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.
Set for release in the fall, the documentary “The Longest Kiss” follows six young Sudanese as they grapple with questions of identity and home. Shot around the time of South Sudan’s independence and in the midst of the Arab Spring, the film—from the looks of the trailer—will be a touching and emotional account of those significant events through the perspectives of individuals who share the same aspirations, but still face a deeply entrenched dictatorship. The title refers to the meeting point in Khartoum of the White and Blue Nile rivers.
Tying together anecdotes and observations from several trips to Sudan and South Sudan, The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson provides a detailed account of South Sudan’s first year, the ongoing conflict along the two countries’ border, and some valuable analysis about why the violent status quo isn’t likely to improve any time soon.
More than two weeks after her husband was arrested in Sudan, Nancy Williams Dawod, wife of Rudwan Dawod, was a guest on NPR’s Morning Edition. Dawod’s story—while it isn’t unique in the sense that thousands of people like him are currently in detention in Sudan—is helping to catalyze attention around the protests in Sudan and the good work that activists have been doing for years, which is now landing them in prison.
Psychology professor David DeSteno recently conducted some experiments to test compassion and examine how feelings of empathy affect actions toward people. The results, which he described in an op-ed for The New York Times, are encouraging and useful to consider with regards to spurring activism on behalf of people suffering from human rights crimes in faraway places.
Several of Sudan’s largest opposition parties joined forces earlier this month with a commitment to overthrow the current government of Omar al-Bashir. While that overarching goal unites them with the activists in the streets, there are significant discrepancies in what various groups think a post-revolution Sudan would look like. Simon Jennings of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting considers how these fissures are undercutting the overall impact of the anti-regime efforts.