Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.
Thousands of children fought in the front lines during the 22 year civil war between northern and southern Sudan that raged until the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. Reintegrating child soldiers in the South is a critical task that is too often overlooked. In an op-ed for CNN, UNICEF officer Pernille Ironside, who recently returned from the region, discusses the situation for children in remote sections of southern Sudan. Ironside honestly evaluates the difficulties former child soldiers face and the successes and failures of reintegration efforts in the South.
As part of its correspondent’s diary series, The Economist online published a wonderful vignette that offers a glimpse of life in a remote southern Sudanese town plagued by violence between the Luo and Jikany groups. The piece also discusses the lives of those foreigners working at the small MSF run hospital there.
Writing for the Center for Global Development’s Blog, Senator Richard Luger, the respected Republican former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argues in support of strengthening USAID and U.S. foreign assistance programs. He provides recommendations for ways forward and highlights legislation he recently introduced in the Senate.
This week, the United Nations General Assembly held a crucial debate on the enforcement of the responsibility to protect doctrine, known as R2P. The doctrine puts the onus on the international community to protect citizens from genocide and crimes against humanity taking place around the world. The New York Times provides a useful look at the debate, which gets at the heart of how the international community should combat mass atrocities.
Uganda’s uncertain position toward ICC action against Omar al-Bashir was described in detail in a piece from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. The article notes that the situation is complicated both by the fact that Uganda “is both a member of the ICC and the AU,” and the fact that “Uganda was the first country to take a case before the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.”
The Enough Team contributed to this post.