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Author: John Prendergast

Follow the Money (and the Minerals)

Follow the Money (and the Minerals)
This piece first appeared as part of New York Times’ "Room for Debate." Enough Project Co-founder John Prendergast and others—including writer Eve Ensler, consultant and analyst Willet Weeks, Kambale Musavuli of Friends of the Congo, Yaa-Lengi Ngemi of the Congo Coalition, and Séverine Autesserre of Columbia University—address the complex question: How to stabilize Congo? ...

Foreign Policy Op-ed: The Africa Surprise

Foreign Policy Op-ed: The Africa Surprise
Barack Obama's victory over Mitt Romney could have significant implications for America's approach to countries ranging from China to Russia. But U.S. policy toward Africa was unlikely to shift dramatically no matter who was elected president this week -- a remarkable fact considering that nearly every foreign policy issue is cannon fodder for partisan battles these days ...

It’s Not an Either/Or Question

It’s Not an Either/Or Question
This piece first appeared as part of New York Times "Room for Debate." Enough Project Co-founder John Prendergast and others—Daniel Bekele of Human Rights Watch, Michael Fairbanks of The Seven Fund, Girma Fantaye, an Ethiopian journalist, and author Deborah Brautigam—address the question: How should the U.S. relate to regimes that, although authoritarian, have moved toward prosperity, like Paul Kagame's in Rwanda? ...

Foreign Policy Oped: Let Them Hunt

Foreign Policy Oped: Let Them Hunt
After all the global attention heaped on Joseph Kony, the LRA warlord wreaking havoc throughout a handful of central African countries, it turns out that the existing plan for bringing him to justice isn't going to work ...

Washington Post Oped: Keeping Sudan from Becoming Another Syria

Washington Post Oped: Keeping Sudan from Becoming Another Syria
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, exhibits vulnerabilities that marked the final chapters of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi. Meanwhile, he is doubling down on a strategy of starving, bombing, and arresting his opponents rather than engaging in meaningful reform. How Clinton and other international leaders respond will be crucial in determining whether he hangs on, like his counterpart in Syria, or goes the way of other Middle Eastern and North African dictators caught up in the winds of regional change ...

Unfinished Business of International Justice

Unfinished Business of International Justice
In her first month as the second chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, or ICC, Fatou Bensouda is facing myriad challenges that threaten to undermine the slowly developing architecture of international justice. No obstacle is greater, arguably, than the primary Achilles heel of global accountability: the lack of a coherent or consistent strategy for apprehending war crimes suspects for whom international arrest warrants have been issued ...

Watch I Am Congo — Because We’re Not in It

Watch I Am Congo -- Because We're Not in It
On our second trip together to Africa last Thanksgiving, we decided to go to the place where the deadliest war in the world was occurring: the Congo. The entire time we were there, we traveled with an extraordinary Congolese guy named Fidel Bafilemba. His video profile is the first in a new video series being launched by the Enough Project, called “I Am Congo.” ...

How to Catch Kony in 2012

How to Catch Kony in 2012
It’s a long way from watching and sharing a video to actually catching a war criminal and ending a war. But if the records that have been broken for videos watched and children abducted are to mean anything, then that gap must be bridged. After an unprecedented push to pluck him from anonymity, can Joseph Kony - newly infamous leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), whose ranks over the last 25 years have been filled with child soldiers - be brought to justice in 2012? ...

The Crisis in the Sudans: The Urgency of U.S.-China Cooperation

The Crisis in the Sudans: The Urgency of U.S.-China Cooperation
This op-ed co-authored with actor George Clooney originally appeared on Time.com. On the surface, our recent trip to the rebel-held areas of Sudan’s Nuba Mountains hauntingly echoed earlier visits to Darfur and South Sudan. A huge group of people—targeted by their government in Khartoum because of their ethnicity, the rich land they live on, and their resistance to dictatorship—are being serially bombarded, raped, abducted, and starved in this case for the second time in the last two decades. The culprit remains the same as well: the Khartoum regime led by General Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court for ...

Chris Meloni vs. Joseph Kony: Funny or Die, Enough Project Take on the LRA

How did the Enough Project team up with actor Chris Meloni to produce this new video with Funny or Die about LRA leader Joseph Kony? This op-ed, originally featured on the Huffington Post, describes how Meloni got invested in the cause and about what the Obama administration must do to ensure that the military advisors deployed to central Africa are successful in their mission to help bring an end to the LRA ...