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.
To counter impressions that the International Criminal Court is targeting certain ethnic groups or communities, a local theater group in Kenya is putting on dramas to inform the public about the work of the court–especially important advocacy in the weeks leading up to the slated trial date of several influential Kenyans, reports Robert Wanjala for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Betty Murungi, vice-chair of the board of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, explains what the group is up against:
Before Kenyans knew who was on the ICC list of suspects, the support for the court was very high. Immediately after [prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo] revealed the names of six suspects, the support dropped by about 50 per cent. […] This was due to ethnic and political mobilisations that followed afterwards in the country.”
The University of California-Berkeley joined the Conflict-free Campus Initiative last week. Berkeley sophomore and former Enough Project intern Roxanne Rahnama wrote an op-ed in The Daily Californian about the important role students have in the movement to end the trade in conflict minerals from Congo.
In a special report, The Economist looks at how activism is on the rise in Africa. Inspiration comes from watching the uprisings of the Arab spring, but also from decades of witnessing corrupt leaders siphon off valuable resources and suffering abuses from ruthless security forces.
Israel recently secretly repatriated 1,000 Sudanese, under circumstances that are still unclear. Israeli newspaper Haaretz broke news of the story and followed up with a piece on the U.N. refugee agency’s perspective: The agency didn’t know and have demanded an explanation from the Israeli government.
The dire straits of the budget crisis in South Sudan has generated interest in a piece by James Alic Garang, published by the Sudd Institute in Juba, that maps out tangible recommendations for where the new government can slim down, boost its effectiveness, and tackle the roots of some challenges, like the high rate of youth unemployment.