White House Touches on U.S. Effort to End LRA via @WHLive
These top experts and advisors opened up the @WHLive twitter account for a #WHChat driven by questions and comments from the public. While tweets flowed in with a range of pressing issues, advocacy groups like the Enough Project, Resolve, and Invisible Children as well as concerned activists nation-wide utilized this opportunity to draw attention to the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA ...
How I Got Apple To ‘Think Differently’
Just over a week ago, a group of students and I who are part of the Coalition for a Conflict-Free Duke sent a video message to Tim Cook, Apple CEO and fellow Dukie, imploring him to create a conflict-free product by the end of 2013. Student leader Stefani Jones wrote this blog post that originally appeared on Huffington Post ...
Conflict Minerals Funds Congo President’s Flawed Reelection?
When Rwanda returned about 90 metric tons of smuggled minerals to Congolese authorities early November last year, many took that as a sign of a growing commitment by the regional powers to fight illicit mineral trade. It went largely unnoticed until now that the returned minerals vanished on the Congolese side ...
Kiir-Bashir Meeting Produces No Deal, Parties Commit to More Talks
No deal on the current oil crisis between Sudan and South Sudan emerged from the highly anticipated meeting today between Presidents Salva Kiir and Omar al-Bashir ...
Satellites Catch Apparent Artillery Barrage as Sudan Armed Forces Create Choke Point on Refugee Route to South Sudan
Satellites monitoring flashpoints in Sudan’s border region of South Kordofan caught an apparent artillery barrage, in a visually striking image released by the Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP). The DigitalGlobe satellite image, analyzed for SSP by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, shows a line of six grey smoke plumes on a ridge above the town of Toroge. The image is consistent with reports of recent fighting in the area. SSP’s new satellite imagery also shows that civilian structures in the town appear to be abandoned and that Sudan Armed Forces, or SAF, has created what appears to be a choke point, with ...
Ugandan Court Orders Amnesty for LRA Commander Kwoyelo, Appeal Pends
The trial of former Lord’s Resistance Army commander Thomas Kwoyelo took a new turn but did not conclusively end yesterday when the High Court of Uganda ordered that Kwoyelo be granted amnesty ...
Refugee Camp in South Sudan Bombed, Sparking Calls for International Response
With attention focused on the tense Sudan-South Sudan talks in Addis Ababa this week, media coverage only paused for a moment to recognize yet another aerial bombardment of a refugee site in South Sudan ...
New Enough Briefing: Countering Inter-Communal Violence in South Sudan
Recent waves of inter-communal violence, characterized by attacks on civilians and deliberate targeting of humanitarian outposts and services, have engulfed South Sudan’s Jonglei state, particularly around the town of Pibor. In Enough’s most recent paper, “Urgent Steps to Counter Inter-Communal Violence in South Sudan,” Jennifer Christian, Amanda Hsiao, and John Prendergast examine not only the most recent flare ups of violence between the Lou-Nuer and Murle ethnic groups in Jonglei state but also evaluate holistic steps the government of the Republic of South Sudan, or RSS, and the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, or UNMISS, must take in order ...
State Delegate Takes First Step to Make Maryland Conflict-free
On Wednesday night, Gaithersburg, Maryland became the epicenter of the grassroots movement to end the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The small, unassuming town reminds you of something out of a scene from "Gone with the Wind." Complete with an old train station and a main street lined with small storefronts, Gaithersburg isn’t the place where you might necessarily expect neighbors, students, community leaders, and Congolese immigrants to gather to discuss how their community can affect change in the Congo ...
Urgent Action Needed to Counter Jonglei Violence: Enough Project Report
In the wake of recent inter-communal violence that has killed hundreds and displaced 60,000 people in South Sudan’s Jonglei state, robust action is needed on the part of the government in Juba supported by the international community to deescalate the immediate crisis, address the systemic causes of the violence, and sustain peace between communities, according to a new Enough Project report ...
