Blog

This weekend, our partners at United to End Genocide, or UEG, are hosting a series of online and offline events to mark the end of genocide awareness month and bring attention to the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Sudan and South Sudan. Beginning today, activists across the U.S. and abroad will begin spreading the word on Facebook and urging people to take action ...

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

After a five year long trial, warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor was convicted yesterday of “aiding and abetting” a rebels notorious for their use of child soldiers and favor terror tactic, amputation, in the vicious 1991-2002 civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone in which an estimated 50,000 people died. The conviction is the first by an international tribunal of a former head of state since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders, a development that was no doubt received with concern by the growing list of former leaders wanted for orchestrating atrocities ...

The Massachusetts-based Congo Action Now group recently claimed some early success in their efforts to usher a new law through the Massachusetts legislature that would bolster the pending federal law on the use of conflict minerals from Congo. Activist and guest blogger Pat Aron writes about their initiative ...

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? ...

In the most recent of legislative efforts to bring Joseph Kony to justice, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) and Senator John Boozman (R-AR) introduced bipartisan legislation to expand upon the Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program to provide incentives for offering information that leads to the arrest or conviction of individuals wanted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide ...

Last Thursday, the Enough Project's John Prendergast and Omer Ismail were on Capitol Hill to brief House members and staff on the current situation in Sudan, to bring the members up-to-date information and solicit bipartisan support for the Sudan Peace, Security and Accountability Act of 2012 ...

In the caves in Sudan's Nuba Mountains, individuals are fighting for survival and are unable to bring their grievances against the government of Sudan before domestic, regional, or international judicial or political institutions. That is why this week, when the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights convenes for its 51st ordinary session in the Gambia, it will consider a petition against the Republic of Sudan filed by the Enough Project ...

In an unprecedented show of commitment and accountability by the U.S. to the prevention and elimination of mass atrocities around the world, on April 23 President Barack Obama announced the launch of the first-ever Atrocities Prevention Board, or APB. The board’s inception, which has been highly anticipated within the human rights community, marks a historic step within the U.S. government to work across agencies in collaborated efforts to prevent and respond to mass atrocities around the world ...

For nearly 10 days following South Sudan’s military occupation of the disputed oil-rich area of Heglig, Sudan and South Sudan were on the verge of war. On Friday, April 20, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, or SPLA, announced its withdrawal from Heglig, a move regarded by the international community as a positive step toward diffusing tensions between South Sudan and Sudan. However, the two countries are not any nearer to achieving a lasting peace as the Sudan Armed Forces, or SAF, continue to carry out aerial and ground attacks on territory in South Sudan, yesterday reaching a crescendo with the ...