Five Stories You May Have Missed This Week

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.

Farah Stockman paints a picture of the streets of Juba as a country rampant with “Cowboy Capitalism” in her piece titled “The Wild West in South Sudan.”  She writes,

“The streets of Juba are teeming with the very thing that Americans believe makes the United States great: the immigrant entrepreneurial spirit, in overdrive. But it comes at a cost. The unregulated underbelly of capitalism flourishes here, too: money laundering, extortion, counterfeiting.”

Activists and campaigners working on Sudan have been asking why the West and Obama’s administration are moving towards normalized relations and closer engagement with Bashir’s government. Mike Pflanz’s piece for the Christian Science Monitor weighs the different fears and strategic importance of Sudan as potential reasons why Bashir’s arrest warrant remains unserved.

John Prendergast and Omer Ismail co-authored an op-ed on the dire situation in Darfur. Despite the rhetoric from journalists and diplomats that Darfur is now a place of peace, attacks by Janjaweed militias are currently escalating. The article emphasizes that the peace efforts in Darfur have intensified conflict rather than reducing it.

“The answer, therefore, is an internationally-backed new peace process that addresses the main issues comprehensively.”

This week, The Guardian published article that called for improved techniques of prosecution to hold perpetrators of war-time rape accountable. U.N. Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Bangura stated that army commanders use rape as a cheap and effective tactic of war and the results are catastrophic for communities.  Bangura further said,

“Prosecution is prevention, and it has been shown that when you end impunity for a crime the instances of that crime go down.’”

UNCHR spokesperson Melissa Fleming reported that UNCHR recently finished the relocation of Darfur refugees.  The refugees were moved from the volatile border area at Tissi to the newly established Ab Gadam camp, which now hosts 10,247 people.