Author: John Prendergast

This piece first appeared as part of New York Times "Room for Debate." Enough Project Co-founder John Prendergast and other debaters—including Oxfam’s Sudan Country Director El Fateh Osman, Former Special Envoy to Sudan Andrew S. Natsios, Girifna member Dalia Haj-Omar, Chair of Islamic Studies at American University Akbar Ahmed, National Director of STAND Daniel Soloman, and Heritage Foundation Research Associate Morgan Roach—address the question: How can world leaders prevent another humanitarian disaster from taking place in Sudan? ...

2011 was a year of unprecedented action on behalf of freedom and human rights. When citizens flooded streets throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. and other countries dropped their long-standing presidential allies and demanded new leadership. When massive human rights abuses loomed in Libya and Ivory Coast, the international community acted decisively. That backdrop makes it all the more puzzling why the two countries where human rights abuses are worst in the world—Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo—have received such comparatively tepid international responses ...

You'd think by the second decade of 21st century — with the development of international accountability and prevention mechanisms — that the use of starvation would have disappeared from the arsenal of war weapons because it bears too high a cost for the perpetrator. The people of Sudan would beg to differ, George Clooney and I write in an op-ed appearing on TIME.com today ...

Last month, I had the honor of presenting my friend and talented musician Emmanuel Jal with a 2011 Common Ground Award at the annual Search for Common Ground awards ceremony, where he performed his hit song “We Want Peace” that brought the entire crowd to its feet ...

I lost my dear friend Howard Wolpe yesterday. Many of you might not know that name, but he was one of the heroes of making U.S. policy toward Africa more compassionate ...

In deciding to send U.S. military advisors to assist in tracking the Lord's Resistance Army, President Obama said, "I believe that deploying these U.S. armed forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy." As actress and activist Mia Farrow and I write in this op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, there is a very compelling human interest as well ...

Since South Sudan became the world's newest nation in July, the state of Sudan it left behind has become engulfed in a civil war of its government’s own making. The Khartoum regime’s report card during the past four months includes an invasion of Abyei, a war-crimes spree in the Nuba Mountains, ongoing attacks against civilians in Darfur, and most recently an assault on the Blue Nile border state ...

This post originally appeared on The Hill: How could U.S. policy toward South Sudan over the last decade be so successful, and its policy toward Sudan be such an abject failure? The answer to that question partially holds the fate of millions of Sudanese who remain trapped in a state at war with its own people on four fronts and ruthlessly repressing all forms of unarmed opposition ...

The combination of current internal, regional and international variables could provide a real catalyst for future peace in Sudan. Demonstrations earlier this year, inspired by Arab Spring initiatives in neighboring countries, were ruthlessly crushed with draconian regime tactics—including rape of women involved in protests ...

After a decades-long deadly struggle for freedom, South Sudanese celebrated for days over the realization of their dream of independent statehood. A new U.S. policy—rooted in the international responsibility to protect civilian life and democracy promotion—is desperately needed for these two new Sudans ...