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.
Reporter Colum Lynch, who covers all things U.N. at the Foreign Policy blog Turtle Bay, reflects on a year of tweeting and how it’s changing the way he follows his beat.
“If you’re buying chocolate this Valentine’s Day, you might want to stop and think about where it comes from,” said Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep, introducing a piece by NPR’s Ofeibea Quist-Arcton on the cocoa trade in Cote d’Ivoire. Despite an official ban on exporting the beans – an attempt to choke off a financial stream of former President Laurent Gbagbo – the black market for cocoa is thriving.
In an extended interview with The World’s Marco Werman, author Rebecca Hamilton discusses the findings of her just-published book Fighting for Darfur. Werman got right down to the questions that have stirred the movement in recent years, asking Hamilton whether the U.S. government could have stopped the genocide in Darfur:
“Not alone. If the U.S. government really felt like it was a priority that topped traditional national interests, it could have really pushed countries that have more leverage over Khartoum, in particular China, to really influence Khartoum’s behavior. (…) [T]he trouble was that the U.S. advocacy movement was so committed to the belief that if the U.S. government just wanted to badly enough then it could.”
Reporting for KALW News out of San Francisco, Becky Palmstrom talks with voters participating in the southern Sudan referendum from Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. Sudanese refugees are watching with caution how crucial issues like security and governance will play out in southern Sudan post-referendum, but during the excitement of the vote, they were effusive about prospects for returning home.
Congo Siasa blogger Jason Stearns rolls out the first of a series of posts based on Wikileaks cables from the U.S. embassies in Kampala and Kigali. The first installment provides some candid observations about Congolese leaders, which are particularly interesting as Congo’s election approaches and we expect hear more about these personalities. Opposition leader Kamerhe (who Enough blogged about this week) features prominently.