Blog

This is the second installment in a series of letters to President Obama spelling out a practical roadmap to end the crisis in Sudan ...

You might have been paying attention to other things on January 20, but major developments unfolded in the Great Lakes region of Africa that morning as 3,000 Rwandan troops crossed into North Kivu, Congo, as part of a joint operation with the Congolese army to take on the FDLR, the Rwandan-affiliated Hutu militia. Although Enough has been pressing for international action to remove the FDLR from eastern Congo for quite a while, several aspects of this operation make us uneasy: Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda, indicted by the International Criminal Court, and his dissident rebel faction are collaborating with the Rwandan ...

The Enough Project’s RAISE Hope for Congo Campaign today announced that it will deliver to President Barack Obama on his first day in office, January 21, a petition containing 39,900 signatures asking for immediate action to halt widespread sexual violence against women and girls in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo ...

Is your cell phone, I-Pod or Blackberry helping fuel the conflict in eastern Congo? It might very well be. Here is how you can find out, and what you can do to help. Working with a number of partners, we are starting a major effort on conflict minerals in eastern Congo, and this is the first step. Stay tuned ...

The Financial Times recently reported that Jarch Capital, an investment firm led by financier Philip Heilberg (which includes several former United States government officials on its board of directors) has leased a jaw-dropping 4,000 square kilometers of arable land—approximately the size of Dubai—in southern Sudan. The F.T. provided further comment in an editorial entitled “Rhodes Redux,” noting the “deal depends as much on control exerted by Paulino Matip, the warlord whose son’s company claims rights to some of the land, as it does on legal title.”Matip is currently second-in-command of the armed forces of Southern Sudan, but until recently led ...

Dr. Denis Mukwege of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, eastern Congo, has been named “African of the Year” by the Daily Trust newspaper of Nigeria. Dr. Mukwege is the founding director of Panzi Hospital, an extraordinary non-profit organization that, along with other Congolese organizations such as HEAL Africa (a partner of Enough’s RAISE Hope for Congo campaign), are leading the charge to enable the survivors of horrific acts of sexual violence—which are occurring in the context of Congo’s ongoing deadly crisis—to recover and rebuild their lives. When he accepted the award in Abuja, Nigeria, Dr. Mukwege said that “I am pleased ...

Amid celebrations in Mogadishu over the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces from Somalia’s war-torn capital after their bloody two-year, United States-backed military campaign, the BBC reports that four of the six bases vacated by the Ethiopian troops “have been taken over by [Islamist] insurgents from different factions, seemingly working together.” Not a huge surprise, given the anarchic state of affairs in Somalia today — in case you missed it, the President resigned last month and aid workers are assassinated on a regular basis — and the rapid strengthening of the Islamist shabaab militia throughout the country. However, to be clear, the ...

Gérard Prunier is undoubtedly one of the most astute contemporary analysts of Africa’s Great Lakes region, and his new book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe, is required reading for anyone trying to put Congo’s current crisis into broader historical perspective. After the Rwandan genocide, Prunier published The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide, a meticulously researched account of the genocide that, like his latest work, provided essential background to aid in understanding the intense and simmering context into which the genocide exploded. Prunier’s new book picks up where his last one ...

A devastating report from Physicians for Human Rights decribes the health situation in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is suffering from a mounting health crisis, and it is almost entirely man-made. Just as President Mugabe has long politicized the delivery of food aid, he has similarly manipulated the health system. The report asks exactly the right question: “When government policies lead directly to the shuttering of hospitals and clinics, the closing of its medical school, and the beatings of health workers, are we to consider the attendant deaths and injuries as any different from those resulting from a massacre of similar proportions?” ...

The Enough Project and Resolve Uganda issued a joint statement today calling on the incoming Obama administration to take “swift and decisive action” to protect civilians from the grave violence that has resulted from the poorly executed (and still in progress) “Operation Lightning Thunder” joint military operation against the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, by the armies of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Government of Southern Sudan. Enough and Resolve assert that “Operation Lightning Thunder” is still salvageable and should be salvaged. Ending the LRA insurgency is a crucial step toward sustainable peace not only in ...