special Representative and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Afghanistan and Pakistan (STATE) Dan Feldman, Deputy to the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Rosemarie Pauli, Chief of Staff, Office of Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Vikram Singh, Senior Defense Advisor to the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (DOD) Christopher Reimann, ...

One of the most frequent critiques of our effort to get electronics companies to deal with Congo’s conflict minerals is that amid a global recession, companies can’t afford to invest in cleaning up their supply chains. With that in mind, Apple’s announcement of their best non-holiday quarter ever—profits up 15 percent, with a net income of $1.23 billion—suggests that there is no shortage of resources that an industry leader like Apple might put toward developing the means to ensure that its products are conflict-free. Apple sold 5.2 million iPhones from April to June this year, a number close to, but ...

Global Witness released a new report today that is required reading for anyone concerned with the continuing crisis in eastern Congo. The report, entitled “Faced with a gun, what can you do?” provides an in-depth examination of Congo’s mineral trade and details the economic linkages between rebel groups, the Congolese army, and international companies. Among the highlights of the report, which is based on extensive research conducted in the Kivus last year, are some choice quotes from the field: "They don't want to leave because of the natural wealth. They are like bees swarming on honey. They prefer to die ...

Last week, the African Union passed a resolution refusing to cooperate with the International Criminal Court on the case of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. This maneuver, engineered by Libyan President Gaddafi, is a sure sign of the AU’s institutional decline from a once-promising ideal of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ into a club for dictators much like its predecessor, the Organization for African Unity. As a colleague put it, the AU appears “doggedly determined to make itself completely irrelevant in the lives of ordinary Africans.” Not all African states appear to be following this lamentable path: Botswana came out swinging against the ...

Via John Boonstra at U.N. Dispatch, I see that intrepid reporters from Jane’s Defense Weekly have been keeping an eye on those Ukrainian tanks that were hijiacked by Somali pirates way back at the beginning of the piracy crisis in Month 2008. The Kenyan government had convolutedly rejected assertions that the tanks were ultimately headed for the Government of Southern Sudan, or GOSS, as part of the arms race that has coincided with the faltering implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. However, thanks to satellite analysis, it appears that the tanks have made their way north and are now located ...

Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA) has been a leader in the House when it comes to Congo’s conflict minerals—he’s even made a video to support Enough’s Come Clean 4 Congo video contest. Today he pushed forward for greater transparency with an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill that would require the U.S. government to develop a map of armed groups and mineral-rich areas of eastern Congo. The McDermott Amendment to HR 2647 would require the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to publish a map delineating mineral-rich areas and armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the ...

Debates about U.S. foreign policy tend to take place within narrow silos, defined by the very different backgrounds of those of us following different issues. It begins in graduate schools of international relations, where returned Peace Corps volunteers study microfinance and value chains in one classroom while military reservists and would-be CIA analysts read Clausewitz and practice net assessments in another, rarely taking the time to learn each other’s acronyms or appreciate very different perspectives on shared challenges. Here at the Enough Project we’re equally guilty … we share office space with some pretty nifty organizations working on national security ...