5 Stories You Might Have Missed This Week
A weekly round-up of must-read stories, posted every Friday (or on occasion, on Saturday) ...
Lessons From Darfur: Is The U.N. Setting A New Example In Libya?
Drawing comparisons across foreign policy issues has limited use, of course, because there is so much variation from one situation to the next and thus, they illicit different responses. But in recent years, as a growing consensus has formed around the idea that the international community does indeed have a “responsibility to protect,” an important question has remained: Can we actually get our acts together and effectively protect civilians? ...
The Responsibility to Protect in Abyei
As Sudan’s northern and southern governments hurl accusations about who is responsible for recent flare-ups along the disputed border, U.N. officials issued a principled reminder to both governments of their responsibility to protect their people. In a joint statement issued yesterday, the U.N. secretary general’s advisers on genocide prevention and the responsibility to protect, Francis Deng and Edward Luck, reiterated common concerns among international actors this week on the volatile situation in Abyei ...
PBS NewsHour Profiles Satellite Sentinel Project
In a segment on PBS NewsHour last night, Tom Bearden reported on the Satellite Sentinel Project’s use of imagery from space to track and document the deliberate razing of villages in the Abyei region of Sudan. PBS NewsHour visited DigitalGlobe's satellite control room and analysis center in Colorado and sat down with the Enough Project’s Jonathan Hutson to discuss the significance of having private satellite companies monitor violence in Sudan in real-time ...
New Mobile Court May Try Conflict Minerals Cases in Mineral-rich Walikale
The Congolese military will set up a military justice mobile court next week in Walikale, the most mineral rich area of eastern Congo, according to an announcement by the Ministry of Mines. “Any soldier caught trading minerals is breaking the law and this means he should be punished,” said Mining Minister Martin Kabwelulu, as quoted by IRIN ...
From an LRA Camp to Harvard: The Education of Survivor, Advocate Florence Apuri
Florence Apuri was in high school when she first understood the challenges of educating a girl in northern Uganda. The second of nine children, Florence grew up in a small village in northern Uganda that has experienced the terror of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. While in her third year of high school, Florence’s uncles brutally beat her father for sending her to school instead of giving her away to marriage so that she could earn a dowry for the family. When she was in college, Florence’s future was again called into question when she was abducted by the ...
Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools Program Expands to Goz Amer Camp
The Darfur Dream Team is returning to Darfuri refugee camps in eastern Chad and this time, I get to go with them. It will be my first trip to the camps as the new Sister Schools Program Manager, and I am ready. Got my shots (ouch), my visa (yay), my ticket (woot), and letters from the U.S. students to their sister schools in Chad (excellent!). The opportunity to see those wonderful faces whose videos, messages, and lives have been an important part of my life for the past four months is incredible ...
In Sudan, Post-Referendum Political Tensions Hit New High
Two months into the post-referendum period, and just four months until Sudan splits, the list of contentious issues the North and South need to work through isn’t getting any shorter. Rather, presidential level talks mediated by the African Union high-level panel were called off this week as the southern ruling party unveiled a collection of documents it says prove the National Congress Party is backing of southern militias ...
Why Africa’s Great Lakes Region Needs a Special Envoy
At the blog Congo Siasa, Jason Stearns reinforces several points on the urgency of an envoy, including the need for a position capable of coordinating senior U.S. diplomatic engagement with Congo and its neighbors. Jason rightly notes that an envoy should report to Secretary Clinton in order to coordinate policy across the department. Adding to the conversation, I think this organizational chart for the Africa bureau from State’s foreign affairs manual explain why Congo policy is currently falling through the cracks ...
South Sudan Army on the Offensive Following Malakal Flare-ups
In the aftermath of recent flare-ups in Upper Nile between South Sudan’s army and southern militias, the southern government has quickly blamed its northern counterparts for the ongoing instability. And while northern complicity should be investigated, the strategy of the southern army vis à vis militias is also worth a look. The SPLA has decided to take on a more pre-emptive role rather than being on the defensive, as they were in recent months when they worked to entice splinter factions to come into the fold ahead of the referendum ...
