City Councils: A New Pressure Point for the Conflict Minerals Movement?
As with other social movements, students have led the way. Across the United States, student leaders are stirring up interest on campuses, collecting pages of signatures, and petitioning their administrators and trustees to enact policies committing endowments and procurement plans to “conflict-free” investments and purchases. Now, city councils in Pittsburgh and St. Petersburg are setting the pace among U.S. cities to commit to ensuring that public funds are not perpetuating the conflict in eastern Congo ...
On First Anniversary of LRA Bill, What’s Changed?
It’s been a year today since President Obama signed the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, to much optimistic fanfare. This landmark legislation, supported by a broad bipartisan coalition, required President Obama to develop a strategy for eliminating the threat posed by the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, a brutal rebel group that has been terrorizing civilian populations in central Africa for nearly 25 years. So, one year later, what has changed? ...
Francis Deng and John Prendergast on Genocide Prevention
Last Friday, Under-Secretary General Francis Deng, the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and Enough Co-Founder John Prendergast engaged in a conversation on genocide prevention in a panel hosted by the U.N. Department of Public Information and Facing History and Ourselves. In the two hour-long discussion, Deng and Prendergast reflect on the tools and capacity the international community has developed in the ongoing effort to keep the ‘never again’ pledge ...
War Again Between North and South Sudan?
Sunday, as the Khartoum regime was solidifying its military occupation of Abyei and beginning to loot and burn the town, I heard from one of the foremost experts on Sudan in the world, Dr. Douglas Johnson. We agreed that Bashir's government felt certain that it would face no international consequences for its attack on Abyei, which threatens to plunge the North and South back to full-scale war. In the absence of any cost or accountability, to have believed that Khartoum would NOT strike would have been foolhardy ...
After Assault on Abyei, U.S. Must Adopt a Consequence-based Sudan Policy: Rights Groups
The U.S. government’s incentive-oriented policy toward Sudan has not achieved its objectives. The Khartoum regime has militarily occupied Abyei, escalated bombing and aid cut-offs in Darfur, and increased support for ethnic militias throughout the South. The process toward normalization between the U.S. and Sudan should be suspended and offered incentives should be supplanted by escalating consequences for government officials in Khartoum and any other party that promotes violence, commits human rights abuses, and targets civilians, said a group of prominent anti-genocide and human rights advocacy organizations ...
Darfur: Guisma’s Story (Episode 3)
Here’s the third installment of Guisma’s Story, a video series about a six-year old girl from Darfur, currently living in a refugee camp in eastern Chad, who dreams of returning to a peaceful Sudan one day. Our Sudan Now partner iAct produced this video series to share her inspiring story and dreams ...
Women Press for More Prominent Role in New South Sudan
Less than two months away from South Sudan’s independence, women in the soon-to-be state have united together to ensure their rights and gendered concerns are incorporated into the new constitution. Over the weekend the South Sudan Women’s Coalition—made up of a number of women’s professional and civil society groups—held a two-day workshop in Juba to discuss the draft transitional constitution and the constitutional review process ...
Four Villages Reportedly Bombarded in Abyei as U.N. Investigates Convoy Ambush
On Friday, three villages north of Abyei town were reportedly bombed, and a fourth reportedly bombed or shelled, according to multiple reports from sources on the ground, said the Enough Project. Sources say the Sudan Armed Forces conducted the bombings. These reports have not been officially confirmed. The reported bombings follow Thursday’s attack on a U.N. convoy escorting Sudanese Armed Forces that were part of a Joint Integrated Unit ...
Unauthorized Armed Forces Remain in Abyei Past Deadline
It “looked like the two sides were almost ready to go to war” in Sudan’s fraught border region of Abyei said the U.S. special envoy recently in a briefing. The situation was defused two weeks ago when the northern and southern Sudanese armies agreed to withdraw all unauthorized forces from the region by May 17. But as of yesterday, May 18, the withdrawal had not begun, according to a source on the ground ...
Sudan Army Launches Air Raids, as Darfur Rebels Vow Overthrow
A deadly wave of government-led bombings and ground attacks hit Darfur early this week, just on the heels of a vow by two prominent rebel leaders to work together for “regime change.” The humanitarian impact of the government’s air strikes and ground attacks were unclear and likely exacerbated by the fact that the government has blocked access for peacekeepers and aid groups to the affected areas ...
