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.
Foreign Policy’s Turtle Bay blogger Colum Lynch highlights the grave danger that U.N. staff have faced in Southern Kordofan. Given the atrocities inflicted widely on Nubans since early June, emphasis on the dangerous circumstances for peacekeepers and U.N. staff can feel misplaced. But a compelling takeaway is that when it gets this bad for those brought in with arms, a mandate that enables them to use force if necessary, and the backing of the world’s largest international body, it underscores the desperation for the civilians there.
Sudan analyst Eric Reeves comes down hard on Obama administration and U.N. officials for their hesitant and skeptical response to the violence in Southern Kordofan. In The New Republic he writes, “the more proof that accumulates about the targeted destruction of the African Nuba people, the less the White House and the U.N. seem inclined either to speak out forcefully or to announce a course of action.
Daniel Howden of the UK’s Independent offers a commentary on the reasons behind the Horn of Africa’s famine. In a nutshell, international engagement with Somalia since the 1990s – support for its ill-performing transitional government, aid, support for regional players – was driven by the view that “it no longer mattered what happened to Somalis as long as their suffering could be contained within their borders and radical elements could be neutralised,” according to Howden.
Congo expert Tony Gambino is a guest on the Holocaust museum’s Voices on Genocide Prevention podcast series, talking about the significance of Congo’s November election, only its second in 51 years.
[S]econd elections are at least as important, if not more important, because they test whether the process of democratization is starting to set down any roots, and whether something enduring and sustainable is starting up in the Congo.
Writing for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Barrett Holmes Pitner describes the concern among many Sudan watchers that South Sudan will be an SPLM-run autocracy. It’s a topic that many reporters have examined since independence, but Pitner suggests that the one-party tendency isn’t just a result of the SPLM’s repressive stance, but also a consequence of the poor organization and lack of popular appeal of opposition parties.