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.
Writing in today’s Washington Post, former assistant secretary of state Stephen Rademaker makes some interesting points about why the crime of aggression doesn’t belong in the ICC’s jurisdiction. I would beg to differ with Rademaker’s characterization that the Court’s current cases arise out of civil wars in Africa (the LRA, for one, ceased having any real political aims long ago), but he raises some pragmatic issues as ICC members prepare for a review conference in Uganda next month, where aggression is expected to be the primary topic of discussion.
On the heels of the Human Rights Watch report about a major LRA massacre in Congo, the New York Times published this slideshow of photographs by Jehad Nga from the villages where the killings happened.
The Lens blog featured a haunting series of photographs of Holocaust survivors, titled “One Last Sitting.” It is a dark, artistic series, just as photographer Maciek Nabrdalik intended in order to capture memories of the past through expressions on his subject’s faces. In the description of the project, Nabrdalik recalls the reaction of one woman, whose slow perusal of the pictures caused him concern that she was unpleased. The woman remarked:
“Don’t think I will give you a hard time. These are not our present portraits. You managed to take us back to the camp times. It’s exactly how it was.”
James Martone traveled to eastern Congo for the World Bank to document stories of people affected by the conflict there, an experience he writes about on the World Bank’s Conflict and Development blog. He explains that the work he and a colleague produce, including video, will accompany the WB’s 2011 World Development report, so we’ll be on the lookout. In the meantime, his post is thoughtful.
Hired to assist in the production of a new BBC documentary “The World’s Most Dangerous Place For Women,” Judith Wanga has the chance to return to Congo for the first time in 20 years, since she was sent to London at the age of 3 with an uncle. Wanga’s trip, first to Kinshasa to visit family and then on to the eastern region for work, spawns a variety of emotions and thoughts that she writes about beautifully in this piece for the Guardian.