Sudan in Today’s State Department Briefing
An exchange during today's State Department briefing offers some insight into the administration's position towards the ICC's arrest warrant for President Bashir and recent events on the ground in Sudan. See below for the exchange between reporters and State Department Spokesman Gordon Duguid. QUESTION: Do you have any reaction now to the expulsion of these aid groups who were working in Darfur, or Sudan, generally? MR. DUGUID: The action was announced, and it’s unclear whether it was announced by the government or the particular commission that oversees the aid groups in Sudan, seems to me to be against Sudan’s own ...
More on Sudanese Governmental Action Against NGOs
As John noted below, the Sudanese government’s Humanitarian Aid Commission, or HAC, has revoked the registrations for crucially important NGOs throughout Sudan. According to the United Nations, Affected NGOs are the main providers of life-saving humanitarian services, such as water, food, health and sanitation. Their departure will have an immediate and serious effect on the humanitarian and security situation in North Sudan, especially in Darfur. NGOs have begun to speak out about the Sudanese Government’s actions. They have been saying the following: Mercy Corps President Nancy Lindborg responds to the suspension of her organization’s efforts in Sudan by saying “ ...
Tutu Fights for Justice
On the eve of the increasingly probable issuance of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, two opinion pieces discussing the issue appear in the New York Times. South African clergyman and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu has an incredible opinion piece in support of ICC action that rebuts arguments, such as the one put forth in an editorial by Franklin Graham, that “The removal of Mr. Bashir will make it harder to negotiate an end to the crisis in Sudan.” Graham, the president of the evangelical relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, seems to ...
Mugabe’s Birthday Blues
It seems that Robert Mugabe may not be getting everything he wants for his birthday this year. A week after I mentioned that Mugabe was set to celebrate his 85th with thousands of pounds of ducks and lobsters, buckets of caviar, and more than 10,000 bottles of champagne, it seems that his fundraising committee is having difficulty raising the cash to bankroll the proposed ridiculousness. Although the extravaganza is just days away, officials are still racing around Zimbabwe trying to find donors willing to foot the bill. Sources note that increased MDC authority in regions formally controlled by Mugabe’s party, ...
Arrest Highlights Intense Fragility of Forced Compromise in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe’s unity government was less than two days old when police arrested Roy Bennett, a high ranking official from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, on treason and terrorism charges. The arrest of Bennett, the MDC’s nominee for Deputy Agriculture Minister, occurred the day he was to assume his new post, is the latest example of the ZANU-PF’s penchant for prosecuting political opponents, and is yet another indication that Zimbabwe’s fragile new government may already be unraveling. Tsvangirai has been continually demanding for Bennett’s release, calling the arrest “an attempt by hard-liners in (Mugabe’s party, the ...
Fighting Back Against the LRA
A powerful story in today’s New York Times gives a human face to the unimaginable crimes of the Lords Resistance Army, or LRA. In the piece, the Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman focuses on the stories of three people living in the remote town of Faradje in northeastern Congo and narrates how, despite the “terrible mismatch,” communities are doing all they can think of to fight back against Joseph Kony’s “band of experienced killers.” ...
Zimbabwe: Change We Can’t Believe In
His country’s unimaginable crisis is not stopping Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe from hosting a birthday party that will make Steve Schwarzman’s 60th birthday celebration look like a backyard barbeque. On the menu for Mugabe’s fete: “2,000 bottles of champagne (Moët & Chandon or ’61 Bollinger preferred); 8,000 lobsters; 100kg of prawns; 4,000 portions of caviar; 8,000 boxes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates; (and) 3,000 ducks.” Such luxury is par for the course for a man who two years ago celebrated his 84th with 20,000 cronies in a Gweru soccer stadium. This blatant example of Mugabe’s hubris exemplifies why observers must call ...
Doctors Without Borders Spotlights MONUC’s Failures in LRA-Affected Areas
A recent statement from Doctors Without Borders, known by their French acronym MSF, deplores the failure of MONUC, the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Congo, to protect civilians from the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. Commented Marc Poncin, MSF’s operational manager for Congo: “The conclusion we’ve reached day in and day out on the ground, is that the LRA is continuing its unspeakable violence against civilians…U.N. Security Council Resolution 1856, from this past December 22, makes protection of civilians the priority for the United Nations peacekeepers in (Congo). The MONUC must therefore take up its responsibilities and can no ...
Freedom House Narrates Africa’s Downward Trend
Joshua Keating, writing for the new Foreign Policy Passport blog, recently highlighted the downward trend in political rights and civil liberties worldwide as represented in Freedom House’s 2009 Freedom in the World survey. According to the organization, over 2 billion people — 34% of the world’s population — live in countries, “where basic political rights are absent, and basic civil liberties are widely and systematically denied,” and only South Asia has registered improvements in the “state of democracy” in the past year. In his analysis of the survey’s results, Freedom House researcher director Arch Puddington underlined Africa’s particularly worrisome year: ...
The Elephant in the Room
We here at Enough love gorillas, elephants and people. As part of its Planet in Peril series, CNN sent correspondent Lisa Ling to southeastern Chad to report on the illegal poaching of elephants in the region. Stories from her trip received significant airtime on both American Morning and Anderson Cooper 360, two of the network's most popular programs. Such poaching is a grave problem and is demonstrative of the rampant illegal exploitation of natural resources in the region. However, discussing violence against animals in Chad without any mention of the alarming banditry problems and ongoing political instability in the country ...
