Author: John Prendergast

Steps towards an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir provides an opportunity for the U.N. Security Council to demand real changes in Khartoum’s policies and behavior. Unfortunately, the historical record suggests that the Council will likely miss this opportunity as it has missed many others during the past five years. This report diagnoses the underlying obstacles to effective Security Council response, providing a practical guide on how activists can better engage their governments to stop—and ultimately prevent—genocide and crimes against humanity ...

Last week’s move by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, or ICC, to seek an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir introduces a new point of leverage with the Sudanese government and provides an opportunity for the U.N. Security Council to demand real changes in Khartoum’s policies and behavior. Unfortunately, the historical record suggests that the Council will likely miss this opportunity as it has missed many others during the past five years ...

We congratulate you and welcome your appointment as mediator for the Darfur peace process. Your work is as vital as it will be challenging, and we believe that with leadership,and credible support from the international community, peace is within reach for Darfur. Equally clear without an effective peace process, Darfur’s violence will continue, and Sudan’s ultimate fragmentation will only become more likely ...

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is now creating havoc and abducting children in four countries in central Africa. Today, United Nations Special Envoy for LRA-affected areas Joaquim Chissano is briefing the U.N. Security Council on the need to continue a two year peace process which has not succeeded in ending the LRA's attacks against civilians. Although the negotiations have yielded some benefits in terms of enabling some northerners to return home and facilitating north-south dialogue, a new strategy is needed to end the ongoing threat to international peace and security posed by the LRA ...

With its latest invasion-by-proxy in Chad, the Sudanese government is taking its defiance of the United Nations Security Council to a new level. As we speak, Khartoum is sponsoring and supporting an open and transparent effort to overthrow a neighboring government. A month ago, the regime burned the strategic town of Abyei to the ground, leaving the North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) at extreme risk. This comes against the backdrop of a government offensive in Darfur and ongoing support to the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), whose actions threaten the children of four countries ...

The unprecedented attack on a suburb of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, by the Justice and Equality Movement, or JEM, demonstrates once again the urgent need for a credible and inclusive peace process to resolve the crisis in Darfur. This paper outlines the urgent steps that must be taken to create a peace to keep in Darfur. Enough and the Save Darfur Coalition have identified these steps through our field work, our consultations with key actors, and our own experience with peace processes in Sudan and elsewhere. In particular, we draw on the model used to negotiate the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ...

The Darfur peace process in currently in shambles. Read our Activist Brief for an outline by Enough and the Save Darfur Coalition of the urgent steps that must be take to create a peace to keep in Darfur ...

It has been almost 15 years since Somali militias shot down two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters over the capital Mogadishu and killed 18 American servicemen in a battle that also killed more than 1,000 Somalis. Since that fateful day in 1993, which had followed decades of American involvement that contributed directly to Somalia’s brokenness, the United States has largely turned its back on the fate of the Somali people. U.S. involvement has been rooted in counter-terrorism efforts in which the suffering of the Somali people has barely been factored beyond the sending of humanitarian band-aids to cover gaping human rights ...

Students at Princeton University have selected John Prendergast, co-founder and co-chair of the ENOUGH Project to end genocide, as the winner of the 2007-08 Crystal Tiger Award ...

In the fight to eliminate genocide and crimes against humanity, the world has recently seen the birth of two essential pillars in that foundation: the International Criminal Court and the doctrine of the "Responsibility to Protect," however, the doctrine is currently failing in Darfur, Congo, and Uganda. What does R2P mean in real life, rather than in some fancy UN document? ...