Author: Laura Heaton

Since the early 1900s countries around the world have celebrated International Women’s Day as a time to recognize the role of women in society and mobilize against injustices specifically impacting half of the world’s population. At Enough, rather than confining our commemoration to just one day—March 8—we’re giving a special focus to women all this week, to highlight how the conflicts we’re working to end affect women and girls, and to recognize the work of heroes advocating on their behalf. In the fifth and final post of our International Women’s Week coverage, Enough’s Kenya based researcher Laura Heaton shares testimonies ...

A weekly round-up of must-read stories, posted every Friday (or on occasion, on Saturday) ...

Just six months remain before the Somali Transitional Federal Government’s time is up to ready the country for more permanent governing structures and institutions after more than 20 years of civil war. Marking the start of that countdown, British Prime Minister David Cameron convened a high-profile conference today in London to map out plans for concluding the transition and rally support for the many costly initiatives currently underway inside Somalia. But what’s the good of a ‘transition’ that primarily focuses on surface-level tasks—in and of themselves no small feat in Somalia—like replacing the current leaders and building more representative, streamlined ...

A weekly round-up of must-read stories, posted every Friday ...

Good intentions alone are no match for regimes and their security agents bent on silencing dissent. For protesters on the ground in a country in turmoil and for activists overseas utilizing crisis mapping and social media to raise attention to their plight, the novelty of the technology and the creativity it enables has the potential to overshadow the harm that could be done if sensitive information gets into the wrong hands ...

A weekly round-up of must-read stories, posted every Friday ...

With conflict flaring in several regions of Sudan and a political showdown with South Sudan over oil threatening to spur an even more severe economic downturn, is Sudan’s Arab Spring in the making? Without a broader movement to back them up, the young activists who are mobilizing in the streets and on campuses face serious risks, without knowing if their sacrifices will spark the changes they seek. Girifna, one group at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement, has seen all too clearly the perils of challenging the status quo and contending with Sudan’s nefarious intelligence and security apparatus, known as ...

A weekly round-up of must-read stories, posted every Friday (or on occasion, on Saturday) ...

Curious to see and hear the analysts working on Enough’s policy on South Sudan and Sudan? CNN and Al Jazeera recently featured Jenn Christian and Amanda Hsiao, two of Enough’s Sudan researchers, in prominent news broadcasts ...

Did the U.N. mission in South Sudan muster all its resources to protect civilians caught up in violence in restive Jonglei state? Certainly some media reports have suggested that the civilian deaths in the midst of ongoing clashes between the Murle and the Lou Nuer have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of U.N. peacekeeping. Hilde F. Johnson, head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, or UNMISS, sought to correct this perception and counter the scale of the killing in an oped that appeared on The New York Times website and in The International Herald Tribune ...