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Category: Reports

A Criminal State: Understanding and countering institutionalized corruption and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo

D.R. Congo
A Criminal State: Understanding and countering institutionalized corruption and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo is not a failed state—for everyone. It is a failure for the vast majority of Congolese who suffer from abysmal security, health care, and education services. However, it is an efficient state for ruling elites and their commercial partners who seek to extract or traffic resources at the expense of Congo’s development ...

Activist Brief: A New Policy Approach to the Democratic Republic of Congo

D.R. Congo
If international policymakers are to have a real impact in helping Congolese reformers actually transform the system of violent kleptocracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo, they need to shift lenses. Policies should focus on creating significant consequences for those most responsible for the system of violence, corruption, and undermining of democracy. This can be done by creating new leverage using tools of financial pressure normally reserved for countering nuclear proliferation and terrorism aimed at isolating certain leaders from the international financial system, and increasing support for Congolese civil society organizations and journalists to hold the government accountable ...

Violent Kleptocracies: How they’re destroying parts of Africa and how they can be dismantled

D.R. Congo
Millions of people have suffered and perished in the ongoing wars in East and Central Africa, including Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and the Central African Republic. The big prize in these deadly conflicts is the control of a hijacked state and the natural resource wealth of the country ...

Activist Brief: Violent Kleptocracies

What is a Violent Kleptocracy? Enough defines violent kleptocracy as a system of state capture in which ruling networks and commercial partners hijack governing institutions for the purpose of resource extraction and for the security of the regime. Ruling networks utilize varying levels of violence to maintain power and repress dissenting voices ...

Bankrupting Kleptocracy: Financial tools to counter atrocities in Africa’s deadliest war zones

Bankrupting Kleptocracy: Financial tools to counter atrocities in Africa's deadliest war zones
Fighting corruption must become a cornerstone of U.S. engagement with countries that have been plagued by violent kleptocracy. The U.S. government should expand its support for the development of robust oversight institutions and accountability mechanisms and redouble its efforts to create and protect space for civil society and the press to act as watchdogs and articulate public concerns. However, in hijacked states, efforts toward this end are typically thwarted by elites who co-opt, sideline, or bypass institutions designed to restrain their ability to loot with impunity ...

Testimony of Brian Adeba – “The Growing Crisis in South Sudan”

South Sudan
Testimony of Brian Adeba, Associate Director of Policy, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations' hearing on “The Growing Crisis in South Sudan,” given on September 7, 2016 ...

Targeted Sanctions and Beyond: Financial and Judicial Tools for the U.S. and Europe to Help Enable Timely Elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

D.R. Congo
Political tensions are building in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where sitting President Joseph Kabila is attempting to subvert the country’s constitution, hold on to power, and reduce political space ahead of the scheduled end of his second presidential term. During the past 18 months, the situation has worsened, with multiple attempts to significantly delay elections; peaceful protesters arbitrarily arrested, beaten, or killed; and the expulsion of several key international researchers or officials, including those from the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office, Human Rights Watch, Global Witness, and the Congo Research Group ...

Khartoum’s Economic Achilles’ Heel: The intersection of war, profit, and greed

Khartoum’s Economic Achilles’ Heel: The intersection of war, profit, and greed
Sudan’s increasingly urgent economic crisis, which has recently grown more acute because of financial isolation related in part to tighter sanctions enforcement for Iran, has become the Sudanese regime’s greatest vulnerability. This economic vulnerability has caused sanctions relief to replace debt relief as the regime’s primary preoccupation, giving the U.S. government powerful leverage to support an inclusive peace deal in Sudan that leads to a transition to democracy ...

The Bangui Carousel: How the recycling of political elites reinforces instability and violence in the Central African Republic

The Bangui Carousel: How the recycling of political elites reinforces instability and violence in the Central African Republic
The successful February 2016 election of President Faustin Archange Touadéra marks a new beginning for the Central African Republic (CAR) and provides hope that the country is now stabilizing after three years of violence and political transition. Touadéra has been endorsed by many of his political opponents, and the country remained largely peaceful in the weeks following the elections ...

A Hope from Within? Countering the intentional destruction of governance and transparency in South Sudan

South Sudan
A Hope from Within? Countering the intentional destruction of governance and transparency in South Sudan
In April 2016, after considerable foot-dragging, opposition, and obstacles, the two main parties to the conflict in South Sudan that erupted in December 2013 formed a transitional government as mandated in the August 2015 peace agreement. Sustainable peace in South Sudan will continue to be elusive unless leaders make profound and fundamental changes to establish accountability and end impunity ...