Author: Maggie Fick

During his trip last week to Sudan, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes expressed his concern about the recent violence in southern Sudan, saying that “the scale of conflict, scale of death, scale of destruction is really worrying.” While the initial death tolls for the recent attacks in southern Sudan’s Jonglei state by armed Lou Nuer militia on rival Murle villages were estimated at under 200 people, hundreds more were reportedly killed in reprisal violence in April and Holmes said that it was possible thousands had been killed and that “nobody really knows” the ...

I'm a bit late getting to this story, but Bill Easterly has a thoughtful post up on his Aid Watch blog in which he calls into question a completely accepted reality of the western aid community: It is justified for “white men [to] offer themselves as saviors of African women.” Now, I’m not out to launch an attack on the while male diplomats working to end atrocities in eastern Congo or white male aid workers working on gender-based violence programs in Liberia; I don’t think that’s Easterly’s goal either. Instead, Easterly rightly calls for “white men who run aid agencies ...

UPDATE: Al Jazeera and BBC reported yesterday that, according to "French military sources," Chadian government forces have defeated the Sudan-backed rebels and forced their retreat back East toward the Sudan border. Chadian ministers also announced yesterday that army troops had won decisive victories against the Union of Resistance Forces (UFR) rebels, who had entered Chad from neighboring Sudan's Darfur region, last Tuesday. In related news, Chadian President Idriss Déby announced over the weekend that “Chad lacks confidence in the African Union’s ability to resolve the crisis with Sudan,” and that his government may opt to “hand over” resolution of the ...

Just a reminder, if you're in Washington, consider heading to E Street Cinema tonight to watch the acclaimed documentary The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court, premiering in D.C. at the first annual Politics on Film Festival. Director Pamela Yates and Producer Paco de Onís will be present for a Q&A following the screening. Here’s a brief description of The Reckoning: Late in the 20th century, in response to repeated mass atrocities around the world, more than 120 countries united to form the International Criminal Court (ICC)—the first permanent court created to prosecute perpetrators (no matter how powerful) ...

This morning, some sad and disappointing news on the Darfur peace process and another nail in the coffin regarding the Sudanese government's true intentions vis-à-vis peace in Darfur. Mandate Darfur, a unique Darfurian-led initiative largely underwritten by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, is working to "shape the future of Darfur around principles of peace, security, justice and development" by engaging Darfurian citizens--including refugees in eastern Chad and internally displaced people, or IDPs, in Darfur--and helping to empower them to participate as stakeholders in a revitalized Darfur peace process. But today, Mandate Darfur announced that they had been forced to cancel its ...

I'll be honest. In the weeks and months following the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant issuance for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, as I went through my daily routine of waking up and checking the news from Sudan, I became increasingly discouraged as I saw the wanted war criminal Bashir gallivanting from Tripoli to Qatar with the support and good blessings of the Arab League and the African Union. As much as I know that the behind-the-scenes diplomatic negotiating going on in Khartoum, Cairo, Washington, and other capitals is more complex than anything one can ascertain from wire stories, there has ...

Speaking today at the Newseum in Washington, Enough’s Co-founder John Prendergast joined other foreign policy experts and Voice of America correspondents from around the world in a “Global Town Hall” to discuss the foreign policy challenges facing new administration and President Obama’s first 100 days in office. When asked by the VOA moderator about the progress of the Obama administration in “planting the seeds” for a revitalized American foreign policy, Prendergast highlighted the investments that President Obama and his administration have made in rebuilding relationships and restoring cooperation and trust around the world. He noted that the Obama administration is ...

Two recent Washington Post articles by Stephanie McCrummen covering recent episodes of violence in southern Sudan underline the threat that ongoing insecurity in this fragile region poses to the future of Sudan. The recent deadly attacks by armed men from the Murle ethnic group on Lou Nuer people in Bor, a town along the Nile in the oil-rich state of Jonglei, highlights one of the daunting challenges facing the new government of southern Sudan, or GoSS, in the next two years. As the Bor county commissioner told the Post: With this insecurity, we can't collect taxes, we can't open schools, ...

Here’s a question: what is the only cross-party parliamentary caucus in the National Legislature of Sudan? Answer: the Women’s Caucus, a body comprised of all 82 female members of the upper and lower parliamentary houses, who hail from a diverse range of regional, ethnic, religious, and political communities. As you might imagine, the National Legislature of Sudan is nothing near an example of bipartisan harmony. But the Women’s Caucus has managed to cross party lines and forge partnerships between erstwhile enemies in the name of political progress for all of Sudan. Even when the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, one of ...

In the midst of the media frenzy surrounding the swine flu, an article by the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall lends some interesting perspective: Confirmation that Switzerland had suffered its first case of swine flu is big news today. According to the Swiss federal health department, a young man recently returned from Mexico exhibited symptoms of the virus. He is now tucked up in bed in Baden, north of Zurich, where it is hoped he will make a full recovery. Not considered quite so newsworthy by perspiring international media infected by a global sneezing fit was the latest extreme violence in eastern ...