Category: Blog

Divisions between leading contenders in South Kordofan’s elections are widening in the results period, following what was largely a calm vote in the tense Sudanese border state. The race pitted incumbent governor, NCP-backed alleged war criminal Ahmed Haroun against the SPLM candidate and deputy governor Abdelaziz al-Hilu in a heated contest. Party rhetoric sharpened shortly after polls closed, with both the NCP and SPLM preemptively claiming that their candidate for governor had won ...

Emmanuel Jal, a former child soldier, musician, and activist and I recorded the video (with a cameo by Enough's Joe Enten, AKA 'MoJoe) to drive home the point that while the independence vote in southern Sudan will usher in the world's newest country, the Republic of Southern Sudan faces many challenges. The main reason the referendum was successful was that the world shined a bright light on the situation and made it hard for the spoilers to ruin the moment. We are going to have to keep the focus on the situation there ...

“I have learned the most about the horrible conflicts in Darfur, the Congo, and northern Uganda from the hundreds of individuals who have traveled to Capitol Hill to shed light on these atrocities— many who have experienced the violence firsthand and others, including many young people, who are determined to make sure these crises get the attention they deserve," writes Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) as she reflects on her Enough Moment ...

Khartoum’s military campaign is without precedent, presently and historically: Never has a recognized government and member of the United Nations, over many years, deliberately and extensively bombed and strafed its own citizens with almost complete impunity. And these attacks continue today in Darfur on a large scale, and occasionally even in South Sudan, which was the primary target through 2002. Sudan scholar Eric Reeves wrote this guest post announcing the launch of a new database compiling information about the Sudanese government's aerial bombardments targeting civilians and humanitarians between 1999 and now ...

Last Wednesday, Politics on Film kicked off its third annual film festival with actress and activist Melissa Fitzgerald’s documentary “Staging Hope: Acts of Peace in Northern Uganda.” “Staging Hope” documents a two-week theater program, run by a group of American actors, for 14 Ugandan youth from the Labuje IDP camp in northern Uganda ...

Some have criticized the Enough Project’s advocacy on conflict minerals in the Congo as unintentionally destroying the livelihoods of artisanal miners. Critics say our efforts to promote regulation of the trade in minerals and to cut out abusive armed groups will result in a de facto embargo of Congo minerals and eliminate jobs in the mining sector. This conclusion, though, is based on a false premise; there actually aren’t any “jobs” to be eliminated in eastern Congo’s artisanal mines. Those working in the mines are essentially slaves with no real “livelihood” to lose ...

Awareness about the link between eastern Congo’s decade-long war, consumer electronics, and the trade in conflict minerals is growing. Perhaps most significantly, the conflict minerals provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act passed last year in no small part thanks to the efforts of activists, who pushed a notable shift in how people in Africa’s Great Lakes region perceived public concern over Congo’s minerals. The upside to the increasing attention on Congo’s conflict minerals is that a number of initiatives are underway to begin to trace, audit, and certify the mineral ores mined in Congo. However, without coordination or ...

Nowhere are the detrimental effects of Congo’s conflict minerals trade – the presence of multiple armed groups vying for power at the expense of civilians, the widespread use of rape to exert power and control local communities, the stark contrast between natural wealth alongside a deeply impoverished society – more prevalent than in the area of Walikale. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list of recommendations, but rather a reflection on the strongest takeaways and what could encourage more local-level buy-in for efforts to trace, audit, and certify the minerals trade: ...

Sixteen states are coming before the United Nations Human Rights Council for a review of their human rights records. The exercise, known as the Universal Periodic Review, brings forward a U.N. member state once every four years for a conversation about the human rights situation in its country. Among those scrutinized this week is Sudan, a country whose regime has shown little interest in the protection and respect of the human rights of its citizens ...

Guest blogger Greg Queyranne returned home to Ottawa after interning with Enough in Washington, D.C., and decided to dedicate himself to raising awareness about how Canadians -- both in leadership positions and as consumers -- could do to help reform the trade in conflict minerals from eastern Congo. "To streamline our efforts and better engage politicians and the public, a few colleagues and I founded a non-profit organization, the Centre for African Development and Security, or CADS, to promote awareness and action on this and other challenges affecting the African continent, as well as to raise funds to support a ...