Connecticut Save Darfur Coalition

Investing Against Genocide

2009-05-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

On May 8, 2009, the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur hosted Eric Cohen, the chair of Investors Against Genocide. These are notes taken at that meeting.

Cohen began by explaining his talk was about money and acknowledged talking about money is generally boring. People get statements and nobody reads them, but there is something going on in those documents that's important and relevant to you.

He then showed a video, courtesy of Fox News, with the following information and perspective.

Unlike the Holocaust or Rwanda, the genocide in Darfur has been widely identified while it's going on.

Fidelity is the largest investor in PetroChina, with four and a half million shares, valued at $500 million. Cohen is trying to convince Fidelity to pull this money out of PetroChina.

Early in the game, the group wrote Fidelity asking for a meeting, but Fidelity refused and said it had the fiduciary responsibility to obtain the best returns for its investors. Someone being interviewed pointed out Fidelity has other ways to make money; it doesn't have to invest in PetroChina.

Samantha Power, Harvard Professor: If anything is going to make a difference, it's divestment.

There is a bill pending in the Massachusetts legislature mandating divestiture from any company complicit in the genocide in Darfur.

After showing the video, Cohen when he first heard of the problem he thought Fidelity would divest from PetroChina as soon as it was made aware, but he learned he was wrong. His group then started going public, including the website.

They tried explaining to Fidelity that it surely would have divested if in 1942 they learned one of their companies was making Zyklon B gas, but Fidelity didn't want to engage; they said they were just finance guys. Eric has made it his mission to make sure this issue doesn't go away.

At a minimum, there have been 200,000 complaints that went to Fidelity, which wasn't fazed and hasn't change its policy.

He noted once you leave the executive offices, they people at Fidelity are people like us and they care. One fund manager in charge of three funds hadn't known about the connection between PetroChina and Darfur, but he got educated and in 2007 sold every share of PetroChina in those three funds, more than half a billion dollars worth. On a human level, he showed it could be done and his funds performed well compared to others in his sector.

At the same time, other funds at Fidelity didn't change and hasn't changed to this day. At one time they had about $1.3 billion invested in PetroChina and still have $600-700 million.

Investors Against Genocide came up with another strategy - shareholder proposals. Until they started doing this, nobody had come up with shareholder proposals on mutual funds. They're targeting mutual funds because that's where ordinary Americans put their money.

They wrote a shareholder resolution that a mutual fund not invest in companies that substantially contribute to genocide. (An electronic copy of the resolution may be obtained by sending an email to proposals@investorsagainstgenocide.org.) They had twenty-one funds in Fidelity on which the resolution was voted. Usually shareholder proposals get approval in the single digits. These got on average 25-30%. This was recognized by everyone but Fidelity as a really powerful message.

This helped with publicity. When you want to drive out bad behavior, shine a spotlight on it. It also took a discussion and turned it into an event.

So they decided this was a good strategy and now have proposals filed at 118 different funds, including Fidelity, Vanguard. This isn't a single institution problem, but an industry-wide problem.

This is another dimension of the problem of companies not wanting to engage with their customers. This type of initiative is foreign to them. Investors Against Genocide thinks there should be one more rule: we should draw the line at complicity with genocide.

Since it was so public and written about in the financial press, it was watched by other firms and had a spillover effect.

TIAA-CREF was a significant holder in PetroChina. They had written letters to PetroChina, but predictably with no effect. Eric Cohen published something about TIAA-CREF's holdings in PetroChina in the Chronicle of Higher Education. There was to be a proposal on the ballot, but TIAA-CREF changed its tune and the proposal has been dropped. TIAA-CREF is now a model for other companies. This was the first major win for the campaign.

There are now shareholder proposals at 30 different funds at Vanguard, which will be having votes this July.

In its communications, Vanguard is recommending a vote against the proposal on the grounds it allegedly substantially duplicates their current policies. However, their behavior hasn't changed and they've actually bought more shares in PetroChina.

Evidence of progress: Vanguard now says it can divest. Also for Vanguard, there will now be an opportunity to vote. There are also votes coming up at American Funds in August.

Investors Against Genocide can help shareholders fill out the forms needed to get a proposal on the ballot. Shareholders have to have at least $2,000 invested and have it invested for at least a year in order to have standing.

A question and answer period ensued.

Question from Steven Bayer: If you're successful, what happens to the Chinese company?

Eric Cohen: The question really is why would this do any good. It will make it more difficult when those companies need to raise more capital. It also affects the management directly in their pockets.

The broader picture is the entire industry needs reform in the area of socially responsible investing.

There is a question about whether divestment pressure works. China doesn't really care enough about their image with us to respond to pressure, but they do care about their business.

When it comes to helping Darfur, no one strategy is enough, but everything taken together might be enough. It's unlikely China will change, but it may have an effect on future genocides. We don't really want China to leave Sudan; we want China to force change in Sudan.

Hopefully, this campaign is touching some people who now know more about Darfur. Even if this doesn't do any good, how many of us want our money invested in companies doing business with Darfur.

David Schneider: Before taking my money out of Vanguard, I'm planning to send Vanguard a letter telling them I want them to do what TIAA-CREF did.

Eric Cohen: Whatever you do, don't do it quietly. We've sent a letter to John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, who has a solid reputation.

We used to tell people to complain and move their money; now we are asking people to use their vote. The most valuable thing groups can do is tell their people about the ability to vote.

Bob Fishman: Is there a way to approach the relevant people in the Obama administration and get them to make this part of their strategy?

Eric Cohen: There's little chance Fidelity will do anything publicly.

Cohen may be reached by email at ericcohen98@gmail.com. The Investors Against Genocide website is at www.investorsagainstgenocide.org

Gaza and Darfur: Some people matter more than others

2009-03-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

By Savo Heleta

This is from the Sudan Tribune.

March 25, 2009 — The recent conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza created fury and protests around the globe and especially in the Arab and Muslim world. A number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa saw some of the largest demonstrations in their history that condemned the killings of civilians and children by the Israeli forces.

At the same time, the Middle Eastern media, such as Al Jazeera, had a 24/7 coverage of the conflict.

One has to wonder why the Darfur conflict has never received similar attention.

Since 2003, Sudan’s western province of Darfur is an epicenter of a conflict between the mainly African rebels and the Arab-controlled government of Sudan and its proxy militias.

As in Gaza, the civilians in Darfur are paying the highest price. It is estimated that over the last six years about 200,000 people have died in Darfur from fighting, starvation, and diseases. The United Nations and aid agencies estimate that over two million Darfurians, out of a population of about six million, are currently living in refugee camps.

Even in the grimmest moments in Darfur, in 2003 and 2004, when the entire communities have been brutally destroyed by the government forces and their militias, a very few people in the Arab and Muslim world protested and condemned the killings of innocent Darfurians. Up to this day, not one Arab or Muslim leader has publicly criticized Sudan’s actions and atrocities in Darfur.

Suffering in the hands of an Arab regime

The Sudanese ruling elite portrays itself as an Arab regime both at home and abroad. Some would say this helps explain the lack of concern for the Darfur conflict in the Arab world. However, both sides in Darfur are Muslim and Darfurians, both Arabs and Africans, are Sudan’s most devout Muslims.

Rami Khouri, a Lebanese journalist, thinks that the silence in the Arab world "is not specific to Darfur or Sudan, but rather reflects a wider malaise that has long plagued the region: Arab governments tend to stay out of each other’s way when any one of them is accused of wrongdoing, and most Arab citizens have been numbed into helplessness in the face of public atrocities or criminal activity in their societies."

This changes only when Muslims suffer in the hands of non-Muslims – Americans, Russians, Serbs, or Israelis, to name a few. Then the Arab and Muslim governments and organizations are very active in condemning the atrocities while citizens show solidarity with the victims and demonstrate against "crusaders, infidels, or Zionists."

But when Muslims suffer on a large scale in the hands of an Arab regime, then there is barely any condemnation of the violence and crimes in the Arab and Muslim world.

Even though millions of innocent Muslims have been the victims in Darfur over the last six years, the fact that they are the victims of an Arab regime seems to prevent the Arab public and governments from often even acknowledging the suffering and humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur.

Darfurians matter less than Gazans

Ahmed Hussein Adam, the spokesperson of the Justice and Equality Movement, currently the most powerful Darfur rebel movement, have condemned the killings in Gaza but "observed with deep regret and sorrow the political, diplomatic, and humanitarian mobilizations for the civilians in Gaza, while [the Arab countries] adopted a dismissive attitude for the safety and security of civilians in Darfur."

Adam says that it is shameful that many in the Arab world seem to "consider blood of the people of Darfur [to be] less important than the blood of the people of Gaza."

Abdel Wahid Al-Nur, the leader of one faction of the Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, thinks that "if the Arab and Islamic countries mobilized 10% of what they [have done recently] for Gaza," they could have stopped the suffering of millions in Darfur long time ago.

Throughout the Darfur conflict, the Arab League stood by Sudan and defended its dismal actions. When the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor decided to seek an arrest of Sudan’s president for the alleged war crimes and genocide committed in Darfur, the League slammed the move and called it an "unbalanced stance."

After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, the Arab and Muslim world continued to support the Sudanese regime. Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Saudi Arabian foreign minister, said his country "stands by Sudan with our heart and soul" despite the indictment.

In the aftermath of the recent Gaza conflict, however, the Arab League immediately called on the United Nations to "form an international committee to investigate Israeli crimes in Gaza and set up a criminal court to try Israeli war criminals."

It is appalling that the people of Darfur, who have suffered unspeakable atrocities since 2003, do not matter to many in the Arab and Muslim world only, it seems, because their tormentors are Arab Muslims and not Jews or Christians.

The killings of children and civilians in Gaza have be condemned in the strongest terms possible. But what about the innocent people in Darfur and their anguish and suffering? They are human beings, too!

Savo Heleta is the author of "Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia" (March 2008, AMACOM Books, New York). He holds an Mphil degree in Conflict Transformation and Management from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

What the Warrant Means: Justice, Peace, and the Key Actors in Sudan

2009-02-18T12:34:00.000-08:00

From Enough Project

The issuance of an arrest warrant for Sudan’s sitting head of state for crimes against humanity offers the Obama administration a chance to catalyze multilateral efforts to bring about a solution to Sudan’s decades-long cycle of warfare. One of the crucial missing ingredients to conflict resolution efforts has been some form of accountability for the horrific crimes against humanity that have been perpetrated by the warring parties in Sudan, primarily the Khartoum regime. Peace without justice in Sudan would only bring an illusion of stability without addressing the primary forces driving the conflict.

The decision by the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court, or ICC, to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is unsurprising given the long pattern of profound abuses in Sudan directed from the highest echelons of government. Over the past several weeks, President Bashir has escalated violence in Darfur and increased human rights violations in Khartoum in a last-ditch effort to force the United Nations Security Council to defer the ICC’s investigation for one year “in the interest of peace.”1 However, as Enough argued when ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo requested the warrant in July 2008, the prior indictments of former Liberian President Charles Taylor and former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic demonstrate that the pursuit of justice can be a catalyst for peace—if the international community stands resolutely behind efforts to promote accountability for genocide and crimes against humanity.2 The situation in Sudan is no different. Senior officials within Bashir’s National Congress Party, or NCP, are deeply concerned about the possibility of further charges by the ICC, and a growing fissure between Bashir’s loyalists and potentially more pragmatic elements of the NCP could lead to the president’s removal.

To ensure that any potential leadership change within the regime will actually produce meaningful movement toward peace on the ground, the international community must fashion a firm and coordinated peace strategy conditioned on actions rather than words and policies rather than personalities. What should be clear to the international community, including the United States, is that President Bashir should be delivered to the court to face a fair trial on the charges against him. Furthermore, the international community needs to use multilateral diplomacy, well targeted pressures, and judicious incentives to bring both the NCP and Darfur’s rebel groups to the negotiating table, while making a major effort to revitalize the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA, as part of a broader and more strategic peace effort for all of Sudan.

How the warrant affects the key actors in Sudan

Sudan is teetering on a dangerous precipice: Violence in Darfur is escalating and CPA implementation is faltering. An NCP-backed coup attempt in neighboring Chad seems increasingly likely. (Rebels supported by Khartoum have reached the capital N’Djamena twice already, in 2006 and 2008). The response of key actors in Sudan to the ICC’s move against Bashir is still obviously a work in progress, but the choices made in the coming weeks by the NCP, as well as the main rebel groups in Darfur, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, or SPLM, will have profound impact on the country’s future. Understanding the calculations of these actors is fundamental to leveraging the arrest warrant into progress toward peace.

The National Congress Party

Sudan’s ruling NCP has faced substantial pressures both from within and without in anticipation of the warrant against Bashir. Internally, Bashir and his loyalists face growing opposition from a group led by Sudan’s Second Vice President Ali Osman Taha, its intelligence chief Salah Abdullah Gosh, and its energy minister Dr. Awad al-Jaz. Tensions between the two camps have been mounting for months, and Gosh blames Bashir and his senior advisor Nafie Ali Nafie for Sudan’s increasing international isolation.

With the warrant now out in the open, this jostling between these two main factions will likely intensify and could split the party. Although Bashir, an army general, still commands loyalty within the regular armed forces, this rival alliance is represented by powerful actors in Sudan’s political, security, and economic sectors. Taha and Gosh bear significant responsibility for crimes against humanity committed during the regime’s 20-year rule, yet they have shown willingness to work with the international community. Taha was the NCP’s point person in negotiating the CPA, and Gosh has become the United States’ favored interlocutor on counterterrorism. Within a ruling party increasingly focused on its own survival, Bashir may become a sacrificial lamb for a party in search of more pragmatic leadership.

Externally, Bashir’s efforts to force a deferral of the ICC investigation have run aground, and the new Obama administration has already raised the possibility of additional punitive measures against the regime. The African Union, the Arab League, and China have all maintained vocal support for a deferral, but the United States’ outspoken opposition has effectively neutralized these efforts.

Furthermore, the recent government attacks in Darfur have made it difficult for even some of Bashir’s most loyal allies to use their typical arguments while seeking to defer justice. In the weeks leading up to the arrest warrant, some of the regime’s most stalwart allies already began distancing themselves from Khartoum. Most important is Egypt, which for years used its influence in the Arab League to rally support for Bashir’s government. However, relations between the two countries have cooled since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met Bashir in Khartoum in November 2008. According to Sudanese officials, Mubarak called Bashir to task for failing to implement the CPA and for driving the South toward independence, a situation that would complicate maintaining the uninterrupted flow of the Nile River, Egypt’s main interest in Sudan. Mubarak also voiced concerns that the Sudanese Islamist movement is the gravest security threat in the region, and blamed the Sudanese government for instability in Chad, and the continued predations of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. If Egypt expresses a willingness to accept new leadership in Khartoum, other allies in the Arab world will likely follow suit, further weakening Bashir’s internal position.

Given these internal and external pressures as well as the regime’s historic patterns of behavior, there are three likely scenarios for how the NCP will react to the indictment:

Scenario one—President Bashir opts for confrontation with the international community: By intensifying the aggressive crackdown in Darfur that he began in Muhajiriya in advance of the warrant, increasing aerial bombardments of civilians, restricting or expelling humanitarians and peacekeepers, stepping up support for Chadian rebels, threatening to withdraw from the CPA, or backtracking on counterterrorism cooperation, Bashir could force the international community to take more assertive action or back down. At the same time, Bashir could work internally to assert firm control of the NCP by jailing opponents, imposing martial law, and increasing military presence in Khartoum and elsewhere. While many humanitarians and U.N. officials have expressed deep concerns about this scenario, it is important to note that such maximalist behavior by Bashir would only serve to further galvanize international support for decisive action against his government.

Scenario two—Internal pressure forces Bashir from office: Given the mounting pressure from within, Bashir could decide to peacefully step aside and cede control to a new NCP candidate, who would participate in the upcoming national elections. Alternatively, rivals within the party could attempt to take power by force. Salah Gosh is one of the strongest advocates for removing Bashir, and Sudan is no stranger to coup d’états. However, Bashir has reportedly told Gosh that he may step down if the divisions within the NCP become irreconcilable. Some Sudanese officials have cited the possibility of exile in Saudi Arabia, which is not a party to the ICC. The new leadership of the NCP could then adopt a more pragmatic approach to the international community by negotiating an end to the war in Darfur and recommitting itself—although unenthusiastically—to the CPA. Bashir’s peaceful departure would undoubtedly be in the best interests of the NCP and the country as a whole, but some Bashir loyalists have threatened to kill Vice President Ali Osman Taha if any attempt is made to remove Bashir from power. Here again, it is important to note that after charges were brought against both Charles Taylor and Slobodan Milosevic much was made of the fact that there was no clear mechanism to deliver them to The Hague—yet that is exactly where both men eventually found themselves. This was in large part because in both cases loyalists recognized the increasingly steep cost of resisting international norms on an issue as fundamental as crimes against humanity.

Scenario three—Bashir stalls for time: After years of what the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice calls “bluster and retreat,” by the international community, Bashir may well calculate that the pressure arising from the arrest warrant will eventually dissipate. The NCP has weathered heavy external pressure in the past and survived by exploiting the inherent divisions in the international community. It may be entirely possible that Bashir, rather than take dramatic action in response to the warrant, will bide his time, and commit the bulk of his energy and resources to facing internal challenges.

The Darfur rebel groups

Bashir’s indictment fundamentally alters the context for Darfur’s rebel groups, presenting a rare opportunity for the more politically savvy groups in the region to gain some legitimacy at the expense of the regime. Darfur’s most significant rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, or JEM, supports the issuance of an arrest warrant. At the same time, however, Mr. Ocampo is pursuing cases against the rebels, and the leaders of the JEM and the various factions of the Sudan Liberation Army, or SLA, have to weigh their support of a warrant for Bashir against the possibility that they are potentially subject to a similar fate.

Given the JEM’s dominant military and political status vis-à-vis the other rebel groups, its response to the warrant will strongly influence other rebels. The JEM’s recent behavior—renewed military offensives, bellicose threats against the government, and overtures to the international community—suggests that the rebels are keeping their options open. Although the JEM took control of Muhajiriya, South Darfur, by force in late January, the rebels withdrew when Khartoum requested that peacekeepers from the joint United Nations/African Union mission, or UNAMID, leave the area and threatened to level the town. Afterward, JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim met in the Chadian capital N’Djamena with a senior UNAMID official and stated that the JEM is “willing to establish a working relationship with UNAMID for the protection of civilians.”3

The JEM’s gesture toward UNAMID, a recent JEM visit to the United States (at the invitation of the outgoing Bush administration), and its decision to participate in “talks about talks” in Qatar suggest a broad effort to present itself as a credible political actor. However, the JEM continues to warn of greater military action down the road, including another attack on Khartoum if Bashir’s indictment leads to “chaos.”4 Although government forces routed the rebels when they attacked the Khartoum suburb of Omdurman last May, the JEM could seek to rally support for a new offensive meant to remove a president charged with war crimes from power. Provoking a heavy-handed response from the Sudanese government could also be a way to force external actors—particularly the United States—to increase pressure on the regime and potentially take military action to protect civilians against wholesale casualties. Generating a threat of force from the international community to buttress one’s own strength is nothing new: The Kosovo Liberation Army used this tactic to great effect during the run-up to NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement

The SPLM is largely in reactive mode, and senior officials within the party disagree on the possible effect of the arrest warrant. Salva Kiir, the president of the Government of Southern Sudan and Sudan’s first vice president in the national unity government, is deeply concerned that Bashir’s indictment signals the end of the CPA. Other SPLM officials are optimistic that second Vice President Ali Osman Taha will remove Bashir and recommit the NCP to CPA implementation. Taha’s influence has diminished since the death of SPLM leader John Garang, and the NCP has sought to undermine CPA implementation. Yet many within the SPLM believe that Taha understands the importance of the CPA to the survival of his party, and that he will make some sacrifices—as he did while negotiating the CPA—to keep the deal on track. If Bashir were to step down, the new NCP leadership would have to work with the SPLM to reorganize the government of national unity, which an interim president would lead until elections and the formation of a new government.

Next steps for the Obama administration

Although no one can accurately predict how various actors in Sudan will respond to the warrant for Bashir, the international community, including the Obama administration can—through effective multilateral diplomacy, a willingness to call Bashir’s bluff, and practical steps to increase pressure on Khartoum in pursuit of a comprehensive peace deal that includes both Darfur and revitalized CPA implementation—make the pursuit of peace the most attractive option for the NCP and Darfur’s rebel groups. The Obama administration’s response to the immediate challenge posed by the warrant should take into account the calculations and possible scenarios discussed above, but it should also flow from answers to broader and more strategic questions: What is the end game? What is the overall strategic goal? And what level of force is the administration and its allies willing to use, if the Sudanese government chooses to escalate confrontation? Answering these big picture questions up front is fundamental since many of the tactical responses to the situation on the ground and arrest warrant could inexorably lead to a much higher stakes game.

A comprehensive policy approach to Sudan must include several components:

* Consistent high-level diplomacy: Given the scale and complexity of the crisis in Sudan, the president should appoint a special envoy to serve as the United States’ point person on Sudan policy and lead U.S. efforts to forge a multilateral coalition that supports more robust measures to help end the war in Darfur and ensure full implementation of the CPA. This envoy must have direct access to President Obama, and appropriate staff and resources, including authority over the State Department’s Sudan Programs Group. This envoy would need a dedicated team and sufficient resources to carry out his or her work.
* Firm messaging to the NCP: Messages should be conveyed to the key actors within the NCP both publicly and privately. In terms of public messages, the administration should make it clear that it fully supports justice and accountability for Darfur’s genocide, and will not tolerate any obstruction of aid efforts, deployment of UNAMID, or implementation of the CPA. There will be consequences for such actions that will directly affect the leadership of those entities party to the conflict. Behind-the-scenes, the United States must make clear that continued attacks on civilians or peacekeepers, the anticipated proxy coup attempt in Chad, or efforts to cut off humanitarian aid will be viewed as a major escalation of hostilities by Khartoum and will be treated as such by Washington and its allies. Any credible peace effort will demand an unconditional ceasefire and a peace deal in Darfur that includes accountability mechanisms broadly acceptable to Darfuri citizens, real movement on CPA implementation, and the demonstrable return of large numbers of Darfuri IDPs and refugees to a secure environment.
* Firm messaging to the rebels: The Obama administration should make clear to Darfur’s rebel groups that it and the international community will apply a common set of standards to all sides of the Darfur conflict. The U.S. envoy should make clear to JEM and others that the international community will hold rebels accountable for crimes against humanity and that attempts to provoke external intervention will be met with consequences.
* Contingency planning: The Obama administration must take steps to detach humanitarian and peacekeeping operations from dependence on Khartoum. Contingency plans should be established to reposition all non-life-saving personnel, and to provide life- saving programs in non-permissive environments. The United States should consider providing air assets and logistical support to facilitate these steps if needed, and Washington’s allies should consider similar measures. Too often, UNAMID has been left in the position of pleading with the Sudanese government and rebels not to be a target of attacks. UNAMID should be in a position to respond with decisive force to provocations from any side and to effectively protect civilians. Until it can meet those basic standards, it cannot be considered an effective peacekeeping mission.
* Clear consequences: The international community should establish clear consequences if Sudan fails to deliver Bashir to justice. These measures should include rapid escalation of targeted sanctions, an expanded arms embargo, imposition of an oil blockade on Port Sudan, and targeted airstrikes against air assets used by the regime for offensive military operations, with escalating strikes against military and government installations if there is continued intransigence. To that end, the Obama administration should task Pentagon and NATO planners with developing options for a multinational force to carry out the military options outlined above. Such a force could also temporarily buttress UNAMID by providing the robust command-and-control capabilities UNAMID currently lacks and badly needs.
* Direct diplomacy with the SPLM: Although more robust measures aimed at Khartoum carry risks to the CPA, the United States ought to reaffirm its commitment to southern self-determination and take advantage of the SPLM’s role in the national unity government to encourage more pragmatic elements within the NCP to step forward.
* Deeper engagement with China: The Obama administration should engage more deeply with the Chinese to make clear that the U.S. goal in Sudan is stability and lasting peace—goals which Beijing should also support and which the two countries could work together to secure. An American envoy should invite closer collaboration between the United States and China in support of Darfur peace and CPA implementation. Bashir is increasingly an obstacle to those goals and his behavior risks creating more danger and instability for the international community.

An historic choice

The situation in Darfur is changing daily, and it is impossible to predict what will occur in the immediate post-warrant period within the ranks of the NCP and among the key rebel factions. One thing, however, is certain: This is a moment of opportunity during which the United States has a crucially important choice to make. It can help lead the international community in the pursuit of a credible and strategic approach to peace and justice, or it can let the situation worsen absent serious pressure from outside actors. Now is the time for the Obama administration to follow through on its promises to end the crisis in Darfur and lead international efforts toward a peaceful future in Sudan.

Endnotes

1 Article 16 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court provides that “[n]o investigation or prosecution may be commenced or proceeded with under this Statute for a period of 12 months after the Security Council, in a resolution adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, has requested the Court to that effect; that request may be renewed by the Council under the same conditions.” The Sudanese government so far has failed in getting Security Council support for a 12-month suspension of the investigation, in large part because of the dismal situation on the ground in Darfur and the government’s lack of seriousness in addressing the peace process.
2 See Enough’s strategy paper by John Norris, John Prendergast, and David Sullivan, “The Merits of Justice” (July 2008).
3 See ReliefWeb, “UNAMID JSR Adada meets with JEM Chairman in N’Djamena, Chad,” February 5, 2009.
4 See “Darfur JEM claims free reign in the region, warns government,” Sudan Tribune, January 31, 2009

OUT OF EXILE: Narratives From the Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan

2009-02-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

2009-01-29T16:51:00.000-08:00

[Click on photograph to view audio slideshow.]

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is home to the deadliest war in the world today. An estimated 5.4 million people have died since 1998, the largest death toll since the Second World War, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

IRC reports that as many as 45,000 people die each month in the Congo. Most deaths are due to easily preventable and curable conditions, such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, malnutrition, and neonatal problems and are byproducts of a collapsed healthcare system and a devastated economy.

The people living in the mining towns of eastern Congo are among the worst off. Militia groups and government forces battle on a daily basis for control of the mineral-rich areas where they can exploit gold, coltan, cassiterite and diamonds.

After successive waves of fighting and ten years of war, there are no hospitals, few roads and limited NGO and UN presence because it is too dangerous to work in many of these regions. The West's desire for minerals and gems has contributed to a fundamental breakdown in the social structure.

ACTIVIST BRIEF: President Obama's Immediate Sudan Challenge

2009-01-22T15:48:00.000-08:00

by John Prendergast, John Norris, and Jerry Fowler

Jan 22, 2009
The ENOUGH Project

Within the first month of the President Obama’s administration, the International Criminal Court, or ICC, is expected to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President, Omar al-Bashir. If the warrant is issued, President Bashir has threatened to cut off humanitarian aid and escalate the conflict. The possibility of a further deterioration of the situation on the ground represents an immediate challenge for the Obama administration. How the United States responds to Bashir’s threats will factor greatly into what the Sudanese regime actually does in response to the ICC action and will also help shape what the international community is prepared to do. President Obama’s response must be firm in addressing this immediate threat, but should not lose sight of the larger strategic goals that ought to be at the center of a new administration’s policy: an unyielding focus on brokering a peace deal for Darfur and the implementation of the existing Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA, the 2005 agreement to end the 22-year war between northern and southern Sudan.

FOCUSING ON THE LONG TERM SOLUTION

While immediate attention must be paid to the potential negative impact of the ICC arrest warrant, President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations Susan Rice must also establish and implement a holistic strategy to bring long-lasting peace to Sudan. Focusing on an all-Sudan solution and ensuring that U.S. policy shifts from managing Sudan’s conflict to ending it will be important in framing the overall strategy approach.

The United States must take leadership in launching an international “peace surge” for Sudan. Leverage for bringing peace to Sudan can come from the following actions:

* Supporting for the ICC’s investigation into crimes against humanity
* Enhancing international efforts to isolate the regime economically
* Expanding the arms embargo
* Making the joint United Nations/African Union peacekeeping force more effective
* Enforcing the U.N. ban on offensive military flights over Darfur

Members of the Obama administration have spoken passionately about their intention to act boldly to end the crisis in Darfur and promote international efforts toward a peaceful future in Sudan. Now they will have the chance to do so at a crucial juncture in Sudan’s history.

TAKE ACTION: Call the White House today by dialing 1-800-GENOCIDE (1-800- 436-6243). Tell President Obama to appoint a special envoy as a first step in addressing the crisis in Sudan.

Darfur from Day One: Fax Obama!

2009-01-20T12:13:00.000-08:00

Day 1 - January 20

Fax the Obama administration on Day 1, and let them know what you expect them to do in terms of Darfur. Remind them of the promises they have made. Make sure that on Day 1, President Obama and Secretary Clinton realize this is a priority for the American people.

1. Go to http://faxzero.com/
2. Fill out the information in the "Sender" and "Receiver" information fields.
* Sender Name: your name
* Sender Company: STAND: a Student Anti-Genocide Coalition
* Sender Fax #: 202-682-9258
* Sender Email: your email
* Receiver Name: President Obama
* Receiver Company: The White House
* Receiver Fax #: 202-456-2461
3. Download the page that we're faxing in, save it, and then attach it in the "Fax Information" box
4. You will be prompted for a confirmation code in the "Fax Information" box
5. Click on "Send Free Fax Now" on the bottom left
6. You will be sent an email form FaxZero.com with a link. You need to click on this link in order to send the fax.

Webcast Jan 22 Darfur Policy Expectations for the Obama Administration

2009-01-20T11:50:00.000-08:00

WITH:
John Prendergast and Jerry Fowler

WEBCAST: Save Darfur Coalition and The Enough Project Panel On the President-elect Obama and Darfur

WHAT: Webcast on Darfur Policy Expectations for the Obama Administration

WHEN: Thursday, January 22, 2009 – 2 p.m. EST to 2:45 p.m. EST

WHERE: http://www.enoughproject.org/content/webcast-enough-project

Please register at http://www.enoughproject.org/webcast if you plan to participate

WHO:

John Prendergast, Co-chair of the Enough Project, an Africa policy expert, activist, and author who has participated in numerous peace processes in Africa, including his service at the National Security Council and the Department of State during the Clinton Administration.

Jerry Fowler, President, Save Darfur Coalition, an expert on genocide and international law. An international human rights lawyer and author, he previously served the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Lawyers’ Committee on Human Rights.

About the Web Cast:
The new administration opens a real opportunity for the United States to use its tremendous experience in peacemaking to finally resolve the Darfur conflict. A policy letter has been sent to the new President from the Save Darfur Coalition and the Enough Project advocating an end to genocide, war, and crises in Sudan. It details a practical plan to bring peace to the region. Our two experts will discuss the plan and their expectations for the new administration: who the key players will be, the likely timetable and what priority peacemaking in the Sudan will get.

###
The Save Darfur Coalition is an alliance of 180 faith-based, advocacy and human rights organizations - raises public awareness about the ongoing genocide in Darfur and mobilizes a unified response to the atrocities that threaten the lives of people throughout the Darfur region. The coalition's member organizations represent 130 million people of all ages, races, religions and political affiliations united together to help the people of Darfur. For more information on the coalition, please visitwww.SaveDarfur.org

Enough is a project of the Center for American Progress to end genocide and crimes against humanity. Founded in 2007, Enough focuses on crises in Sudan, Chad, eastern Congo, northern Uganda, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. Enough’s strategy papers and briefings provide sharp field analysis and targeted policy recommendations based on a “3P” crisis response strategy: promoting durable peace, providing civilian protection, and punishing perpetrators of atrocities. Enough works with concerned citizens, advocates, and policy makers to prevent, mitigate, and resolve these crises. To learn more about Enough and what you can do to help, visit www.enoughproject.org.

The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all. We believe that Americans are bound together by a common commitment to these values and we aspire to ensure that our national policies reflect these values. We work to find progressive and pragmatic solutions to significant domestic and international problems and develop policy proposals that foster a government that is "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

SIGN PETITION TO OUR PRESIDENT

2009-01-19T16:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/node/petition

DEADLINE: 1.20.2009

Add your name to this petition to ask our next president to announce his administration’s initial plan to end the scourge of violence against women and girls in eastern Congo on International Women’s Day on March 8, 2009, and then report back on his progress toward this goal one year later.

TIME TO FORCEFULLY OUST MUGABE

2009-01-15T13:14:00.000-08:00

Successful intervention by neighboring African states has been done before.

By John Prendergast

Christian Science Monitor
January 16, 2009 edition

Washington - In the past decade, working as a US diplomat and then as a human rights advocate, I've had the perversely unique opportunity to meet on occasion with one of the longest-serving dictators in the world, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

These three- or four-hour marathon meetings were right out of central casting, with an out-of-touch octogenarian autocrat spouting vitriol against the British, democracy, and American corporate interests while sipping tea and speaking in an English accent even Queen Elizabeth would envy.

In one of the early meetings, no one in the room at that time took seriously his vague threat that he would rather watch his house burn down then give away the key to the presidential mansion. Mugabe's latest announcement that he is forming a new government without the opposition despite their power-sharing deal clarifies what he meant: that he would never leave power willingly as long as he was alive, and that he would destroy the country if he had to in order to maintain his grip on power.

He's made good on his promise: Half the country faces starvation, the government – which once boasted a literacy rate higher than America's – spends 18 cents per student per year on education, food prices double every 24 hours with the world's highest inflation rate, and a cholera epidemic rages as the once-stellar healthcare system collapses.

The situation is dire but not hopeless, if the international community – including the incoming Obama administration – is willing to move beyond the failed strategy aimed at cobbling together a coalition government with a man whose entire worldview is predicated on maintaining absolute power by any means necessary.

For a real solution in Zimbabwe, there are two credible choices: isolation or intervention. Neither is cost-free, and both are fraught with dangers. But now that the house is burning, we must take away Mugabe's key.

A strategy of isolation would involve widening and deepening targeted sanctions against regime officials and building a coalition to enforce them. Beyond that, Zimbabwe's southern African neighbors could close their borders with Zimbabwe to all but refugees and humanitarian supplies, and interdict all energy and arms exports to Zimbabwe.

Furthermore, the UN Security Council could refer the case of Zimbabwe to the International Criminal Court in order to investigate the systematic denial of food to people on the basis of their political affiliation as well as the widespread use of torture by the state.

There are significant risks in this approach. The humanitarian crisis could deepen, pushing millions into actual starvation. Mugabe could order his militias and security services to intensify their attacks against civilian populations deemed unsupportive of the regime. His government could block access by humanitarian groups and thousands could die of cholera and other epidemics.

The truth, however, is that much of this is already happening, but in slow motion. Mortality rates are creeping upward because of an explosion of untreated AIDS cases, combined with spiraling malnutrition rates. Zimbabwe already has among the lowest life expectancy rates in the world, hovering around 40 years by the UN's last count.

There may be a faster solution. When the situation in Idi Amin's Uganda spiraled out of control and he began destabilizing neighbors, Tanzania intervened in 1979 and overthrew Amin's regime. When Charles Taylor's destruction of Liberia and Sierra Leone became untenable, Nigeria and other neighbors sent troops, and the US sent warships off Liberia's coast in a concerted regional push to successfully urge Taylor to resign and leave the country in 2003. When Congo's Mobutu Sese Seko's divide-and-conquer approach to government began creating security problems for neighbors, they supported rebel groups to overthrow him in 1997.

As refugees, crime, and disease flow across their borders from Zimbabwe, the time has come for neighboring governments to expedite Mugabe's departure. South Africa remains the key, and the incoming Obama administration would do well to hold early talks with President Kgalema Motlanthe and ruling party leader Jacob Zuma about how this might be accomplished.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who is returning to Zimbabwe for more talks with Mugabe next week, should be congratulated for his exhaustive efforts to find a negotiated solution to the conflict. But the likelihood of successful talks remains low, and the international community should not delay putting the wheels in motion to oust Mugabe. It will probably be messy in the short run and not without unintended consequences. But the status quo will guarantee that any hope for Zimbabwe – and huge numbers of its people – will eventually cease to exist.

• John Prendergast is co-chair of Enough, a Center for American Progress project focused on ending genocide and crimes against humanity (www.enoughproject.org). He is the coauthor with Don Cheadle of "Not on Our Watch."

WRONGING RIGHTS BLOG

2009-01-15T10:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.wrongingrights.blogspot.com

People Are Saying....

"Exceptionally well-written, and more amusing than a blog that focuses on various atrocities has any right to be."
- Kevin Jon Heller (Opinio Juris)

"I would totally have fun drinking with these bloggers. There's no question."
- Una Hardester (The Interdependent)

"If you can come to terms with laughing while reading about the most egregious human rights abuses imaginable--and you really should, because it takes serious skill to be this insightful and snarky at the same time--hilarity abounds at Wronging Rights."
- Michelle F. (Stop Genocide)

Contributors

* Kate Cronin-Furman
* Amanda Taub
* Amanda & Kate

2009-01-14T20:01:00.001-08:00

PLEASE VOTE TO END GENOCIDE:
www.change.org/ideas/view/end_the_genocide_in _darfur.

2009-01-14T19:46:00.000-08:00

Urge President-elect Obama to take action on the crisis in eastern Congo.

Sign the RAISE Hope for Congo petition, and encourage your friends to sign before January 20th: http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/node/13

STAY TUNED...

2009-01-14T15:47:00.000-08:00

EVENTS UPCOMING:

FILM SCREENING OF "THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO" TO SUPPORT THE GIRLS AND WOMEN OF THE CONGO IN HONOR OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH PLAYWRIGHT WINTER MILLER AND YALESTAND, PRESENTING OF WINTER'S ACCLAIMED PLAY, "IN DARFUR", AT YALE.

DARFUR AND CONGO

2009-01-14T15:42:00.000-08:00

"It is often the case we can do something even if we can't do everything, and we ought not do nothing just because we can't do everything."
- John Prendergast

Conflict in Congo and how YOU can take action

2009-01-14T09:32:00.000-08:00

The Raise Hope for Congo (www.raisehopeforcongo.org) campaign works to protect and empower Congolese women and girls.

"The conflict in eastern Congo, the deadliest in the world since World War II, is being fueled by a multi-million dollar trade in minerals that go into our electronic products from cell phones to digital cameras. Over five million people have died as a result of the war, and the United Nations estimates that 200,000 women have been raped in eastern Congo over the past decade. The armed groups that are perpetuating the violence generate over $100 million each year by trading in three main minerals, the 3 Ts:

"• Tin – used as a solder on circuit boards inside cell phones and laptops. 70% of the world’s tin is used as solder, and 5-10% of tin ore comes from eastern Congo.
• Tantalum – used to store electricity in iPods, digital cameras, and cell phones. 70% of the world’s tantalum is used in electronic products, and 15% comes from Congo.
• Tungsten – used to make your cell phone or Blackberry vibrate. Tungsten is a growing source of income for armed groups in Congo.

"In late 2008, UN investigations revealed that key tin smelting companies, who sell tin to the major electronics companies, are buying tin ore directly from rebel-held areas in eastern Congo. The money that the rebels generated from those tin sales is now allowing them to buy even more weapons and continue to kill, rape and loot across eastern Congo.

"What you can do:

"Email, fax or call the biggest buyers of these minerals – major electronics companies – and demand better. As always, please be polite and friendly, you are more likely to get a response. Here’s what you can write:

"As a consumer of your product, I am concerned that your company and the electronics industry as a whole may be buying minerals from the war-torn region of eastern Congo. Over five million people have died in eastern Congo thus far, hundreds of thousands of women have been raped, and the violence is worsening today.

"Tin, tantalum, and tungsten – the 3 Ts – are all key metals used in your products, and armed groups in eastern Congo rely heavily on funds from the illicit trade in these minerals to finance their activities.

"I would very much appreciate if you could share with me the concrete steps you are taking to ensure that your supply chain is transparent, reliably traced and “conflict free.” Like many of your customers, I want to know for sure that my cell phone or digital camera is not helping fund violence in Congo.

"This will be a key first step, but we will need your help later, too.
Emailing the electronics companies is an important step, but it will not be the last. Sign up for our action alerts at www.raisehopeforcongo.org so we can update you on the companies’ responses, as well as send you future action alerts to hold unresponsive companies accountable, support conflict minerals legislation in Congress, and pass shareholder resolutions."

Thanks so much!

OBAMA, AFRICA AND PEACE

2009-01-13T18:05:00.000-08:00

Authors: John Prendergast and John Norris
ENOUGH Project

Reframing the Overall Approach to U.S. Relations with Africa

The Obama administration has an opportunity to fundamentally remake U.S. relations with Africa during its tenure, and a cornerstone of that effort needs to be a much greater emphasis on the most cost-effective element of our foreign policy tools: peacemaking. An investment in ending some of the world’s deadliest, most destructive, and costliest wars would yield great results in those countries and the positive repercussions from such engagement would rebound across the continent.

As the first president of the United States with immediate African roots, President Obama not only has an important reservoir of goodwill on the continent, he also has the ability to move beyond the tendentious “North-South” debate between developed and less developed countries that has made more transformational policies difficult to attain. Efforts by the dying generation of Africa’s strong men who believe they should rule for life, such as Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, to portray President Obama as a former colonial master will have little resonance in Africa or elsewhere. President Obama will represent a fresh start, but the problems facing Africa and how best to address them will be no less acute.

Equally important, an Obama administration can also leave behind the “for-us-or-against-us” strategies of the Bush administration that tended to ignore the worst behavior of “allies” while demonizing every action of those who were deemed “enemies.” The Bush approach was in many ways a return to a Cold War calculus and approach to relations with the continent that did little to ameliorate the fundamental forces driving conflict on the continent or to improve the overall capacity of states to address such tensions. To be fair, the Bush administration did make a considerable investment in HIV/AIDS prevention in Africa through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS relief, or PEPFAR, and also deeply engaged in pursuit of an eventual peace deal between the Sudanese government and southern-based rebels. The Obama administration will need a much more nuanced approach, and it will need to work more closely with both governments and civil society on the continent to shape a shared agenda.

Given its thinly veiled hostility toward most forms of multilateral institution building, the Bush administration also placed limited emphasis on these issues in the context of Africa, despite a glaring need for Africa’s regional institutions to improve their capability and effectiveness. The Bush administration’s low regard for the United Nations in general also largely precluded the Security Council from playing an effective role in addressing Africa’s multiple crises.

It is essential that the new administration invest significantly in peacemaking and take a smarter, more comprehensive approach to this peacemaking. However, it is vital that these investments in peacekeeping are accompanied by long- term investments in development, crisis prevention, and in shaping African regional institutions that are built around shared values. Too often, membership in African regional organizations has simply been a matter of geography—with democracies and autocracies lumped together. Yet, it is impossible to imagine effective regional institutions in Africa that lack a shared commitment to certain essential values, including democratic government, the responsibility to protect their own populations, and relatively open trade. Indeed, regional organizations in Europe and Latin America have only become more effective when certain membership criteria were added on top of geographic considerations.

The African Union in particular, has a wildly mixed record in this regard. As an organization, it has been far too willing to practice lowest common denominator policies, such as its relative tolerance of the Sudan regime’s massive human rights abuses in Darfur. Similarly, both the African Union and the Southern African Development Community have struggled to come to terms with President Robert Mugabe’s ruinous rule in Zimbabwe. Yet, the recent decision by the African Union to suspend Guinea’s membership unless the military officers who conducted the coup in that country restore “constitutional rule” is exactly the kind of behavior a regional organization should be demanding. This also suggests that with the right kind of long-term support from the United States the mantra of “African solutions to African problems” could move beyond empty rhetoric. This will require two important developments:

* African regional institutions need to become increasingly responsive to the needs of African citizens and not just the prerogatives of African heads of state.

* The broader international community must recognize that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are not “African problems.” They are international problems that demand international solutions.

Reshaping the overall approach to Africa will also demand that the Obama administration face some hard choices. Development resources are increasingly dominated by spending on HIV/AIDS. While responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic is a crucial priority, if U.S. development assistance becomes skewed too far in this direction, it will become very difficult to make long- term investments in state-building, the rule of law, basic education, and economic growth—the elements that are fundamental to changing Africa’s course over the long haul.

The administration will also need to take a hard look at continued agricultural subsidies in the United States. These subsidies continue to drain federal funds at a time when there are unprecedented budget pressures, while simultaneously making it harder for many African states to compete in one of the few areas where they enjoy a comparative advantage. Cutting these subsidies would benefit Americans in three ways: They would pay fewer tax dollars to support unneeded subsidies; they would enjoy the fruits of greater competition as consumers; and, over time, they would need to invest fewer dollars in development and humanitarian relief as Africa has the chance to achieve greater prosperity The same can be said for European agricultural subsidies. While it may sound strange to tie the issue of agricultural subsidies back to the questions of war and peace on the continent, it is essential to do so. For too long, U.S. efforts in development, economic development, trade, humanitarian relief, and diplomacy on the continent have been poorly connected threads, and all of these efforts have collectively suffered as a result.

A Focus on peacemaking

Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Chad, and northern Uganda are part of a region of east and central Africa that is battered by chronic conflict, with millions dead and even more displaced over the last couple decades. It is the deadliest zone of conflict in the world since World War II. Congo and Sudan alone account for nearly 8 million deaths due to the legacy of war in the past two decades.

As part of its fundamental rethink of Africa policy, the Obama administration will need to shift U.S. policy from simply managing the symptoms of Africa’s biggest wars—in the form of billions of dollars in humanitarian aid and peace observation missions that are often unable to effectively protect civilians—to ending these conflicts. The existing model of conflict resolution in Africa has focused on one conflict at a time, treating Africa’s wars as if they occur in isolation. Extreme examples of this include dealing with Sudan’s north-south war while setting the issue of Darfur and eastern Sudan to the side; focusing on the situation in Somalia without effectively addressing the standoff between Ethiopia and Eritrea that fuels the conflict; and negotiating in northern Uganda without involving or sanctioning Sudan’s ruling party, which has long supported the Lord’s Resistance Army as a proxy force. Most of Africa’s wars are complex and regional in nature, and they cannot be addressed by a bureaucratic process that encourages stove-piping rather than coordination and synthesis.

The new administration needs to make an investment in competent, sustained conflict resolution, backed by focused leverage that transforms the logic of regional combatants from war to peace.

Enhancing U.S. capacities for peace

The basic elements of an enhanced peacemaking strategy would include the following:

a) Diplomatic capacity: Additional diplomatic slots should be assigned and staffed in embassies throughout East and Central Africa with the primary emphasis of these positions on support for various peace processes in the region. Country teams in each embassy would work closely with Washington and with existing regional efforts to step up support for peace efforts. U.S. diplomats would meet quarterly in the region to coordinate peacemaking strategies, strategize, and share information. Country and issue experts would be hired and shared regionally to support the ongoing and new peace processes with a focus on making them more effective. In general, the U.S. embassies on the continent are not only grossly understaffed, but are badly lacking country and issue experts with specific peace-building experience.

b) Inter-Agency task force: A senior official from the State Department or National Security Council should oversee and coordinate a Task Force that helps shape the diplomatic strategy in each of the conflicts of East and Central Africa: Sudan, Congo, Somalia, Chad, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Central African Republic, and the Lord’s Resistance Army threat. The situation in Zimbabwe would also likely be included in this group. The Task Force can ensure the sharing of resources, personnel, and intelligence across the region to guarantee maximum coordination and provide strategic direction to multilateral efforts on each of the processes. Additional country and issue experts should be contracted to support the work of the task force and to purposefully think outside the box of existing approaches. Staff should also be placed in New York and Brussels to support enhanced diplomacy within the U.N. Security Council and European Union.

c) Special envoys: When appropriate, the president should appoint special envoys to add gravitas to peace efforts for specific conflicts. Envoys would work closely with the enhanced regional and D.C.-based capacities, and would be deployed when key messages need to be delivered or support for negotiations is required. Special envoys are by no means a magic bullet, and the effectiveness of many envoys in the past has been undercut by simmering tensions with existing bureaucratic structures and officials. This suggests that special envoys should only be deployed when they are sufficiently senior to command respect within the system and actually serve as a focal point for coordination and effective policymaking. The relationship between any such special envoy and the task force described above would need to be clearly articulated before such a person was deployed.

d) Washington Meetings: When appropriate, the Obama administration should host ministerial or working-level meetings in Washington with key actors, including key diplomatic allies, to help jump-start stalled peace processes or launch new ones. The ability of the United States to bring warring parties to the negotiating table has been sadly underutilized in recent years.

e) Clear top-level leadership: Senior-level officials in the administration should run point for their departments and agencies to ensure maximal coordination and rapid response. Cabinet officials should clearly assign responsibility for leading on African conflict resolution issues to a senior official within his or her department or agency, thus minimizing confusion over responsibility. At times, these assigned officials could take a more direct role in support of negotiations if appropriate, and in close coordination with the Task Force described above.

The three deadliest conflicts in Africa

Sudan, eastern Congo, and Somalia are the three deadliest conflicts on the continent and deserve immediate attention and a new strategy. At the same time, the administration will also need to develop new plans and a new approach to dealing with the Lord’s Resistance Army, relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and the general situation in Zimbabwe. Forthcoming Enough papers will address the Lord’s Resistance Army and Zimbabwe.

With regard to the three biggest conflicts on the African continent, we offer the following recommendations:

1. Sudan

Nowhere else is a new approach to making peace more needed than in Darfur and southern Sudan, where Enough has called for a concerted “peace surge.” There remains no comprehensive, internationally supported initiative for making peace in Darfur, and no effective and high-level strategy for implementing the existing peace deal for southern Sudan. The Obama administration should focus on helping build an effective peace process, maximally coordinating with China as the biggest investor in Sudan, with Qatar and its fledgling efforts, and other key Arab states that have economic leverage with the Khartoum regime and who do not want to see their investments put at risk by a widening conflict in Sudan.

The timing is auspicious. The International Criminal Court will likely issue an indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir early in 2009, and the United States will have an opportunity to quietly build an effective coalition of countries that demands peace and justice for Sudan in the form of a peace deal that addresses the root causes in Darfur, the implementation of the north-south peace deal, steps to ensure accountability, and a practical strategy to remove Bashir as president.

Beyond support for the ICC indictments of Bashir and some of the rebel leaders, leverage should be built through intensive work in the U.N. Security Council to go after the assets of Sudan’s ruling party (particularly President Bashir, his family, and associates) and rebel leaders who are undermining peace in Darfur. Other leverage-building initiatives could include the initiation of NATO planning for a credible no-fly zone with muscular follow-up actions in the event that the Sudanese regime cuts off humanitarian aid access in response to the imposition of the U.N. ban on offensive military flights. The effort to fully staff the U.N. force in Darfur at 26,000 should be accompanied by a shift in the U.N. forces mandate that would allow it to protect civilians who want to go home to their villages of origin, which should be the ultimate goal of our Darfur policy. In addition, the administration should take a hard look at steps to increase pressure on Port Sudan, a vital transportation link for Sudanese oil exports, recognizing that this would require intensive diplomacy with China given its impact on oil shipments.

Lastly, the administration will need to take a much more integrated look at the problems spilling over the borders in Chad, the Central African Republic, and western Sudan, recognizing that state weakness and internal conflicts in both Chad and the CAR continue to make the Darfur conflict more difficult to resolve.

2. Eastern Congo

Local, national, regional, and international factors continue to fuel the deadly war in eastern Congo. At the local level, disputes over land and citizenship contribute to considerable tensions. At the national level, poor governance and fundamental insecurity have created a vacuum in which numerous spoilers have considerable room to operate. At the regional level, militias such as the Rwandan FDLR, the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army, and very bad relations between Kinshasa and Kigali have created an environment of permanent instability and hostility. Lastly, the international trade in minerals has created a self-financing mechanism for militias and others hoping to continue to exploit violence to their own gain. The Obama administration should focus on more robustly supporting existing conflict resolution efforts led by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, and taking action to help end the atrocities being committed against civilian populations. Priorities would include:

* High-level support for a negotiated deal with the main rebel groups and a practical road map for implementing this deal
* Leadership in fostering and provision of technical support for a multilateral military and sanctions strategy to deal with the FDLR and CNDP
* Political and intelligence support for the International Criminal Court’s investigations into war crimes in the Kivus
* Real support for security sector reform and DDR strategies
* An investigation into what must be done to end the predatory extraction of “conflict minerals” in the East, the insatiable demand for which traces back to the electronics industry in the United States, Asia, and Europe.

Improving the situation in eastern Congo will demand some very tough diplomacy, and a firm message from Washington that the administration will not tolerate either the Government of Congo or Rwanda offering direct support to militia groups on the ground. The use of these proxy militias continues to be a cancer in the region.

3. Somalia

As Ethiopia withdraws from Somalia, there will be an opportunity to create a more rational diplomatic and security strategy aimed at isolating the hardline Islamist elements in the Shabaab militia. The Obama administration should focus on buttressing and upgrading the existing U.N.-led peace process (the Djibouti Process), while resisting efforts to put in place a poorly thought out, poorly resourced, and poorly staffed U.N. peacekeeping mission with a murky mandate.

Much more work will need to be done to build a genuine government of national unity from the bottom up, with the objective of creating a real power-sharing formula that includes key clan-based leaders, businessmen, and moderate Islamists. A wider security strategy focused on building an alliance of clan-based networks and functioning local governing authorities from Somaliland, Puntland, and throughout the South would further isolate hard-line elements within the Shabaab if it feeds into the transitional governing authority and supports the provision of security and social services, the two things Somalis most crave. Targeted sanctions should be aimed at hard-line Islamists and reactionary warlords who continue to undermine peace and the construction of a legitimate government and the external actors that support them.

Furthermore, a parallel diplomatic effort should be launched to deal with the simmering Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict, including conclusive border demarcation followed by internationally backed bilateral talks on issues of mutual concern. The standoff between these two countries has helped fuel conflict in Somalia over the past decade. The latest chapter in their proxy competition has been particularly deadly and dangerous, further destabilizing Somalia and bringing the two states closer to the possibility of renewed interstate war, an outcome that would be devastating for the Horn of Africa.

Changing the tone

The Obama administration could also do a great deal to change the tone in how the U.S. government talks about Africa in public statements, at the United Nations, and in its policy documents. Major opportunities exist in East and Central Africa, and because expectations are so high throughout Africa, President-elect Obama will have more space than usual to help take the lead in forging a global commitment to end these crises rather than to continue managing their symptoms.

The good news is that we know how to resolve complex conflicts. Working closely with African peacemakers and peace advocates on the ground in war zones throughout the continent, sustained and competent international diplomacy contributed to the end of wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Burundi, and southern Sudan. It helped dismantle apartheid in South Africa and helped guide the birth of the nation of Namibia.

Africa’s remaining wars require outside-the-box thinking in this new era of diminishing resources. The cheapest and most effective instrument we have is vast American experience in peacemaking. The cost-effectiveness of ending wars rather than continuing to manage their symptoms is undeniable. It requires a decision by the incoming president that containing the damage from the status quo is an untenable goal, which must be replaced by a full-scale multilateral effort to resolve Africa’s multiple, interlocking wars. The costs of reassigning diplomats to these war zones (real transformational diplomacy) and appointing a handful of senior officials and envoys where appropriate are relatively negligible when compared with the billions we will continue to spend on clean-up, conflict containment, and counterterrorism in the context of the present “conflict management” approach.

The Obama administration begins it work facing a host of deadly conflicts in Africa and few easy solutions. Yet President Obama also has a historic opportunity to fundamentally reshape relations between the United States and the African continent in a way that will be truly transformational. Many forces and voices within America’s foreign policy bureaucracy will suggest Africa is a problem and an opportunity better left for another day; it will take genuine leadership from the top to make clear that the future is now.

http://www.enoughproject.org/publications/obama-africa-and-peace

ENOUGH Project News Release

2009-01-13T08:09:00.000-08:00

PRESS CALL: AFRICA POLICY EXPERTS DISCUSS OBAMA, AFRICA AND PEACE AS WELL AS ADMINISTRATION APPOINTEES CLINTON AND RICE

Contact: Eileen White Read, 202-741-6376, eread@enoughproject.org

WHAT: Teleconference on Enough Report and Expectations for the Obama Administration

WHEN: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 – 11:45 am EST to 1:00pm EST

WHERE: By telephone, ID: Enough Project

CALL-IN: 888-674-0222; international +1-201-604-0498

Please email Eileen White Read if you plan to participate.

WHO:

John Prendergast, Co-chair of the Enough Project, an Africa policy expert, activist, and author who has participated in numerous peace processes in Africa, including his service at the National Security Council and the Department of State during the Clinton Administration.

John Norris, Executive Director of the Enough Project, a former official of the U.S. State Department, international policy and humanitarian organizations, and the United Nations. He is the author of two books and a recognized expert on Africa, genocide and international relations.

Subject of call:

A strategy paper on United States – Africa relations in the Barack Obama Administration, authored by Messrs. Prendergast and Norris, being released next week by the Enough Project
Expectations for changes in United States foreign policy toward Africa under the designated secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the designated United Nations ambassador, Susan Rice

The paper, Obama, Africa and Peace, offers policy recommendations for the Obama Administration to fundamentally remake U.S. relations with Africa during its tenure, focusing on the most cost-effective element of U.S. foreign policy tools: peacemaking. The authors discuss strategies for reframing the overall approach to U.S. relations with Africa, including the need to replace the Bush Administration’s attitude of “for us or against us” with a more nuanced approach in which the U.S. works more closely with both African governments and civil society to shape a shared agenda. The authors also offer strategies for peacemaking and enhancing U.S. capacities for peace, along with analyses of the three deadliest conflicts the Obama Administration must help solve in Africa: Sudan, Eastern Congo, and Somalia.

Click here to read a copy of Obama, Africa and Peace, embargoed until Tuesday, January 13, 2009.

###

Enough is a project of the Center for American Progress to end genocide and crimes against humanity. Founded in 2007, Enough focuses on crises in Sudan, Chad, eastern Congo, northern Uganda, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. Enough’s strategy papers and briefings provide sharp field analysis and targeted policy recommendations based on a “3P” crisis response strategy: promoting durable peace, providing civilian protection, and punishing perpetrators of atrocities. Enough works with concerned citizens, advocates, and policy makers to prevent, mitigate, and resolve these crises. To learn more about Enough and what you can do to help, visit www.enoughproject.org.

The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all. We believe that Americans are bound together by a common commitment to these values and we aspire to ensure that our national policies reflect these values. We work to find progressive and pragmatic solutions to significant domestic and international problems and develop policy proposals that foster a government that is "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

MASS SUFFERING AND WHY WE LOOK THE OTHER WAY

2009-01-10T15:27:00.000-08:00

By Shankar Vedantam

Monday, January 5, 2009; A08

The Washington Post

When President-elect Barack Obama, an early opponent of the Iraq war, asked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- who helped to authorize the war -- to be his secretary of state, many liberals scratched their heads.

When Obama asked Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates -- a Republican who has run the Iraq war for more than two years -- to stay on in his new administration, the scratching grew fierce.

But no one needs to read the tea leaves on one particular aspect of Obama's foreign policy: Obama, Clinton and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. have all called for aggressive American action against humanitarian crises and genocide. Susan E. Rice, Obama's nominee for U.N. ambassador, has said that if a Rwanda-style genocide began again, she "would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required." Samantha Power, a leading proponent for an interventionist American policy in humanitarian crises, was a senior Obama adviser during the presidential campaign.

"Look empirically at the kind of people who will populate the decision-making positions in the new administration and compare them with the principals" in the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, said John Prendergast, co-chairman of the Enough Project, an advocacy group that fights genocide. "What we will get, possibly for the first time in my life, is leadership from the top in these crises."

Obama might want to include a scientist named Paul Slovic in his team. Slovic, a professor at the University of Oregon, has conducted experiments that provide an unusual window into why the United States has often failed to intervene in humanitarian crises -- and why it is likely to remain slow to do so in the future.

Slovic's research suggests that the central reason the United States has not responded forcefully -- and quickly -- to crises ranging from the Holocaust to the Rwandan genocide, from the ethnic cleaning that occurred in the 1990s Balkan conflict to the present-day crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, is not that presidents are uncaring, or that Americans only value American lives, but that the human mind has been unintentionally designed to respond in perverse ways to large-scale suffering.

In a rational world, we should care twice as much about a tragedy affecting 100 people as about one affecting 50. We ought to care 80,000 times as much when a tragedy involves 4 million lives rather than 50. But Slovic has proved in experiments that this is not how the mind works.

When a tragedy claims many lives, we often care less than if a tragedy claims only a few lives. When there are many victims, we find it easier to look the other way.

Virtually by definition, the central feature of humanitarian disasters and genocide is that there are a large number of victims.

"The first life lost is very precious, but we don't react very much to the difference between 88 deaths and 87 deaths," Slovic said in an interview. "You don't feel worse about 88 than you do about 87."

Slovic did one experiment shortly after the Rwandan genocide. He asked volunteers whether they were willing to spend precious resources getting water to a refugee camp in Zaire, now called Congo. There were many pressing demands for the money, but Slovic told the volunteers that the water could save 4,500 lives. Without the volunteers' awareness, however, the researcher told some people the refugee camp had 11,000 people while telling others that the camp had 100,000 people. The number of lives that could be saved was the same in both cases -- 4,500 -- but Slovic found that people were reluctant to divert resources to save lives in a large camp rather than the same number of lives in a small camp.

In another experiment, Slovic asked people to imagine they were disbursing money on behalf of a large foundation: They could give $10 million to fight a disease that claimed 20,000 lives a year -- and save 10,000 of those lives. But they could also devote the $10 million to fight a disease that claimed 290,000 lives a year -- and this investment would save 20,000 lives.

Slovic found that people preferred to spend the money saving the 10,000 lives in the first scenario rather than the 20,000 lives in the second scenario: "People were responding not to the number of lives saved but the percentage of lives saved," he said. In the one case, their investment could save half the victims; in the case of the more deadly disease, it could save 7 percent of the victims.

There are parallels between such behavior and how we perceive physical sensations, and evolution's hand in shaping the way we perceive physical sensations may be behind the errors we make in judging suffering among our fellow humans. We are sharply aware of the difference between total darkness and the light thrown off by a five-watt bulb, but we are hard pressed to tell the lighting difference between a 90-watt bulb and a 100-watt one.

Slovic said people probably are inappropriately -- and unconsciously -- using a similar metric in humanitarian crises: Failing to save only half the victims in a tragedy seems less dreadful than failing to save 93 percent of the victims of another tragedy. The mathematical side of our brain could tell us the absolute number of victims saved is more important than the percentage of survivors, but our analytical side isn't usually in charge.

Slovic has also shown that the amount of compassion humans feel can diminish as the number of victims increases: In an experiment in Israel, Slovic asked volunteers whether they would help raise $300,000 to save eight children who were dying of cancer. Those in another group were told only about one child with cancer and asked how much they were willing to donate to save the life of that child. Slovic found that people were willing to give more money to save one life than to save eight.

"When we trust our feelings in these cases, we are led down the path of turning our backs on the suffering of many people," Slovic said. "Even though we don't think of ourselves as uncaring, if we trust our moral intuition, it is not designed by evolution to respond accurately to these types of situations of mass tragedy."

Slovic's work showing people's tendency to intervene in situations in which they can save all or most of the victims, but to turn away from situations in which they cannot help most of the victims, has important ramifications for the new administration. "It is often the case we can do something even if we can't do everything, and we ought not do nothing just because we can't do everything," Prendergast said.

TAKE ACTION: CONGO CONFLICT MINERALS

2009-01-10T15:19:00.000-08:00

The conflict in eastern Congo, the deadliest in the world since World War II, is being fueled by a multi-million dollar trade in minerals that go into our electronic products from cell phones to digital cameras. Over five million people have died as a result of the war, and the United Nations estimates that 200,000 women have been raped in eastern Congo over the past decade. The armed groups that are perpetuating the violence generate over $100 million each year by trading in three main minerals, the 3 Ts:

• Tin – used as a solder on circuit boards inside cell phones and laptops. 70% of the world’s tin is used as solder, and 5-10% of tin ore comes from eastern Congo.
• Tantalum – used to store electricity in iPods, digital cameras, and cell phones. 70% of the world’s tantalum is used in electronic products, and 15% comes from Congo.
• Tungsten – used to make your cell phone or Blackberry vibrate. Tungsten is a growing source of income for armed groups in Congo.

In late 2008, UN investigations revealed that key tin smelting companies, who sell tin to the major electronics companies, are buying tin ore directly from rebel-held areas in eastern Congo. The money that the rebels generated from those tin sales is now allowing them to buy even more weapons and continue to kill, rape and loot across eastern Congo.

What you can do:

Email, fax or call the biggest buyers of these minerals – major electronics companies – and demand better. As always, please be polite and friendly, you are more likely to get a response. Here’s what you can write:

As a consumer of your product, I am concerned that your company and the electronics industry as a whole may be buying minerals from the war-torn region of eastern Congo. Over five million people have died in eastern Congo thus far, hundreds of thousands of women have been raped, and the violence is worsening today.

Tin, tantalum, and tungsten – the 3 Ts – are all key metals used in your products, and armed groups in eastern Congo rely heavily on funds from the illicit trade in these minerals to finance their activities.

I would very much appreciate if you could share with me the concrete steps you are taking to ensure that your supply chain is transparent, reliably traced and “conflict free.” Like many of your customers, I want to know for sure that my cell phone or digital camera is not helping fund violence in Congo.

This will be a key first step, but we will need your help later, too.
Emailing the electronics companies is an important step, but it will not be the last. Sign up for our action alerts at www.raisehopeforcongo.org so we can update you on the companies’ responses, as well as send you future action alerts to hold unresponsive companies accountable, support conflict minerals legislation in Congress, and pass shareholder resolutions.

Source: RAISE Hope for Congo

http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/conflictmineralsaction

CELL PHONES AND CONGO'S WAR AGAINST WOMEN

2009-01-06T21:47:00.000-08:00

Robin Wright Penn, John Prendergast

San Francisco Chronicle

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

What in the world could a policy wonk have in common with a movie actress? As it turns out, a lot. Every day we both use electronic devices that wouldn't work without raw materials from a country halfway around the world in central Africa. That country, Congo, has been torn apart by the deadliest war since World War II, where 5.4 million have perished. Its war is fueled by our inexhaustible thirst for cell phones, laptops, video games, digital recorders and other products that owe their existence to Congo's contribution to the world's mineral supply.

Remember when we learned the periodic table of elements? Three of the minerals - tantalite, tungsten and tin - are indispensable to the proper functioning of much of our electronics industry, and Congo has a good percentage of the world's supply of all three. The upshot is that feuding militias and a failed government have led to one of the highest death rates in the world, where an estimated 1,500 people die per day of war-related causes.

Congo is a country that has been raided, looted and raped for the past century and a half because of its vast natural resource wealth. Kings, corporations and countries have swooped into the Congo to steal whatever they could, leaving behind a shattered state and deeply divided communities. The latest chapter has seen the neighboring country of Rwanda in direct confrontation with Congo over the remnants of the militia that perpetrated Rwanda's genocide 14 years ago. These forces have taken up residence in Congo and are supported at times by the Congolese government. In response, Rwanda supports Congo's rebels. But at the root of all this is the scramble for resources, in which Rwanda and Congo support their rebels of choice and benefit from the minerals extracted from the areas they control.

So even though the issue we have in common is our use of products dependent on the Congo's resources, the issue that really unites us is that the Congo - with the highest rates of sexual violence globally - has become the world's most dangerous place to be a woman or a girl. This is not the first time that armies or militias have used rape as a weapon of war. But what appears to set Congo apart is the frequency of sexual assault, as well as its graphic nature. The militias in the Congo are perfecting this tool of war in a manner never seen before. The effectiveness of deploying sexual violence as a tactic of war is unquestioned. Competing forces rape in order to permanently drive communities out of contested areas.. Women are so traumatized by gang rapes and other depredations that they never want to return to their homes, too afraid to re-live their experiences. And as long as the perpetrators pay no price for their heinous crimes, there is no incentive to stop. In fact, impunity and inaction leads the militias to intensify their attacks.

That's where we come in. As we use our cell phones, computers, iPods and video games every day, we are benefiting from Congo's natural wealth. We need to stand up for the women of the Congo and let our elected officials know that we want to see an end to that violence. We need to let the electronics companies that we all buy our products from know that it matters to us where they get the raw materials that run their devices.

On Jan. 20, a new U.S. president will be sworn in. His inauguration is wildly anticipated by Africans, including those in Congo. President-elect Barack Obama will have the chance to help rectify one of the world's most egregious injustices by making the end of the Congo's war one of his policy objectives. High-level American involvement can help catalyze efforts toward peace in that shattered country.

But a president's attention won't be enough. Because of our demand for PlayStations, iPods, and BlackBerrys, we will have to use our considerable market muscle to demand from companies like Apple, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard and Nintendo that their products do not contain "conflict minerals." This will require them to change their procurement practices and ask far more questions about where their components are from.

This is not impossible. Remember the film "Blood Diamond"? A decade ago, Sierra Leone was a country in turmoil, ripped apart by battles over control of the diamond mines. Today, Sierra Leone is a functioning democracy completely at peace. The horrors there led the world to get serious about stopping them. We need to do the same for Congo, and fast. For the sake of Congo's women and girls, Congo needs us now.

Robin Wright Penn is an actress and Enough envoy for the Raise Hope for Congo Campaign ( www.raisehopeforcongo.org ). John Prendergast is a co-chair of Enough, the project to end genocide and crimes against humanity, which sponsors the Congo campaign. They will appear on Saturday, Jan. 10, at the Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael, for a 4:15 p.m. screening of "The Greatest Silence: Rape In the Congo," followed by a discussion.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/06/ED2T153VI0.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Mass Suffering and Why We Look the Other Way

2009-01-04T18:06:00.001-08:00

By Shankar Vedantam

Monday, January 5, 2009; Page A08

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401307.html

When Obama asked Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates -- a Republican who has run the Iraq war for more than two years -- to stay on in his new administration, the scratching grew fierce.

But no one needs to read the tea leaves on one particular aspect of Obama's foreign policy: Obama, Clinton and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. have all called for aggressive American action against humanitarian crises and genocide. Susan E. Rice, Obama's nominee for U.N. ambassador, has said that if a Rwanda-style genocide arose again, she "would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required." Samantha Power, a leading proponent for an interventionist American policy in humanitarian crises, was a senior Obama adviser during the presidential campaign.

Slovic's research suggests that the central reason America has not responded forcefully -- and quickly -- to crises ranging from the Holocaust to the Rwandan genocide, from the ethnic cleaning that took place in the 1990s Balkan conflict to the present-day crisis in Darfur, is not that presidents are uncaring, or that Americans only value American lives, but that the human mind has been unintentionally designed to respond in perverse ways to large-scale suffering.

When a tragedy claims many lives, we often care less than if a tragedy claims only a few lives. When there are many victims, we find it easier to look the other way.

Virtually by definition, the central feature of humanitarian disasters and genocide is that there are a large number of victims.

Slovic found that people preferred to spend the money saving the 10,000 lives in the first scenario rather than the 15,000 lives in the second scenario: "People were responding not to the number of lives saved but the percentage of lives saved," he said. In the one case, their investment could save two-thirds of the victims; in the case of the more deadly disease, it could save only 5 percent of the victims.

Slovic feels that people are inappropriately -- and unconsciously -- using a similar metric in humanitarian crises: Failing to save only a third of the victims in a tragedy seems less dreadful than failing to save 95 percent of the victims of another tragedy. The mathematical side of our brain could tell us the absolute number of victims saved is more important than the percentage of survivors, but our analytical side isn't usually in charge.

PLEASE SIGN RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO'S PETITION TO THE PRESIDENT

2008-12-16T10:55:00.000-08:00

Hold our leaders accountable!

Add your name to this petition to ask our next president to announce his administration’s initial plan to end the scourge of violence against women and girls in eastern Congo on International Women’s Day on March 8, 2009, and then report back on his progress toward this goal one year later.

Often successful in its intent to destroy and exterminate, rape as a weapon of war is causing the near total destruction of women, their families, and their communities. Efforts to protect women and girls in the Congo are failing spectacularly. It is time to get serious about ending the conflict and protecting and empowering Congo's women.

HELP US COLLECT SIGNATURES!

Print out the petition and sign-up sheet and collect signatures from your coworkers, friends, classmates, and family members. Take it to your local grocery store, park, or mall and collect signatures. Help us make a strong statement to the president!

TEXT OF THE PETITION

Dear Mr. President:

I urge you to take immediate action to end the suffering of women and girls in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since 1996, eastern Congo has been the epicenter of the deadliest war since World War II, and it remains a place where combatants on all sides routinely use rape and sexual violence as a weapon to destroy women, families, and communities. I ask you to announce your administration’s initial plan to end the scourge of violence against women and girls in eastern Congo on International Women’s Day on March 8, 2009, and then report back on your progress toward this goal one year later.

We ask you to embrace a comprehensive approach that promotes peace, protects people and punishes perpetrators by:

• Promoting Peace: Lead aggressive diplomatic efforts to forge an inclusive peace deal between the Congolese government and rebel groups, remove Rwandan rebels from eastern Congo, and end the illegal exploitation of Congolese natural resources — a major driver of the conflict and violence.

• Protecting People: Ensure that UN peacekeepers aggressively patrol areas where women are most vulnerable, increase support for UN and charitable programs responding to sexual violence, and urge Congress to pass the International Violence Against Women Act (S. 2279).

• Punishing Perpetrators: Call for the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into rape as a war crime in eastern Congo, work with the Congolese government to increase rape prosecutions in Congolese courts, and aggressively enforce existing UN sanctions.

I urge your administration to take strong action to protect and empower Congolese women and girls and promote peace in eastern Congo. Thank you for your urgent attention to this continuing tragedy, and I look forward to your announcement on March 8, 2009.

http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/node/13

Hold our leaders accountable!

Sexual Violence in Context

2008-12-16T10:35:00.000-08:00

Rebecca Feeley

Submitted by congo on Mon, 12/15/2008 - 16:10.

By Rebecca Feeley, Enough Congo Field Researcher

Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The crisis here in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has been in the news lately. Several television shows and magazines have reported on eastern Congo as the “rape capital of the world.” And, in some respects, this is likely true; sexual violence occurs in eastern Congo on a scale seen nowhere else in the world. However, there is a context to this tragedy. Sexual violence is a weapon of war, and if the international community is serious about ending the plight of Congolese women, then it must look beyond the weapon and focus on ending the war itself.

Over the past few years, the international community has tried to give a voice to the victims of unimaginable crimes in eastern Congo. Living here for nearly a year, I have met scores of journalists and film crews who want to focus solely on sexual violence and its devastating consequences. And Congolese women have been remarkably open in sharing their stories, having been promised that increased international awareness would lead to more robust international action. Yet while the Western media has unflinchingly portrayed sexual violence, media reports often tip-toe around the reason why these atrocities occur in eastern Congo: the war itself. Are journalists ill-equipped or intimidated by Congo’s complexities to handle such detail? I certainly hope not.

I recently met a young girl here named Marie. She was kidnapped from her village by armed men and taken as a sex slave. The story of her life in captivity is horrendous, and it is important for the world to know Marie’s suffering and the suffering of tens of thousands of other women just like her. Just as important, however, is the story of the men responsible. Marie was held captive by a Rwandan rebel group called Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda, or FDLR. The FDLR are a messy collective of Rwandan Hutu refugees, former Rwandan Armed Forces, and a Hutu extremist militia called the Interahamwe that fled neighboring Rwanda to eastern Congo in 1994 after slaughtering nearly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

For the last 14 years, the FDLR has been a destabilizing and threatening presence in both South and North Kivu provinces in eastern Congo. State authority here is often non-existent. In South Kivu, where Marie was abducted, the FDLR controls nearly 55 percent of the province. The FDLR is only one of the many parasitic armed groups (including the Congolese army) that commit appalling atrocities against women, and this violence continues unchecked despite the world’s largest U.N. peacekeeping force. How is this possible? What can we do to rid eastern Congo of the FDLR and demobilize other armed factions so that the Congolese population might finally enjoy some peace and stability? In Enough’s latest report, “Eastern Congo: Beyond Crisis Management, Towards Conflict Resolution,” Colin Thomas-Jensen and I try to answer these questions and suggest steps to secure lasting solutions to the local, national, and international dimensions of this crisis.

Congolese women have been willing to share their most personal and painful memories with the world in the hopes that the world in turn would take the time to learn about the conflict here and work to end it. If we fail to translate the outrage we feel and force policymakers to take effective action, the awareness-raising on sexual violence in eastern Congo seems little more than voyeurism.

http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/node/98

TAKE ACTION NOW!

2008-12-15T21:16:00.000-08:00

Today! New team, new opportunities!

Dear Nell,

In order to make sure that ending genocide in Sudan is a priority from Day 1 of Obama's administration, we need to send a strong message to Congress TODAY!

Join Americans across the country by calling 1-800-GENOCIDE right now to speak with your Senator.

Why should you call TODAY?

In early January, the Senate has a unique opportunity to make Sudan a priority for the incoming Obama administration. How? President-elect Obama's nominees to to key foreign policy positions - like Secretary of State and UN Ambassador - cannot take office until they are confirmed by the Senate. Nominees Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice will have to answer questions from Senators about their priorities and plans during confirmation hearings.

Call 1-800-GENOCIDE right now and ask your Senator to make sure the nominees lay out their Sudan plans during the confirmation hearings.

The nominees will appear before the Senate in January. Will your Senator ask about Sudan?

.Call 1-800-GENOCIDE (1-800-436-6243) and speak to your Senator today!

If you'd like more info, check out this downloadable one-pager.

Thanks for having a hand in stopping genocide.

~ Janessa Goldbeck, Director of Membership

PS - We need your creative ideas for ways to get the administration's attention - and compel them to act - in the months ahead. Got ideas? Share them!

TAKE ACTION NOW!

Call your Senator today!

Forward

Forward this message to friends and family and help grow the anti-genocide movement!

Genocide Intervention Network | info@GenocideIntervention.net | www.GenocideIntervention.net
1333 H Street NW, First Floor, Washington, DC 20005 | (202) 481-8220

Establishing American Leadership in Genocide Prevention, Part I

2008-12-12T16:21:00.000-08:00

by Michelle
http://genocide.change.org/blog/view/establishing_american_leadership_in_genocide_prevention_part_i

Published December 08, 2008 @ 07:11PM PST

After 13 months of debates and consultations, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Genocide Convention, and with an eye towards the rapidly-approaching inauguration of our new president, the Genocide Prevention Task Force released its final report at a press conference this morning.

A key premise of the report, which provides a blueprint for U.S. policymakers, is a recognition of the fundamental need for sustained, high-level leadership in pursuit of the goals of genocide and mass atrocity prevention:

"Nothing is more central to preventing genocide than leadership--from the president, Congress, and the American people. In subsequent chapters of this report we propose numerous specific ideas that we believe will enhance U.S. government capacity to prevent genocide. But none of these will be realized without the best kind fo American leadership: farsighted, energetic, and optimistic, eschewing partisanship to rally our government and people to a great calling."

Eschewing partisanship may seem a tall order--one oft-exalted and oft-neglected in the campaign on/off cycle, respectively--but by dedicating Chapter 1 of its report to "Leadership: The Indispensable Ingredient," the Task Force identifies continued attention and engagement as the driving force of the many detailed policy recommendations that follow.

The need for sustained leadership is part and parcel of the need to completely restructure (or, rather, just plain structure) American foreign policy on genocide prevention. As is stated in the report, U.S. government response to genocide and mass atrocity has historically been ad hoc, driven by personal initiative rather than coordinated and comprehensive policy, and subject to neglect in the face of the competing priorities of our top national security officials.

What's needed, the report stresses, is the creation of systems that institutionalize early response mechanisms into American foreign policy, on doctrinal and operational levels. Genocide and mass atrocity should not be considered as a sideline issue of passing moral concern, but as events with sweeping international ramifications, and integral to the pursuit of a broad range of American national security interests and foreign policy goals. (The Task Force recommends the creation of an interagency Atrocities Prevention Committee (APC), which I will delve into in another post.)

Personal diplomatic and policy engagement by the president will reinforce the integration of genocide prevention into the U.S. foreign policy framework--and vice versa. Genocide is too horrifically monumental an event for an ad hoc, reactive, and uncoordinated response, and the creation of preventative structures within the U.S. government must be coupled by the personal commitment of the president, both within the government and in coordinating U.S. response with the international community.

Genocide is NOT a niche issue, and the Task Force report provides carefully-considered recommendations for integrating genocide prevention and response into mainstream American foreign policy priorities. It's a remarkable document, and if Obama & Co. take it as seriously as they should, we may very well soon see the first real attempt to honor and implement the promise of "Never Again."

And it only took us 60 years to do it.

[Photo: Chairs of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen.]

2008-12-08T17:19:00.000-08:00

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Events Honoring the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention

2008-12-07T18:26:00.000-08:00

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention. There are a variety of special events, including:

Rights Night on the 60th anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- Wednesday, 12/10, 7 PM, The Rabb Lecture Hall, Boston Public Library at Copley Square, Boston. Honoring Rev. Gloria White-Hammond with UUSC's Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award for her commitment to humanitarian service and human rights. Featuring Dr. William F. Schulz, former executive director of Amnesty International and chair of UUSC's Board of Trustees speaking on "The Legacy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Where Do We Go from Here?" Host committee includes: Governor Michael & Kitty Dukakis, Omer Ismail, Ambassador Swanee Hunt, Liz Walker, Howard Zinn, Rev. Kim K. Crawford Harvie, Eric Cohen, Rabbi Or Rose, Eric Reeves, Linda Mason & Roger Brown, Rev. John Buehrens, Sarah Cleto Rial and Charlie Clements. Free, but space limited. RSVP here.
The Genocide Convention at 60 years -- Tuesday, 12/9, 4:30 PM, Tsai Auditorium, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St., Harvard. Featuring a keynote by Richard Goldstone and a panel discussion with Jacqueline Bhabha, Claude Brudelein, Alex de Waal, Jennifer Leaning, Jens Meierhenrich, Susannah Sirkin, and Michael VanRooyen.

EASY ACTIONS FOR DARFUR

2008-12-07T18:23:00.000-08:00

Please act now and do these simple steps:

Click here to urge Senator Clinton to highlight Sudan as a critical priority during her confirmation hearings and to develop plans now so the new administration can end the crisis without delay. Join this e-petition from the Genocide Intervention Network.

Click here to sign the People's Arrest Warrant for Omar al-Bashir. Join this petition effort from the Philadelphia Darfur Alert Coalition, building on the November 7 vigil at Sudan's embassy in Washington DC.

Click here to be a voice for Darfur. Join the Save Darfur Coalition national campaign to get one million people to tell the new president to make Darfur a priority from Day 1.

Your 401K can help end genocide

Calling all Darfur activists with a mutual fund! You can use your mutual funds as a tool in the fight to end genocide.

If you have at least $2,000 invested in a mutual fund and have held that fund for at least a year, you can submit a shareholder proposal. It's easy and each volunteer makes a difference by extending the reach of the campaign.

Investors Against Genocide (IAG) needs many new volunteers to submit shareholder proposals by year-end to be well-positioned for the coming proxy season. IAG will assist you in the very easy process. You will not need to disclose any financial information to IAG or any third party.

Contact proposals@investorsagainstgenocide.org if you are willing to help stop the money supply to those who perpetrate genocide.

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Addresses UN and AJWS

2008-12-04T15:51:00.000-08:00

Source: http://ajws.org/who_we_are/news/archives/features/international_criminal_court_prosecutor_addresses_un_and_
ajws.html
Reflections on Hope and Despair: AJWS Darfur Luncheon

December 3, 2008—Today marks another step in the fight for justice in Darfur, Sudan. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) presented his 8th report to the United Nations Security Council. In it he described ongoing crimes in Darfur and urged all states to cooperate with the court's efforts and to prepare for the potential issuance of an arrest warrant against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. One day prior, Prosecutor Ocampo spoke about his work at American Jewish World Service's luncheon at the New York City Yale Club. He joined other notable panelists, NBC News anchor and correspondent Ann Curry, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof, ENOUGH Project co-chair John Prendergast and Darfuri refugee and author Daoud Hari, in speaking out about Darfur. AJWS president Ruth Messinger opened the event and a convocation was given by Rabbi Rick Jacobs, senior rabbi of Westchester Reform Temple.

A day after the event, Prosecutor Ocampo told the Security Council that the court will soon issue a decision on the pending arrest warrant for Bashir, and stressed that Sudan has yet to hand over two suspects for whom the ICC has already issued warrants. He called on the member states to cooperate to ensure implementation of the arrests in the coming months and asked them to cut off non-essential contact and to target the accused for sanctions, including travel bans and freezing of assets. "If Security Council members can act together," he said, "the crimes will stop and millions of lives will be saved. If different interests prevent a strong and consistent position in support of the Court's decisions, if they give room to false promises, rapes will continue, destruction will continue. An opportunity is coming. A united Security Council can make a difference."

The "false promises" refer to Bashir's efforts to defer the court's proceedings in the name of peace while continuing to obstruct full deployment of the UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID). "What can UNAMID do when those controlling its deployment are the same people ordering the crimes?" The prosecutor asked. "How long are we going to just tally the casualties, the displacements and the rapes?" AJWS urges the Security Council to issue a statement reaffirming support for the ICC, calling on Sudan to comply with the court, and stating that retaliation for any of the ICC proceedings will not be tolerated.

Shaking hands with the devil: Samantha Power on TED.com

2008-11-29T18:44:00.001-08:00

– November 11, 2008

Political scientist Samantha Power tells the story of a complicated hero, Sergio Vieira de Mello. This UN diplomat walked a thin moral line, negotiating with the world's worst dictators to help their people survive crisis. It's a compelling story told with a fiery passion. (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 23:08.)

Source: www.ted.com

Urge the next U.S. President to make Darfur a day one priority

2008-11-25T16:54:00.000-08:00

When they were Presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama pledged "unstinting resolve" in pursuing an end to the Darfur genocide.

Be a voice for Darfur. Join one million people declaring with one voice: President-elect Obama must make Darfur a Day One priority.

To help reach the goal of one million postcards, sign the online postcard or order yours today for FREE by simply filling out and submitting the order form below. They will ship them to your door!

Collect signed postcards and simply mail them back to the return address on the postcards and they will be added to the number that will be presented to the new president.

CLICK TO ORDER OR SIGN THE ONLINE POSTCARD

Source: www.savedarfur.org

TEN REASONS WHY EASTERN CONGO IS THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH FOR WOMEN

2008-11-25T14:51:00.000-08:00

Source: http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/tenreasons

Civilians in eastern Congo, particularly women and girls, are targets of conscience-shocking brutality and sexual violence. Every day, they face a harrowing array of threats from armed militias, the military, and even the police who are supposed to protect them. Understanding the reasons why life has become so dangerous for women in eastern Congo is an essential first step in helping to end the violence and create a more hopeful future.

1. Predatory security forces

"It is more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier right now."
Major General Patrick Cammaert, former UN Deputy Force Commander, describing the situation in eastern Congo, May 2008

Any state’s most basic responsibility is to provide security for its citizens. However, the Congolese military is notoriously corrupt and undisciplined. Soldiers themselves live in appalling conditions, are frequently unpaid, and often resort to looting or petty theft to “pay themselves.” The army is guilty of widespread abuses of the people they are supposed to protect, and soldiers often view attacking women as a ‘benefit” of carrying a gun for the state.

2. Lawless militias

“This violence was designed to exterminate the population.”
Louise Nzigire, social worker at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, spring 2005

A complex and confusing assortment of illegal armed militias operate in eastern Congo. Some are purely criminal, some are loosely political in their goals, and many of them have links back to neighboring states. The Rwandan rebel group called the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, has ties to the 1994 Rwanda genocide and now commits atrocities against Congolese civilians, including appalling acts of sexual violence. The vast majority of civilians in eastern Congo fear militias more than anything else. Militia members often forcibly take local "wives," coerce landowners to conduct menial labor, and steal harvests from local farmers. Militias have been all too eager to use rape and other forms of violence as tools to intimidate and suppress the local population.

3. A culture of impunity

“In Congo, if someone starts an armed group or kills people, they have a better chance of becoming a senior minister or a general than being put behind bars.”
Anneke Van Woudenberg, Human Rights Watch, January 2008

In Congo, law enforcement as we know it is nonexistent, and access to justice is extremely deficient. For most women in the Congo, going to the police with a complaint about a crime is almost unthinkable, and most women fear that if they go to a police station they will be subjected to rape, other forms of violence, or theft. For the few women and young girls who do get the opportunity to publicly identify their rapists, prosecutions are slow to nonexistent, and reprisal attacks against the victim and/or her family are common. Perpetrators thrown into jail are often able to simply pay guards for their release or, in some cases, break through the prison walls and walk away.

4. The resource curse

“We are cursed because of our gold. All we do is suffer. There is no benefit to us.”
Congolese gold miner, June 2005

The scramble to exploit the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s vast natural resources has been the principal driver of atrocities and conflict throughout Congo’s tortured history. In eastern Congo today, resources are financing multiple armed groups that target the local population. Many of these armed groups use rape as a deliberate tactic to drive the local population away from mines and other areas that they wish to control. The twisted logic: terrorize the women first and everyone else will stay away.

5. Poverty

“My job is to beg.”
Congolese woman, November 2003

Instability and grinding poverty in the Congo have created a stagnant economy, and few companies are willing to invest in this central African nation. The international companies who have invested in the Congo are primarily interested in the resource-extraction sector, which at best does little to help local people and at worst fuels competition and conflict between armed groups. Years of economic decline and conflict have acutely affected women, many of whom have become widows and have been forced to find ways—including begging and prostitution— to support their families. As women are the primary caretakers of the family, they must often venture outside of safe zones to collect water or firewood, which puts them at greater risk of attack. With many men killed or driven away from their families, women not only lose an important source of income and protection for their families—they have to care for children and try to earn money with no social safety net. The ability to rely on extended families for support and comfort has also often been shattered by dislocation, violence, and chaos.

6. A collapsed health care system

"I was not trained as a gynecologist, but I am being trained on the job, because the need at the hospital is so large. The Congolese government does not provide our hospital with any resources."
Dr. Roger Luhiriri, Panzi Hospital, Buvaku, South Kivu, September 2008

Another consequence of the prolonged conflict is an outright collapse of the Congolese health care system. Tens of thousands of women have survived rape and sexual violence, but the Congolese government is unable to provide adequate medical services, rehabilitation programs, or psychological counseling. This means that women have a very difficult time surviving the physical scars of sexual violence, much less addressing the psychological ones. Furthermore, lack of adequate medical care to prevent and treat diseases such as cholera and malaria further add to the insurmountable daily struggles and dangers faced by Congolese women and their children.

7. Internal displacement

"It would be much too dangerous [to return home]. Battles continue to rage there. But we're really not proud of having to stay here."
Josephine, a Congolese woman who has been driven from her home and now lives in a camp for displaced people, June 2008

More than 1.3 million Congolese have been driven from their homes, or “displaced,” in eastern Congo. Throughout the conflict, rape has been used as a weapon to force communities to flee their homes. Now, huge populations live in poorly protected camps, where they are vulnerable to attacks by militias and Congolese security forces. Although humanitarian organizations provide life-saving supplies and care to the camps, it is often almost impossible for families to earn a living or properly care for their children in such settings.

8. A failing education system

“Out of more than 4.4 million children who are not in school in the Congo, 2.5 million of these children are girls… The violence, the poverty, the culture – there are many reasons why children are not going to school.”
UNICEF, 2008

The school system in Congo is extremely weak: School enrollment rates, from primary school through university, have dropped significantly since the onset of the conflict. It is difficult for uneducated women in eastern Congo to know and defend their rights. It also been proven again and again that investments in basic education for girls have some of the very best returns of all development programs. Girls that have at least a basic education are more economically productive, have smaller and better cared for families, and are more likely to be active in their communities.

9. Gender inequality and cultural barriers

“Women had very few rights. They are not perceived as equal citizens. I think what […] these atrocities have done is to have, bizarrely, normalized rape. So now it's not just the Congolese army and the factions that are raping the women; now it's becoming normalized. Domestic rape and domestic battery has wildly increased in families."
Eve Ensler, founder of V-Day, September 2007

Ongoing political and economic insecurity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have further eroded the status of women in society. Women in the Congo are often treated as little more than private property, and they are often denied access to health care, property, education, and information.

10. Inaction

"It's shameful that soldiers anywhere are allowed to [commit atrocities such as rape against civilians]. That's why I want to be president. I want to change this. I want to make security one of my first priorities so that these and other acts come to an end once and for all."
President Joseph Kabila, before he won the national elections and became Congo’s first democratically elected president since independence, June 2006

The Congolese Government and the international community have failed to act to end the suffering of Congolese women. In spite of the promises President Kabila made over two years ago and the presence of the world’s largest United Nations peacekeeping force, armed groups continue to target civilians in eastern Congo. If the next president of the United States makes ending violence against women and girls in eastern Congo a priority at the beginning of the new administration, the Congo could have a real chance at peace. The United States should seize this opportunity to play a leading role in ending this violence and ensuring that Congolese women can once again feel safe in their own communities.

NBA Star Scores with His Documentary on Darfur

2008-11-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

BA star Tracy McGrady is making headlines off the court for his amazing work to help raise awareness on the genocide in Darfur. Tracy visited Darfurian refugee camps (along with super-human rights activist, John Prendergast) in Chad last year. His physical and emotional journey is captured in the fabulous documentary, 3 POINTS.

Tracy is candid about his fears of traveling and camping in Africa -- and about his confusion with the very complicated situation. What he learns while he is there -- and what we learn from the film -- is that the children in these refugee camps have strength way beyond their years. And what they need most (in addition to the 3Ps: Peace, Protection and Punishment) is education. And this became Tracy's call to action.

Earlier this month at a recent screening of the film at CAA headquarters in Los Angeles, Tracy unveiled his Sister Schools Program, which pairs students in the U.S. with children in Darfur. Some 200 attended the event including actor Emmanuelle Chriqui, legendary Reggie Miller, and fellow NBA stars Baron Davis and Carl Landry. Dozens of young people from high schools across LA also attended.

McGrady called on NBA stars and others to help raise awareness and funds. If you'd like to take part in the Sister Schools Program, click here. Source: participant MEDIA newsletter
November, 2008

RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO CAMPAIGN

2008-11-25T14:12:00.001-08:00

Enough Project RAISEs Hope for Congo

ince 1996, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has played host to the world's deadliest conflict since World War II. More than 5.4 million people have died from the ravaging effects of war and its aftermath. Today, eastern Congo is caught in an epidemic of appalling sexual violence, as militias use rape as a military tactic to destroy communities and exert control over natural resources. The conflict has been marked by cycles of violence, and the international response has been wholly inadequate.

The Enough Project plans to change that with the launch of their RAISE Hope for Congo campaign. The campaign's ultimate goal is to build an organization of activists that will raise awareness and advocate for the protection and empowerment of Congolese women and girls. The campaign's first objective is to collect signatures asking President-elect Obama to announce his administration's intention to end the violence against women and girls in eastern Congo. After this initial announcement on International Women's Day (March 8, 2009), the campaign asks that the Obama administration report back on his progress toward this goal one year later. RAISE Hope for Congo has also launched a speakers' tour of college campuses across the country, as well as a "Congo Teach In" program in partnership with V-Day and STAND.

www.raisehopeforcongo.org

Protect and Empower Congo's Women November 25, 2008

2008-11-25T10:29:00.000-08:00

Protect and Empower Congo's Women November 25, 2008 I received this email today and post it for all to read.
Dear Nell, Today, November 25, marks the beginning of an international effort by activists to raise their voices and bring attention to the issue of gender-based violence and its damaging effects on women all over the world. The effort begins today, which is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and culminates 16 days later on December 10, International Human Rights Day. The "16 Days Campaign" originated from the first Women's Global Leadership Institute in 1991. Participants chose the dates, November 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and December 10, International Human Rights Day, in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights. This year's 16 Days Campaign is dedicated to celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and underscoring the idea that human rights cannot be universal without human rights for women. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where hundreds of thousands of women and girls are being raped and brutalized in a decade-old conflict, the rights of women are systematically trampled. As women's rights activist Immaculée Birhaheka described in this month's RAISE Hope podcast, women are "treated as things" and the poverty of women is "organized by the society." Yet it is because of the brave activism of women like Immaculée that the women of Congo have hope for their future and for their country. So over the next 16 days, we ask that you stand in solidarity with Immaculée and the thousands of Congolese women and girls fighting for a better future by recruiting 16 friends to join RAISE Hope for Congo and sign the petition to President-elect Obama asking him to take immediate action to end the violence against women and girls in the Congo. And then ask those 16 friends to recruit 16 of their friends. Because when thousands of voices become millions of voices demanding an end to the violence, our leaders will act. Each day that goes by, countless more Congolese women and girls are raped and brutalized, and countless others remain vulnerable. We have no time to waste. Raise your voice now. Sincerely, Candice Knezevic RAISE Hope for Congo campaign manager, Enough Project Don't Miss... Be sure to check out The Wall Street Journal op-ed that actor and activist George Clooney co-authored with Enough's John Prendergast and Not on our Watch's David Pressman about the opportunity that President-elect Obama has to end the world's deadliest wars in Darfur and eastern Congo.

Contact us at: raisehopeforcongo.org

Fast Actions for Darfur

2008-11-24T15:30:00.001-08:00

Please act now to do these simple steps!
Click here to be a voice for Darfur. Join the Save Darfur Coalition national campaign to get one million people to tell the new president to make Darfur a priority from Day 1.

Darfur: Still Waiting for Peace

2008-11-24T15:15:00.000-08:00

Monday November 24th 2008

The Guardian Weekly

People in Darfur are caught in fighting between the Sudanese military allied with the government-backed Janjaweed militia, and rebel groups. Many have been living since 2003 in refugee camps, but these offer no protection from daily violence and death, and UN and African Union peacekeepers don’t act as buffers. Sheik Sulieman, chief representative of the civilian community in the province of Mukvar, explains what life is like there – although he is scared that the government will punish him for talking to western media.

Sheik Sulieman says he must not be seen talking to western journalists. Photograph: Sam Mann

I am of the Fur tribe, the biggest in Darfur. The village I come from, Tende, is in the east. I came here [to an unidentified town in Mukwar and its displaced persons camp] in 2004, when my village was bombed from the air by government militias – the Janjaweed. Everything was destroyed. Since Unamid [the African Union–United Nations hybrid operation in Darfur] and the non-governmental organisations arrived here, Janjaweed tactics have changed. Before they came, I saw the killing with my own eyes. I saw the Janjaweed chain men up, make them kneel on the ground and then shoot them – 150 of them.

The government mobilised the Janjaweed very quickly, armed them and paid them. Then one day they came. All the government officials were here and they just watched and did nothing. That was in 2004. There were no NGOs, no Unamid, so they had impunity. Now, there is no more impunity, but the militias promise that they will do as they please as soon as Unamid leaves.

The leaders of the militias are here. Some of them have positions in the town. Most are illiterate, but they have been given jobs in intelligence and security. I know the leaders well. Some of the militia leaders are here today, some are in Khartoum.
In 2004 I was detained by intelligence with about 100 others, and I saw them hit people in the face and throw them out of a window.

One was called Ahmed Mohammed Haroun [wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity]. He gave orders to kill while saying "God is great" over and over. The one who was hitting them was Ali Kushayb [also wanted by the ICC]. There were others: Kushayb’s deputy, the commissioner of Mukvar and a man from the reserve police force. The government says it can put Kushayb in court for these terrible crimes. But we don’t trust the government. We believe in the International Court.

It is very difficult for us now. Our women are harassed by the Janjaweed when they collect firewood. Sometimes they are beaten and raped. When they go to the police and hospital, the government challenges them – "Why do you say this?" – which intimidates them. These problems happen when women go to the fields and are caused by the nomads with the animals – the camels and sheep.

When we harvest our crops the tribes loose their animals on our fields, ruining our yield. If we complain about it to the authorities, they promise to send a committee to deal with it but never do anything. When we travel from village to village, we are robbed of anything nice we have, like a watch or shoes, and beaten. If we fight back, we will be killed.

The Janjaweed eat our food at harvest time and say: "We let you work here, so we eat." We can’t go anywhere by vehicle without paying the militias. They have checkpoints. Last month in Birgi village, there was a police checkpoint. The Janjaweed hijacked a vehicle belonging to the NGO Triangle and the police just watched and did nothing. You pay or they kill you.

When we were children, the nomadic tribes would say that our land was very green. When the drought came in 1985, they came from other places – from Chad, too – although they weren’t armed then. In Darfur, we have tribal land ownership, which has always been ruled by native administration. When there were disputes over land, they were always easily settled, but this has changed. Now the government wants to displace us from our land. They have said directly that they want our land. But we are farmers and we want to farm our land. And it is our land.

These are the things I want before I will go back to my village:

• I want the government to disarm all the militias in Darfur and impose the rule of law. I want to move wherever I want and only meet wild animals.
• I want real peace – not a policy of compromise. Peace includes IDPs, all factions, and all the people. Peace that brings rights, freedom, justice.
• I want compensation for our destroyed homes and for lost livelihoods over the time we have been displaced.
• I want new homes built, with electricity and plumbing, and schools and clinics.

We have been targeted and marginalised. How many years have we waited? And the UN has failed. We need deeds, not speech. Unamid says: "We are doing, we are doing," but they have done nothing. We are still in camps. People are angry. That’s why Unamid isn’t allowed into the camps. In Zalingei, in Nertit, Sudanese government troops attacked the camp and the peacekeepers did nothing. They just watched people get killed.

In Mukvar, displaced people who live in town face government harassment. We complained to Unamid, wrote letters. Nothing. In August a group of our boys attacked Unamid with stones and broke a window. They were very angry but we managed to restrain them, telling them there were better ways to deal with problems.

As chief representative of the community I can get no response from Unamid. We see them moving and eating, but they do nothing. We want a real protection force from Europe or the US. The African force is unable to protect itself. It has no equipment. How can it protect us?

We have so many rebels here. Before, we had just the SLA and Jem. Now there are many others. We trust the SLA, led by Abdul Wahid – 90% of displaced people support SLA and 10% support Jem. There are other groups but they have no strength on the ground. We have the government but we do not support it.

• Sheik Sulieman was interviewed by photojournalist Sam Mann. Fore more on conflict in Darfur, visit our dedicated section, here.

2008-11-24T15:05:00.000-08:00

November 7, 2008
Congo’s women mutilated, children sent into battle

AUDIO: John Prendergast of the ENOUGH project discusses the use of rape as a weapon in eastern Congo as well as prospects for the UN in the region.

Congo’s children become soldiers in the ongoing conflict. Photo: Michael Kavanagh

The cease-fire collapsed in eastern Congo this week as fighting resumed.

As rebels make demands from the Congolese government, civilians are caught in between. Beyond ongoing hunger and starvation, crimes against humanity include the rape of women and the recruitment of children into war.

United Nations officials have called the epidemic of sexual violence in Congo “the worst in the world,” pointing to the 27,000 sexual assaults reported in South Kivu Province in 2006. Often, women are mutilated and left to die.

The “Healing trauma in DR Congo” blog writes about tackling problems like rape by supporting women empowerment programs.

The “generalspeaking” blog discusses the fate of women in wartime, and writes that both the military and militias in Congo use rape as a weapon.

Blogger “Amber” considers why rape is considered an acceptable tool in Congo and elsewhere.

Children, too, live in fear — Save the Children recently reported that amid the current conflict, armed groups attacked two schools in order recruit child soldiers. Here is a map of child soldiers fighting in Congo and around the world.

Chris Blattman of Yale University talks about his study on the motivation for child soldier recruitment in his blog.

Watch a documentary on the situation of Congo’s children — who are soldiers, prostitutes and refugees.

Rescuing Sudan: A mission for Obama

2008-11-23T17:04:00.000-08:00

The Philadelphia Enquirer

Posted on Sun, Nov. 23, 2008

John Prendergast

is cochair of Enough: The Project to End Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, at the Center for American Progress (www.americanprogress.org)

There is one job President-elect Barack Obama could take on from Day One that - if he were successful - could save billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives. And the small price tag justifies the risk. The job? Helping to bring peace to Sudan, the site of one of the world's deadliest wars and one that both he and President Bush have called genocide.

Times of deepest crisis often present the greatest opportunities. Vision and resolve are necessary to take advantage of those openings.

On Jan. 21, President Obama could first decide to stop managing the symptoms of war and genocide in Sudan and instead end the conflict. To that end, he could announce a "peace surge" for Sudan and the neighboring war-torn eastern and central African region, where the United States spends billions on humanitarian aid and peacekeeping troops but invests relative peanuts on the diplomacy required to bring peace.

Second, he could name a high-level envoy whose job it would be to work internationally to help bring peace to Sudan.

Third, he could appoint a team of foreign-service officers and country experts to deploy to the region to support the creation of a credible peace process to end the war in Darfur and ensure implementation of an earlier peace agreement in southern Sudan that now is in danger of falling apart.

Fourth, Obama could send a top official to China, which, along with the United States, is the foreign nation with the most influence in Sudan. Because of China's vast oil investments in Sudan, Beijing is at risk of exposure if war erupts again in the south. How powerful would it be if the United States and China decided to work together for peace in Sudan?

Fifth, Obama could slowly help ratchet up pressure on the warring parties to make peace by tasking his U.N. ambassador to work quietly to construct a package of targeted sanctions that would be applied to any government officials or rebels who undermined ensuing peace talks.

Sixth, his ambassador for NATO could quietly discuss plans for instituting a credible no-fly zone over Darfur, including concrete follow-up actions to counter civilian bombings or efforts by the Sudanese government to cut off access to humanitarian aid.

Seventh, he could bolster backing for the 2009 elections in Sudan, with robust support for development of political parties and army professionalization for the government of southern Sudan created by the peace deal there.

Eighth, Obama could task U.S. officials to work with the United Nations, the European Union and the African Union to develop a diplomatic strategy to address the conflict in neighboring Chad, which impacts Darfur's stability.

Ninth, he could do the same to deal with the threat to southern Sudan and the surrounding region posed by the Lord's Resistance Army, a regional militia originating in northern Uganda that specializes in abducting children to serve as soldiers and sex slaves.

Tenth, and understanding that peace is rarely possible without accountability, Obama could begin cooperating closely with the International Criminal Court, which is preparing cases against rebels, militia leaders, government officials, and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. This would focus great pressure on the parties to the conflict in Sudan and lead them to support a peace deal if it would trigger the one-year suspension of their cases allowed under the ICC charter if it is in the overwhelming interest of peace.

Even against the backdrop of the global financial crisis, all of these actions are affordable and politically feasible. The payoff could be enormous if peace is secured in Sudan and billions of dollars in aid are saved in the longer run.

Rwanda was President Bill Clinton's greatest shame. Depending how Iraq ends up, Darfur may be that for President Bush. But Obama has a chance to rewrite history with real diplomatic leadership focused on ending Sudan's cycles of war. With millions of lives hanging in the balance, that is a chance worth taking.

Obama, Darfur, and ICC justice

2008-11-23T15:15:00.000-08:00

“Obama, Darfur, and ICC justice
We must stand up to Sudan's shocking threats.”

By Eric Reeves

from the November 24, 2008 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1124/p09s02-coop.html

Northampton, Mass. - Of all the issues President-elect Barack Obama
faces before he takes office, none is of greater moral urgency than
changing the tenor of the US response to what he has repeatedly
described as "genocide in Darfur."

That's because, before Inauguration Day, the International Criminal
Court (ICC) is very likely to issue a warrant for the arrest of Sudan's
president, Omar al-Bashir, charging him with crimes against humanity and
genocide in Darfur.

These charges are amply justified by the evidence. Mr. Obama's clear
and effective response is needed, because the Khartoum regime has
threatened aggressive violence in a calculated campaign to fend off the
arrest.

Indeed, its threats are as shocking as they are underreported.

In August, the UN head of mission in Sudan declared to the Security
Council: "The government has conveyed to me that the issuance of an
arrest warrant against President Bashir could have serious consequences
for UN staff and infrastructure in Sudan." Translation: Seek to arrest
our president and we'll unleash further hell on the aid personnel who
protect Darfur's vulnerable civilian populations.

Also in August, Bashir declared, "We are ready to go through war with
the great power" to forestall ICC actions. Such threats against UN
personnel and operations are unprecedented – and they must be fully
registered by the Security Council, both for Darfur and for future
peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.

As if to make clear just how high the stakes have become, Assistant
Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Edmond Mulet recently stressed that a
warrant for Bashir could "derail the [north/south] Comprehensive Peace
Agreement," which in January 2005 ended more than 20 years of
catastrophic civil war.

Sudan's unambiguous threat – which also poses grave regional dangers
– means the international community has no excuse not to act
forcefully now. And yet, to date, Khartoum's threats stand unrebuked.
The UN Secretariat has acquiesced: Despite Secretary-General Moon's
tepid and abstract support for the ICC, he refuses to challenge Khartoum
directly over its recent dangerous pronouncements.

Compounding the diplomatic problem, several regional organizations and
international groups are pushing for deferral of any indictment of
al-Bashir – not because of doubts about his guilt, but in service of a
putative "Darfur Peace Process."

But no such process exists or lies in prospect, primarily because no
adequate pressure exists on Khartoum to engage meaningfully.

Perversely, present efforts on Bashir's behalf by the Arab League, the
African Union, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference work to
sustain Khartoum's sense of impunity rather than create the necessary
pressures for radical changes in regime behavior on the ground
throughout Darfur – the key to any meaningful peace agreement.

That's why the "peace versus justice" trope often invoked by Westerners
is the wrong way to think about Darfur. It's not a choice between peace
and justice, not if we are serious about meaningful peace: for it is
precisely the relentless absence of justice and accountability
(impunity) that has sustained violence in Darfur and will continue to do
so if unaddressed.

What will follow if an Obama administration, its Western and democratic
allies, and a divided Security Council allow Khartoum to make good on
its ominous threats?

After more than five years of genocidal counterinsurgency war, hundreds
of thousands have died. Around 4.7 million civilians in Darfur remain
affected by the conflict and in need of humanitarian assistance; nearly
3 million have been displaced from their homes, and approximate
ly the
same number need food aid.

The fragile lifeline of assistance simply cannot continue without
greater protection of the sort promised by the UN-authorized
peacekeeping force known as UNAMID. Yet now Khartoum is threatening
UNAMID militarily and the tenuous security it provides to the world's
largest and most endangered aid operation.

The Obama administration can take a key leadership role right now,
beginning with unambiguous support for the international legitimacy of
the ICC. The administration in waiting should also commit to the
provision of critical helicopter and ground transport, the lack of which
has so far crippled UNAMID.

The European Union must be pressed vigorously to impose monetary
sanctions. Heavy diplomatic pressure must be exerted on China, Sudan's
most powerful ally, to condemn all threats against the UN.

And the US must be sharply mindful of Khartoum's evasive penchant for
engaging multiple diplomatic interlocutors: With its regional and global
allies, the US must work to compel the regime to engage with a single,
credible peace forum that recognizes not only Darfuri combatants and
civil society leadership, but the obligations of international law.

To do less is to acquiesce to the threats of a brutal regime whose
responsibility for atrocity crimes throughout Darfur is beyond dispute.

[Eric Reeves is author of "A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the
Darfur Genocide."]

Eric Reeves
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063

413-585-3326
ereeves@smith.edu
www.sudanreeves.org

CONGO'S CRISIS WORSENS

2008-11-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

Eighteen days ago, I published an entry titled "Conflict in Congo, refugees on the move", which showed some of the initial chaos resulting from the war erupting once again in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). In the days since, the civilian population has endured more continued fighting amongst multiple factions, cholera outbreaks, separation from family members, hunger, and further losses (of life, property, safety and trust) as both rebel forces and government soldiers have committed many acts of theft, rape and murder while thinly-stretched UN forces have been unable to provide much help. The organization Doctors Without Borders (M�decins Sans Fronti�res) has recently launched their own multimedia initiative to "bring global attention to the humanitarian consequences of the intensifying war in eastern DR Congo", called Condition:Critical, please take the time to visit and hear the voices that reflect what is seen in the photos below. (39 photos total)

A Congolese child carries two boxes of high nutrition cookies inside the courtyard of the Mercy Corps clinic where the UNICEF and the IMC (International Medical Corps) distributed the cookies, mostly to Internally Displaced People (IDPs) living in a camp in Kibati about 10 kilometers (6.21 miles) north of the provincial capital of Goma, on November 4, 2008. (WALTER ASTRADA/AFP/Getty Images)

Internally Displaced People walk south towards Goma escaping fighting near Kibati on November 7, 2008. Fresh fighting had erupted the Friday before, between rebels and government forces north of Goma, scattering thousands from a displaced people's camp. The UN Mission in DR Congo (MONUC) said it had deployed helicopters to try to contain the fighting, which broke out as regional leaders attended an emergency summit on the crisis in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. (WALTER ASTRADA/AFP/Getty Images) #

A young girl and her grandfather wait at a hospital in Mueso, North Kivu, in DR Congo, in this August 8, 2008 photo released today by Medecins Sans Frontieres. (REUTERS/Cedric Gerbehaye-Medecins Sans Frontiers/Handout) #

Children who have been abandoned or orphaned by war eat dinner at the Don Bosco center in Goma in eastern Congo, November 20, 2008. Fighting in eastern Congo has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians in recent weeks, with 1,519 people taking shelter in the Don Bosco school compound. There were 89 children with no parents among them. (REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly) #

In this Nov. 6, 2008 file photo, young Protegee carries her niece, Response, as she looks for her parents in the village Kiwanja, 90 kms north of Goma, eastern Congo. When photographed on Nov. 6, Protegee was in a crowd of thousands in the town of Kiwanja, having walked for three days by herself after being separated from her mother as they fled on foot from her town about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away. Protegee finally found her mother, Esperance Nirakagori, in Kiwanja at a makeshift refugee camp six days after they were separated. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File) #

A boy looks on at the Mugunga displaced people camp, November 12, 2008 in the outskirts of the town of Goma, DR Congo. The head of UN peacekeeping has asked the UN security Council for more than 3000 extra troops to be deployed to the eastern region of DR Congo. The request is an attempt to protect civillians from the violence of rebel forces and the Congolese Army. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images) #

A boy stands at Kibati refugee camp for internally displaced people in North Kivu in DR Congo in this November 9, 2008 photo released today by Medecins Sans Frontieres. (REUTERS/Sven Torfinn/Medecins Sans Frontiers/Handout). #

People who have been displaced by violence tap into a supply of water in their camp for Internally Displaced People located near the Nyiragongo volcano in Kibati, DR Congo, on November 11, 2008. The international Red Cross said on November 10 it had distributed food aid to over 17,000 frightened and exhausted people forced to flee fighting in the North Kivu region. (WALTER ASTRADA/AFP/Getty Images) #

With Mount Nyiragongo - an active volcano - glowing in the background, displaced people prepare the evening meal in the Kibati refugee camp outside Goma, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008. Around 60,000 people displaced by fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo were to be moved out of the camp because of safety fears, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay) #

Furah carries wood and her eighteen-month-old daughter Shukyru, on the road linking Rupango to Sake, eastern Congo, Wednesday Nov. 19, 2008. Furah walks the 16 kms every day, crossing from the CNDP rebel controlled area to the government held town of Sake to sell wood. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay) #

A child soldier (C), known as "Kadogo," meaning "small one" in Swahili, stands at the front line at Kanyabayonga in eastern Congo, November 17, 2008. Snatched from their homes by armed men who force them to carry ammunition, to fight and kill under threat of beatings, Congo's child soldiers are teenage victims of an unforgiving war. (FINBARR O'REILLY/Reuters) #

A government soldier walks past the burned corpse of an enemy traditional Mai Mai fighter in the looted village of Kirumba in eastern Congo November 19, 2008. The local pro-government militia fought the retreating soldiers at Kirumba and Kayna on Tuesday with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Militia leaders said they had tried to force the army troops back into battle against the rebels. (REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly) #

Government soldiers transport looted goods on a wooden scooter after a day of fighting in the village of Kayna in eastern Congo, November 18, 2008. Demoralised Congolese government troops, retreating before eastern rebels, clashed on Tuesday with their own local militia allies who tried to make them stand and fight after the armed forces chief was replaced. (REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly) #

Two soldiers serving in the Congolese army sit handcuffed to to each other after a military court sentenced them to life in prison during a military trial in the North Kivu provincial capital city of Goma on November 17, 2008. A group of soldiers fleeeing from the front lines during an attack by rebel soldiers on October 27 rampaged through the city creating chaos. A military court sentenced several soldiers for rape, looting and dereliction of duty. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images) #

A woman (center), raped by a soldier from the Armed Forces of the Republic of Congo looks at her attacker, Sargent Shumbo Chance (right) as a military court was sentencing him to life in prison during a military trial in the North Kivu provincial capital city of Goma on November 17, 2008. The woman, who was raped in front of her husband, was one of many who were violated by soldiers during an attack by rebel soldiers on October 27. Amnesty International said that the UN Human Rights Council should hold a special session on DR Congo where rebels and government troops have been accused of war crimes. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images) #

Two boys displaced by violence in the North Kivu region of DR Congo stand on a hill in the Kibati IDP camp near the city of Goma on November 15, 2008. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images) #

A toddler gets a drink of water from her mother as they and a dozen other residents of the North Kivu town of Nyanzale gather in front of a UN peacekeepers base in the town of Rwindi on November 19, 2008. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images) #

A child runs in a downpour at the Don Bosco Ngangi center in Goma, eastern Congo, Thursday Nov 13, 2008. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay) #

People displaced by violence in the North Kivu region of DR Congo crowd a local leader to register their id cards and be counted as Internally Displaced People (IDPs) at the Kibati IDP camp, near the city of Goma, on November 15, 2008. Thousands of newly arrived IDP's from the towns of Kiwanya and Rutshuru registered on ledgers. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images) #

A Congolese Army soldier holds a baby chimpanzee while manning a checkpoint in the entrance to the provincial capital of Goma, Congo on November 6, 2008. The soldier explained that he has had the baby since the soldier had killed the mother to feed himself. He explained that he intends to sell the baby chimp. (YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images) #

Captured pro-government militia fighters sit in the rain near Kiwanja in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, November 13, 2008. Weeks of violence have forced more than 250,000 people to flee their homes or ramshackle camps where they had taken shelter, bringing the number of internal refugees from years of fighting above 1 million. (REUTERS/Emmanuel Braun) #

A Congolese army soldier walks in the bush on the frontline on November 09, 2008 just outside the town of Goma, DR Congo. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images) #

UN special envoy, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, (in purple), and CNDP rebel leader Laurent Nkunda (in suit) dance in Jomba, east Congo, near the Uganda border, Sunday Nov. 16, 2008. The UN 's special envoy on Congo met the Central African country's main rebel leader for the first time Sunday in a bid to end the crisis, as the U.N. reported more heavy fighting elsewhere in the east. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay) #

Women sit on the ground as they wait for their turn to receive food rations from the International Red Cross near a camp for displaced people in Kibati, near the North Kivu provincial capital of Goma, on November 13, 2008. Rebels in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo were on the outskirts of Kanyabayonga town, the scene of looting by government forces early this week, rebel and other sources said. (WALTER ASTRADA/AFP/Getty Images) #

A woman stricken with Cholera lies on a bed at the General Hospital of the provincial capital city of Goma on November 13, 2008. The World Health Organisation warned on November 11, 2008 that cholera poses a "serious risk" in conflict-hit eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where around 1,000 cases have been reported since October. (WALTER ASTRADA/AFP/Getty Images) #

The coffin of eight-month old Alexandrine Kabitsebangumi, who died from cholera, is lowered into a grave in a banana grove at Kibati, north of Goma in eastern Congo, November 12, 2008. Recent fighting has contributed to a heightened risk of cholera, with poor sanitation, lack of clean water, the constant movement of people into squalid and crowded camps. (REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly) #

Pregnant women are reflected in a puddle as they stand in line to receive birth kits from a local NGO at a camp for Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Kibati, on November 12, 2008. With a "schizophrenic" mandate and a lack of troops and logistics, UN peacekeepers in Democratic Republic of Congo are being accused of being powerless and ineffective. (YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images) #

A Congolese government soldier wearing a wig smokes by the roadside near the front line, north of Goma in eastern Congo, November 11, 2008. (REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly) #

Men stand near a Congolese Army tank on November 19, 2008 in the center of Kibumba. The town was the scene of an armed clash on November 18 in what a pro-government militia said was a "friendly fire" incident with government forces. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images) #

Raindrops cling to the fingertips of a dead Congolese government soldier lying on the road at the frontline near Kibati, November 12, 2008. Two soldiers, both shot through the head, were killed in a sharp exchange of artillery, mortar, rocket and machine gun fire late on Tuesday a few kilometres from a refugee camp at Kibati sheltering 80,000 civilians displaced by violence. This is the tense frontline in the simmering war in Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, where Tutsi rebels and government troops face each other just 200 meters apart from positions in the bush and fields. (REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly) #

An elderly woman displaced by fighting stands in a refugee camp in Kiwanja, 70km (50 miles) north of Goma in eastern Congo, November 11, 2008. Packed into squalid refugee camps or roaming in the bush, hundreds of thousands of Congolese children face hunger, disease, sexual abuse or recruitment by marauding armed factions, aid workers said on Tuesday. (REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly) #

Two-year-old Eliya lays on a bed in the hospital of Rutshuru in eastern DR Congo on November 10, 2008, after being treated for a gunshot wound to his arm. Eliya arrived last week from the neaby town of Kiwanja, 80 kms north of the North Kivu provincial capital of Goma with some 40 other civilians fleeing combat between renegade general Laurent Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) fighters and pro-governmentl Mai-Mai militias. Eliya, who does not know what happened to his parents, has not spoken since arriving at the hospital. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images) #

Children who have been abandoned or orphaned by war sit at the Don Bosco center in Goma in eastern Congo, November 20, 2008. Fighting in eastern Congo has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians in recent weeks. (REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly) #

A girl looks on at refugee camp near a UN peacekeepers camp on November 07, 2008 in Kiwanja, DR Congo. Over 250,000 people have been displaced after fighting erupted between the rebel CNDP and the army in the last several weeks. According to reports, violence continues despite a ceasefire declared by (CNDP) rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images) #

A child runs past a U.N. helicopter that had just landed near a makeshift displaced persons camp outside the MONUC base in Kiwanja, 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of Goma, Friday, Nov. 7, 2008. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo) #

Marie Charlotte joins others for evening service at Kiwanja's catholic church in eastern Congo Sunday Nov. 16, 2008. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay) #

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People look at the body of a man in civilian clothes who was allegedely shot dead by rebels of Laurent Nkunda's CNDP force during clashes with pro-government Mai Mai militia, leaving scores dead and displacing thousands, on November 06, 2008 in Kiwanga. Rebels smashed a ceasefire and wrested control of another town in eastern DR Congo in clashes with government forces on the eve of a regional summit on the crisis, the UN said. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images) #

Renegade army general Laurent Nkunda's pet goat "Betty" peeks from behind his master's boots moments after he arrived at his headquarters camp high up in the mountains of North Kivu in DR Congo on November 3, 2008. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images) #

A boy holds his brother at the Kibati camp for displaced people on November 13, 2008 on the outskirts of the town of Goma. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images) #

Source: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/congos_crisis_worsens.html

OBAMA'S OPPORTUNITY TO HELP AFRICA

2008-11-21T17:37:00.000-08:00

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
OPINION NOVEMBER 22, 2008

The two deadliest conflicts in the world merit urgent attention.

By GEORGE CLOONEY, DAVID PRESSMAN and JOHN PRENDERGAST

Given the daunting challenges before him, it would be unsurprising if bringing peace to Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo was not at the top of Barack Obama's list of early priorities. But it should be. Not only because Sudan and Congo are the two deadliest wars in the world, but because they are wars that the Obama administration could actually help end.

A Congolese army tank in Kirumba, eastern Congo.

The war in Congo alone has led to more deaths than any war, anywhere, since the Holocaust. Five million people have died there in the last decade. The wars in Sudan over the last two decades -- both in the south and in Darfur -- have cost the lives of more than 2.5 million people. The number of those driven from their homes is in the millions. Two of Africa's richest countries in natural resources have reduced most of their citizens to abject poverty.

Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, Sudan and Congo garner only occasional attention and sporadic diplomatic action. When the bodies start to pile up, diplomats from around the world descend upon Khartoum and Kinshasa. But this type of emergency diplomacy has left the root causes of conflict unaddressed and has allowed them to fester.

In both wars, government soldiers, militias and rebels ruthlessly deploy rape as a weapon of war. We have met with Congolese women who have been gang-raped, had their lips cut off to prevent them from speaking, and who were then set on fire. Sudanese women tell similar stories.

Rahm Emanuel, the newly minted White House chief of staff, recently reminded us that in the midst of crisis, there is great opportunity. For Congo and Sudan, we see three big reasons for hope.

The first is China. Because of China's nearly $9 billion investment in the oil sector in Sudan, and recent $5 billion deal for Congolese minerals, China increasingly has a vested interest in peace and stability in these two countries. President Obama could send a powerful message and take a meaningful step by sending a high-level envoy to Beijing, early in his first 100 days, to explore ways to work together to help bring peace to these African countries. With all that divides the U.S. and China, these are issues we can and should unite on.

The second reason for hope is the president-elect himself. Mr. Obama has offered the world a renewed American commitment to global citizenship. In both Congo and Sudan, as is the case in countries around the world, there is an extraordinary eagerness to see this global phenomenon engage positively in their crises. However intangible, the president-elect's ability to inspire and lead is as real as any other point of leverage. He can make the case for peace to those controlling the flow of money and munitions into Congo and Sudan. And he can raise the cost of continuing the status quo through multilateral measures to economically and politically isolate the spoilers.

The third reason for hope may be the most potent of all. The American public, especially our younger generation, is increasingly interested in what happens outside of our borders, and particularly in Africa. While we have each participated in our own way in building an advocacy movement around Darfur, it has been the high-school and college students who have made Darfur a political issue too important to be ignored, and who are now preparing similar campaigns for Congo. It is these same young Americans who voted in large numbers for the new president. They are now ready to be led by a President Obama to build a safer world and a safer Africa.

Investing in the resolution of the conflicts in Congo and Sudan will be much cheaper than continuing to spend billions of dollars a year on humanitarian aid and observer forces. These band-aids are expensive substitutes for the real solutions that come from rolling up our sleeves and building an international coalition committed to addressing the root causes of conflict in a serious and sustained manner. President-elect Obama has a chance to help build an international coalition to end the two biggest wars in the world. He should seize it.

Mr. Clooney, an actor and director, and Mr. Pressman, a human-rights lawyer, are co-founders of the international advocacy organization Not On Our Watch. Mr. Prendergast co-chairs the Enough Project (www.enoughproject.org).

A GLEAM AMONG THE RUINS

2008-11-21T08:31:00.000-08:00

Nov 20th 2008 | ABYEI, JUBA AND KHARTOUM
From The Economist print edition

After years of civil war, three new factors may bring hope to Africa’s biggest country

Panos

WITH his outstretched arms shaking in gestures of anger and bewilderment, John stands in the charred remains of his little family compound in the central Sudanese town of Abyei. The four tukuls, or traditional huts, that used to house his wife and nine children have been incinerated. His pickup truck, too, has been overturned and burned. The attack happened only five months ago, but already the weeds and brush of the surrounding swampland are covering the last traces of a happy family life.

Abyei was once a thriving market town. But it is also the capital of a region that straddles the bloody fault-line in Sudan between the Muslim Arab tribes of the north of the country and the African, mainly Christian and animist, tribes of the south. In May heavy fighting broke out in Abyei between the northern government’s army and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which are supposed to have stopped fighting each other since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in 2005, ostensibly ended more than 40 years of north-south war.

The firefight that destroyed John’s compound was bad enough. But the whole town was looted, and then burned to the ground, in the days that followed the fighting. The culprits were the traditional enemies of the Dinka people, the armed militias of the Arab Misseriya tribe. All John’s most valuable possessions were taken: his generator, the two small television sets that it powered and the family’s cooking utensils. By all accounts, much of this has been put up for sale in the Misseriya town of el-Muglad, about 150km (93 miles) to the north. The market there has been nicknamed “Abyei” after the plentiful supply of goods on sale from the looted town.

At least John has a good job, as a driver for the United Nations. He may be able to rebuild his life. Thousands of his fellow Dinka in this impoverished region are not so lucky. Forced to flee Abyei, they now live in a sprawl of hastily erected huts about 40km south, at Agok, where they survive largely on help from foreign aid-workers. In the jargon of international relief agencies, they have become “Internally Displaced Persons”. And like many other millions of Sudanese who are refugees in their own country, these Dinka have no plans to return to the little that is left of their old way of life until security improves—which may take a long time. The charred remains of John’s former home are virtually opposite the front entrance to the UN military base in Abyei. Those soldiers could do nothing to help him.

The story of Abyei is stark proof that the underlying causes of north-south conflict in Sudan have not changed. Much of it is sparked by feelings of marginalisation. Just to the east of the town, for example, are the Chinese-run oilfields around the town of Heglig. These supply the northern government in Khartoum with most of its substantial revenues and help to fund a building and consumer boom in the capital. But the local Dinka derive no benefit from this money. They are not even allowed into the area around Heglig, though it is part of their old homeland.

Mistrust also continues between the largely nomadic Arab tribes of the north, like the Misseriya, supported and armed by the northern Islamist government for its own political purposes, and the settled African farmers of the south, both Christian and Muslim. Migrations of heavily armed Arab cattle-herders into the lusher wetlands of the Dinka at the beginning of each dry season have caused violence for decades. This year’s migrations south have already started, and, especially after the torching of Abyei, everyone is preparing for more trouble.

Yet the fighting between northern and southern Sudan is only one part of it. The western province of Darfur is also riven by a war between the government and rebel forces that erupted in 2003. At first this was a straightforward battle pitting the Sudanese army, together with the Arab militias, the infamous janjaweed, against two main rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army. Now, however, the nature of the conflict in Darfur has mutated, making the violence more unpredictable and widespread and the task of getting a lasting peace deal that much harder. The janjaweed militias have fragmented, fighting among themselves and occasionally against the Sudanese army, especially when they have not been paid. The rebels, too, have fractured into about 30 groups of varying size and seriousness. These roam around the province, and several are kidnapping and killing the very aid-workers who help their own people.

The continuing violence has produced, according to the UN, 300,000 internal refugees in Darfur since January alone, the highest rate of displacement for several years. About 2.7m people are now crowding into overflowing makeshift camps in Darfur itself, and about another 300,000 are in camps over the border in Chad. In all about 5m Darfuris, out of a population of 6m at the last official count in 2002, are either in camps or are relying on aid to survive. And as many as 300,000 have probably died as a result of the conflict.

With 17,000 or so local and foreign aid-workers in Darfur trying to help the victims, the relief operation is still the largest of its kind in the world. But the work is more and more hazardous, and access to the refugees has become increasingly restricted. Eleven humanitarian workers have been killed this year and 179 kidnapped. Some 237 aid vehicles have also been hijacked this year, already double the number for 2007. The UN in Darfur has moved to its highest level of alert before full evacuation. All non-essential staff have left.

The United Nations African Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), the peacekeepers who have been mandated by the Security Council and the African Union to prevent the violence, remain based at el-Fasher, the capital of Darfur. But with only about 10,000 often ineffectual troops and police, well short of the 26,000 that were promised by the end of this year, UNAMID remains pretty impotent. As a result, it is already losing the respect of Darfuris. They had hoped that this force, unlike the previous pathetic outfit provided by the African Union, would finally give them protection from the marauding janjaweed and bandits who kill and rape them. They were wrong.

Breaking the stalemate

These trend-lines in Darfur have become depressingly familiar over the past few years. The various “peace processes” to try to resolve the conflict have repeatedly foundered on a mixture of government intransigence and intrigue, rebel divisions and foreign meddling, notably by Chad. For all the vast international effort put into improving the situation in Darfur, the thousands of UN and diplomatic man-hours and the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, little has changed.

The same stagnation and sense of helplessness is evident elsewhere in Sudan. The peace agreement of 2005 between north and south agreed, for example, to share the wealth, integrate the two sides’ armies and settle the boundary between them. All these proposals were designed to create the New Sudan that southerners dream of: an integrated, federal and multiethnic nation that, for the first time in decades, could live at peace with itself. In fact, progress in all these areas has been slow or almost non-existent. Neither the northern government nor the Government of South Sudan, which now runs the semi-autonomous south, has invested much in making unity “attractive”, as the CPA demands. The peace agreement gives southerners the right to hold a referendum to secede from Sudan in 2011. At the moment, this is what many southerners are really preparing for.

But in the past few weeks three newish factors have coalesced to create a set of circumstances that could shake the country up: for better, if matters are handled carefully, or for much worse. The first is the prospect of national elections next year; the second is the beginning of proceedings against President Omar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of genocide over Darfur; and the third is the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. Each of these factors, on its own, would not bother Mr Bashir much. But the three together are now putting considerable pressure on him to change course in Darfur and get serious about peace with the south.

Elections were forced on the northern government and the SPLM, the political wing of the SPLA, by foreign donor governments as their price for giving billions of dollars-worth of money to rebuild Sudan after the 2005 peace deal. These elections have always offered the best chance of ending Mr Bashir’s repressive government, which came to power by overthrowing Sudan’s last democratic government in a coup in 1989.

Mr Bashir and his henchmen in the National Congress Party (NCP) are genuinely fearful of elections. They know that if even vaguely free and fair ballots were to take place throughout Sudan, they would lose heavily. Salva Kiir, the leader of the SPLM, might well win instead if he ran as the candidate promising to stand up for the marginalised people of all Sudan, in the south, the east and Darfur; there are plenty of them. Such an alliance might at last create the New Sudan, the vision of John Garang, the first leader of the SPLM, who died in a helicopter crash in 2005. A census, albeit an imperfect one, has already taken place to form the basis of voter registration, and under the terms of the CPA an election should take place by next summer.

The Obama factor

If Mr Bashir loses, it may also be easier for the ICC to haul him off to The Hague. Again, despite what they say in public, not only Mr Bashir but the entire government is anxious about the ICC. The regime’s hardliners—the heads of the army, the intelligence and the internal security services, all directly responsible for much of the mayhem in Darfur—know that they could be next on the indictment list. Many people in Sudan, and almost everyone in Darfur, would be delighted if they were. The whole country is waiting to see whether the ICC judges act on the chief prosecutor’s recommendation, made in July, to issue a warrant for Mr Bashir’s arrest. A decision is expected towards the end of December.

And now there is President-elect Obama to contend with. Sudan may be the only country in the world where President George Bush is popular and the Democrats loathed and feared, at least by the regime. Mr Bush gave huge political backing to the peace between the north and south, but the Sudanese also remember that it was President Bill Clinton who launched an attack on Sudan in 1998. He fired cruise missiles into a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum North (mistaking it for a bomb-making factory) in retaliation for al-Qaeda attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The present regime was the incubator for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the mid-1990s.

The Sudanese government knows that a new Obama administration will probably be full of former Clintonites who have spent the past eight years furiously organising campaigns against Sudan over what they call the “genocide” in Darfur. These people, like Gayle Smith, tipped to be Obama’s senior diplomat in charge of African affairs, all have long experience of Sudan and are fierce critics of the Sudanese government. They are less likely than their Republican predecessors to go softly on Mr Bashir’s government for the sake of the titbits of intelligence on al-Qaeda that the Sudanese intelligence services like giving to the Americans.

This matters tremendously to the Sudanese. The government’s priority has always been to come off the American list of state sponsors of terror, to repair its severed relations with the West in general and to see the end of the economic sanctions against it. America can deliver all this in return for improvements in Darfur, elections and much else. The Obama factor is already at work here. The argument to the Sudanese is: “Cut a deal now—or expect much worse come January.” The result is, as one Western diplomat puts it, “a government in full conciliation mode”, firmly on the back foot.

Appeasement and threats

So Mr Bashir has been striking all the right notes recently. The government has been slightly less obstructive to UNAMID, for example. And last week, at a posh forum on Darfur in Khartoum, with foreign diplomats, ministers and even the odd head of state present, Mr Bashir endorsed, in a general way, a document that could give the Darfur rebels most of what they want. Compensation, the return of refugees to their homes and the appointment of a new vice-president for Darfur are all, apparently, on the table. The Qataris, fresh from success in Lebanon, have volunteered to mediate with the rebels and to host a peace conference. There is a vague hope that Qatar will fork out the hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation that may be needed to win the rebels over.

The president even announced, dramatically, a ceasefire by government forces in Darfur. This grabbed the headlines, but he has announced a ceasefire several times before and nothing has ever happened. This makes many people sceptical of his real intentions. The rebels, who were unrepresented at Mr Bashir’s forum, immediately rejected his ceasefire call.

Indeed, as the same Western diplomat points out, all Mr Bashir’s recent promises to reform his ways are, as usual, “easily reversible”. He is trying to do just enough to persuade countries at the UN to vote for a deferral of the ICC case against him, as they have the power to do. Most African and Arab countries support him on this. But he needs to convince some Western countries, and preferably America as well, while the going is relatively good.

And if no one is persuaded by Mr Bashir’s promises of future good behaviour, foreign countries certainly have to think hard about the Sudanese government’s likely response if the ICC does issue its arrest warrant. Most opposition politicians presume that, at the very least, full elections will never happen. A lot of semi-plausible excuses will be trotted out: an incomplete census, a long rainy season, the lack of voter education. But ultimately, as Adam Madibu, the deputy chairman of the opposition Umma party, says: “The election is the best way to get the transformation of Sudan, and we will have lost it.” And the SPLM leadership, unfortunately, may well collude in that. They fear the schisms and divisions that elections could open up in their own ranks. An unaccountable SPLM would be perfectly happy to get through to its own referendum in 2011 without elections.

Losing the opportunity to vote Mr Bashir out of power would drive many Sudanese to despair. There are dark mutterings of a coup against him by moderates in his own party. They could at least get a new, more palatable figurehead for international consumption and then shield Mr Bashir from the ICC. But this would hardly “transform” Sudan. Another, more remote, possibility is a popular uprising. There have been two against unpopular military rulers in the years since Sudan’s independence in 1956. But the security apparatus is more pervasive and onerous now than it has ever been, especially in Khartoum.

AFPBashir at bay

Already, NGOs on the ground in Darfur are suffering from a government backlash prompted by the ICC charges against Mr Bashir. Harassment by security officials has got much worse. The goons have spent days in NGO offices haranguing staff to hand over sensitive documents and computer files which, they suspect, could have been used as evidence against Mr Bashir. In particular, officials have been targeting projects that help women recover from sexual violence. The massive use of rape as a weapon in the army’s counter-insurgency war is a critical part of the ICC case. If a warrant is issued, the harassment will surely worsen to the point where many counselling projects will be shut down, as at least one has been already.

Mr Bashir could also turn on his former enemies in the south by simply reducing the share of oil money they get. Already, there is concern about the incompetence of the government there and the lack of economic and social development. A large proportion of the SPLM’s small revenue goes on new weapons, such as, it is widely assumed, the T-72 tanks now stuck off the Somali coast. If a weak south does move towards secession against a surly, hostile north, diplomats fear that the resulting conflict would create a whole swathe of instability in Africa, from Somalia across south Sudan to eastern Congo—another place where a peace agreement has unravelled with awful consequences.

Among Mr Bush’s first orders to his National Security Council in January 2001 was the drawing up of a new policy on Sudan. Mr Obama, who will be taking office more or less at the moment when the ICC is expected to issue its warrant, needs a new policy even more badly. But at least he will not be short of advice.

TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN'S RIGHTS DAY

2008-11-20T19:43:00.000-08:00

Today is the International Children’s Rights Day, a United Nations holiday that celebrates the creation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. Unfortunately millions of children lack the most basic rights such as access to education,, food, water and lives free from war. According to UNESCO, 77 million kids worldwide do not attend school. School is one of the best ways to improve all aspects of kids lives, including creating better economic opportunities, improved health outcomes and empowering girls.

In honor of this important holiday, I am highlighting the work of Jewish World Watch, an instrumental organization for the Social Action campaign for our film, Darfur Now. While the organization is only three years old, it has quickly become a leader in humanitarian relief, advocacy and education for Darfur. One of their critical programs–backpacks– extends well-beyond providing immediate humanitarian relief to millions of refugees. It helps to build long-term infrastructure and educational opportunities to thousands of Darfurian refugee children. Their backpack program will provide school supplies to 14,000 children in the Oure Cassoni refugee camp. The contents of the backpacks provides more than just learning tools; these children will be given educational opportunties and safe-spaces in their otherwise chaotic, war-ridden lives. As victims of war and violence, these children lack the most basic rights as children and human beings. takepart today to support the backpack program which will give these Darfurian kids resources and hope for a better future.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

(photo: vonbergen.net)

Original Post by Sarah Newman:

http://www.takepart.com/2008/11/20/sarahs-social-action-snapshot-backpacks-for-darfur/

Sign the RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO Petition to the President

2008-11-20T16:59:00.000-08:00

Started by Michael Bear Kleinman

http://humanitarianrelief.change.org

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is host to the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II. Congolese women and girls in particular bear the vicious brunt of this crisis. Eastern Congo right now is perhaps the worst place in the world to be a woman. Used as a weapon of war, rape in Congo exists on a scale seen nowhere else in the world.

Often successful in its intent to destroy and exterminate, rape as a weapon of war is causing the near total destruction of women, their families, and their communities. Efforts to protect women and girls in the Congo are failing spectacularly. It is time to get serious about ending the conflict and protecting and empowering Congo's women.

This is an ongoing pledge that should be fulfilled as often as possible.

ENOUGH PROJECT RESPONDS TO ICC PROSECUTOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS FOR DARFUR WAR CRIMES PROSECUTION

2008-11-20T14:39:00.001-08:00

November 20, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Enough Project today issued the following statement in response to an announcement by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. The statement, which follows, is from John Prendergast, Co-chair, John Norris, Executive Director, and Omer Ismail, Policy Advisor:

Today the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, or I.C.C., Luis Moreno-Ocampo, applied for an arrest warrant for war crimes against several members of a splinter rebel faction in Darfur related to the September 29, 2007, attack on African Union peacekeepers in Haskanita. The Chief Prosecutor's actions are a powerful reminder that the Court will pursue justice with an even hand and follow the chain of evidence with regard to crimes against humanity wherever it leads.

Today's move by the prosecutor makes clear that repeated claims by the Sudanese government that it is being unfairly targeted by the Court are without merit. Now that government officials, rebels, and militia leaders all have been subject to I.C.C. actions, it is clear that the Court is pursuing its work in a professional and impartial manner. Further, this balanced pursuit of accountability underscores the importance of all sides in the conflict partaking in credible peace talks and forging a lasting solution. While the United Nations Security Council can invoke Article 16 to defer specific cases on a rolling one-year basis, it only should do so in the overwhelming interest of peace. Efforts by parties, including the Sudanese Government, to build support for invoking Article 16 will not be taken seriously until there is a peace to keep in Darfur.

To read the I.C.C. Chief Prosecutor's statement, click here.

Separately, the Court is still waiting to determine if it will issue an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omer al-Bashir for charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. We believe these charges to have merit, and the issuance of an arrest warrant coupled with a change of administration in Washington can combine to create a transformative opportunity for Darfur. Many governments that had earlier expressed unqualified support for Bashir are backing away quietly, making it increasingly plausible that it will be politically feasible for Bashir to be replaced as president of Sudan if his fellow party members follow the letter of the law in Sudan, hold him accountable for his actions, and push him to the side. An arrest warrant would also present a golden opportunity to use the regime's desire to suspend these judicial proceedings as leverage not only in forging a peace agreement in Darfur but in getting implementation of the existing North-South peace deal back on track.

The Enough Project, Save Darfur, and the Genocide Intervention Network jointly have called on President-elect Obama and his transition team to develop a new strategy for Sudan, or a peace surge, built around strong diplomacy, improved civilian protection, escalating pressure on the parties to the conflict, and justice. President Obama can help lead an international effort to construct a viable, sustained, high-level peace process that addresses the fundamental issues in Darfur and Sudan more broadly. The time is right also for a concerted multilateral effort to see an indicted Bashir resign the presidency and face extradition to The Hague, which would have a profound effect on the domestic political situation in Sudan. Peace remains possible in Sudan, and today the Chief Prosecutor took an important step in helping the international community fulfill that goal.

###

Enough is a project of the Center for American Progress to end genocide and crimes against humanity. Founded in 2007, Enough focuses on crises in Sudan, Chad, eastern Congo, northern Uganda, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. Enough's strategy papers and briefings provide sharp field analysis and targeted policy recommendations based on a "3P" crisis response strategy: promoting durable peace, providing civilian protection, and punishing perpetrators of atrocities. Enough works with concerned citizens, advocates, and policy makers to prevent, mitigate, and resolve these crises. To learn more about Enough and what you can do to help, go to www.enoughproject.org.

BE A VOICE FOR DARFUR!!!

2008-11-18T15:36:00.000-08:00

PLEASE!!!

SIGN THE SAVE DARFUR POSTCARD TO OBAMA ASKING THAT HE MAKE DARFUR A DAY-ONE PRIORITY!!!

http://addyourvoice.org/

PLEASE!!! Sign Raise Hope for Congo's Petition to the President:

2008-11-18T15:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. President:

We urge you to take immediate action to end the suffering of women and girls in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since 1996, eastern Congo has been the epicenter of the deadliest war since World War II, and it remains a place where combatants on all sides routinely use rape and sexual violence as a weapon to destroy women, families, and communities. We ask you to announce your administration’s initial plan to end the scourge of violence against women and girls in eastern Congo on International Women’s Day on March 8, 2009, and then report back on your progress toward this goal one year later.

We ask you to embrace a comprehensive approach that promotes peace, protects people and punishes perpetrators by:

• Promoting Peace: Lead aggressive diplomatic efforts to forge an inclusive peace deal between the Congolese government and rebel groups, remove Rwandan rebels from eastern Congo, and end the illegal exploitation of Congolese natural resources — a major driver of the conflict and violence.

• Protecting People: Ensure that UN peacekeepers aggressively patrol areas where women are most vulnerable, increase support for UN and charitable programs responding to sexual violence, and urge Congress to pass the International Violence Against Women Act (S. 2279).

• Punishing Perpetrators: Call for the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into rape as a war crime in eastern Congo, work with the Congolese government to increase rape prosecutions in Congolese courts, and aggressively enforce existing UN sanctions.

We urge your administration to take strong action to protect and empower Congolese women and girls and promote peace in eastern Congo. Thank you for your urgent attention to this continuing tragedy, and we look forward to your announcement on March 8, 2009.

http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/1364/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=131

Thank you!
Nell

SAMANTHA POWER ON A COMPLICATED HERO

2008-11-18T12:30:00.000-08:00

Samantha Power studies US foreign policy, especially as it relates to war and human rights. Her books take on the world's worst problems: genocide, civil war and brutal dictatorships.

Why you should listen to her:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/samantha_power.html

Samantha Power is head of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, where she studies US policy as it relates to human rights, genocide and war. She's the author of a famous memo (in policy circles) suggesting that US foreign policy is utterly broken -- that the United States must return to a human rights-centered foreign policy or risk its prestige and respect in the world community. Her latest book is about Sergio Vieira de Mello, a UN diplomat who worked with the world's worst dictators to help protect the human rights of their people.

Power is also a journalist of fearless reputation. She spent 1993 to '96 reporting in the former Yugoslavia, and now contributes reportage and commentary to the New Yorker and Time. Her other books include A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.

"We need voices like Samantha Power."

Richard Holbrooke

CONDITION: CRITICAL - VOICES FROM THE WAR IN EASTERN CONGO

2008-11-16T13:54:00.000-08:00

From Doctors Without Borders: http://www.condition-critical.org/

Hundreds of thousands of people are on the run, fleeing a war that rages in eastern Congo, in the provinces of North and South Kivu. They are frightened. Many are sick or wounded. Others have been harassed or raped, or have had everything they own stolen. The people of the Kivus are in a critical condition. The destiny of everyone in this region is shaped by the war. The story of their struggle to survive needs to be told.

Starting November 20, 2008, MSF will help the people of the Kivus speak out through this web site.

WATCH THE TRAILER OF THE VIDEO TO BE POSTED ON NOVEMBER 20, 2008.
http://www.condition-critical.org/

Coming Soon: Tracy McGrady and the Darfur Dream Team to Launch the Sister Schools Program

2008-11-16T13:09:00.000-08:00

Young people are pretty much the same everywhere. They want a good education and better opportunities for their future. Children in refugee camps who have survived the war in Darfur are no different. They dream of a quality education and a chance to someday help build a peaceful Darfur.

When Tracy McGrady of the Houston Rockets heard about the massive challenges children from Darfur were facing in the refugee camps in Chad, he decided to travel there. After spending the bulk of his time listening to the harrowing stories of young Darfurians in the refugee camps and their universal quest for a better education, he decided to act. When Tracy and his traveling companions from the Enough Project returned to the U.S., they hatched the idea for the Darfur Dream Team's Sister Schools Program linking American middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities with schools in Darfurian refugee camps.

About the Sister Schools Program

The Sister Schools Program is an initiative to connect American middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities with sister schools in the 12 refugee camps in Chad. The two main objectives of the program are: (1) to provide a quality education to every refugee child from Darfur and (2) to develop connections between students from Darfur and the U.S. Through the Sister Schools Program, students in the U.S. will make commitments to a UN-affiliated registry for items such as textbooks and teacher training. Video linkages between the schools in the camps and the U.S. schools will connect the students and be a vehicle for cross-cultural exchange. NBA players will be major recruiters for the program and will also make financial contributions to refugee camp schools.

WATCH CLIP FROM DOCUMENTARY 3 POINTS.

http://www.darfurdreamteam.org/

CONTINENT OF HOPE by John Prendergast

2008-11-16T12:16:00.000-08:00

Forgive a typical American if she were to pay a visit to the West African nation of Sierra Leone and be confused by her surroundings. If she had ever heard of Sierra Leone before, it might have been while watching the movie Blood Diamond, which graphically depicted some of the worst depredations of the conflict there, such as the rebel group RUF’s amputation of limbs, the drug-crazed child soldiers, and the links between criminal diamond-dealing mafias and the war economy.

If this visitor to Sierra Leone had been reading occasional international news missives over the years, she might have remembered something about a rebel group that hacked the limbs off civilians to punish them for voting, or perhaps might have remembered that al Qaeda laundered money in the Sierra Leone diamond market before and after 9/11 to hide its assets.

Given that context, she certainly would have been quite astounded to have joined me on my visit to Tongo Fields in eastern Sierra Leone, the heart of the diamond-producing area and the site of some of the most intense fighting and horrific atrocities in the last century in Africa. What she would have seen in fact defied all expectations—the kind of low expectations that have come to mark international attitudes toward Africa in general.

Tongo Fields is a place crawling with former child soldiers, heavily contested by three political parties in last year’s election, and placed at further risk by a winner-take-all electoral process that dictates access to diamond profits as a result of victory at the polls. Before Sierra Leone’s historic 2007 election, every conflict indicator was flashing a red alert. Africa “experts” around the world were predicting that Sierra Leone, only half a decade after the end of its brutal civil war, was perhaps heading back down an inevitable road toward a return to war.

So in the context of all that Afro-pessimism—the legacy of war thick as the rainy season clouds lacing the Sierra Leonean skies—what happened?

I’VE OBSERVED elections in a number of African countries over the past 25 years, and this election in Sierra Leone may have been the most efficient, transparent and peaceful procedure I have ever witnessed, run by some of the most conscientious and earnest polling officials I have ever met. The army stayed in the barracks and didn’t improperly intervene, while the police contributed to the security of elections throughout the country on election day. The runoff among the two highest vote-getters led to a victory by the opposition party, and the ruling party gracefully and peacefully turned over the reins of power. In a grand affirmation of their country’s future, the people of Sierra Leone are defying both historical legacies and pundits’ low expectations.

An appropriately named former child soldier, Elijah, told me, “It’s a brand-new day for Sierra Leone.” Every one of the ex-combatants that I met in Tongo Fields and Freetown said in no uncertain terms that they would never again be lured back to a life of war in the bush. “We fought for nothing,” another former child soldier told me. “We are so tired of war. We don’t want to be used for fighting and end up with nothing.” A third former combatant, who divulged that he had committed “terrible atrocities” while he was in the bush, concluded, “This vote signals the end of jungle justice.”

The similarities are striking to another African country that also was written off by Africa “experts”: Liberia. Much like Blood Diamond, movies such as Lord of War with Nicolas Cage leave a hopeless impression of Liberia, referred to in the film as “that country which God seemed to have forsaken,” with Cage’s character describing the outskirts of Monrovia as “the edge of hell.” Yet in late 2005, Liberians marched to the polls and elected the first female head of state in Africa, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and more than 100,000 soldiers have demobilized as the country works diligently to erase the legacies of war. President Johnson-Sirleaf’s policies in a number of sectors have become models for other countries, and she is regularly invited to Europe and America to share her lessons learned and insights into how to heal societies and countries believed to have been “broken.”

I was there for that election too. The stories of the former child soldiers in Liberia were hauntingly similar to those of Sierra Leone. A 14-year-old named David told me, “We were used, fooled, and forced” by their former warlords; now he wants to farm if he can be given a little land and some capital. Others want to go to school or get job training. The last thing they want is to be dragged back to a world where the rule of law is abandoned and the gun talks loudest of all.

MOST AMERICANS view Africa as a place ripped apart by war, famine, anarchy, and HIV/AIDS. They often view Africans as people who need to be helped and “saved.” The truth is that there are indeed a few countries that are trapped in cycles of conflict, such as Sudan, Somalia, and Congo. But they are the exceptions. Liberia and Sierra Leone tell a different story of Africa—that of a continent of hope, of transformation.

The evidence goes far beyond those two West African nations. Everyone knows the story of South Africa, which up until the early 1990s was ruled by a system that codified racial discrimination against black Africans. Today, South Africa is preparing for its fourth democratic elections since the fall of that apartheid system. At the time Nelson Mandela was being elected South Africa’s first democratic president in 1994, Africa’s fastest genocide was occurring in Rwanda, where almost one million people were eliminated from the face of the earth in 100 days. Today, Rwandans are working hard to heal the wounds of the recent past, the country has a significant economic growth rate, and the likelihood of a return to conflict diminishes with each passing year. Neighboring Burundi and southern Sudan—themselves ripped apart by genocide and conflict, killing millions—have forged peace deals laying the groundwork for future peace and security.

In all of these countries, there are political and security problems, but the grassroots demand for peace has resulted in fundamental transformations that, if they had occurred in Europe, would be hailed as nothing short of miraculous.

What I have found in my travels in each of these success stories is an unparalleled assertion of rights and responsibilities by people from all walks of life throughout Africa, and especially by young people. There is a demand that their voices be heard, through the ballot box, through civil society organizations, through news media, through new and renewed political parties, and through burgeoning cultures of accountability. Part of what had fueled recruitment of young people during these various wars was disempowerment and victimization. Electoral processes, education, and development initiatives allow for a revaluation of the importance of the individual within the community, thus beginning a process of vesting citizens in the governance of their own countries.

ALL THIS IS just intellectual fodder (Why Africa is a land of endless possibility -- and how that should guide U.S. relations with the continent) unless it provides lessons for what we can do now for the biggest crises on the African continent: Darfur and Congo (Why Africa is a land of endless possibility -- and how that should guide U.S. relations with the continent). The difference between Darfur and other cases such as Sierra Leone is that this time Americans are not looking away, and are asserting that our government has an important role to play in ending the crisis. With the exception of the smaller but effective anti-apartheid movement for South Africa in the 1980s, the outpouring of American activism in support of a more robust U.S. response to Darfur has been unparalleled. It is the first time there has been a mass-based political movement created to confront genocide or civil war in Africa. We need to raise our voices even louder for Darfur and find room in our advocacy for the people of Congo as well.

Failure in Darfur would likely mean that hundreds of thousands of Americans would once again turn away from the hard issues still confronting Africa as it tries to shake off its legacies of slavery, colonialism, and conflict to create a new future. Success in Darfur, however, will ensure that a whole generation of newly politically active Americans will redouble their efforts to ensure that a permanent constituency is created that will not stand idly by in the face of future war or genocide in Africa.

November 16, 2008 09:26:00
http://www.morungexpress.com/morung_express_faith_leaf/7838.html

Tell Obama DARFUR is important TODAY not tomorrow

2008-11-12T14:59:00.000-08:00

We have all received the emails that start with "A new day has come...", but what we really need to do is take action and ENSURE that a new day for Darfur is a reality.

Obama's new transition website is asking for YOUR VISION of the next 4 years.

PLEASE write your thoughts, and even the stories of Darfuris, to President Obama at:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://change.gov%2Fpage%2Fs%2Fyourvision

SAMANTHA POWER: SHAKING HANDS WITH THE DEVIL

2008-11-12T14:48:00.000-08:00

Samantha Power tells a story of a complicated hero, Sergio Vieira de Mello. This UN diplomat walked a thin moral line, negotiating with the world's worst dictators to help their people survive crisis. It's a compelling story told with a fiery passion.

Why you should listen to her:

Power is also a journalist of fearless reputation. She spent 1993 to '96 reporting in the former Yugoslavia, and now contributes reportage and commentary to the New Yorker and Time. Her other books include A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.

ACCESS VIDEO HERE: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/samantha_power_on_a_complicated_hero.html

DARFUR, TRACY MCGRADY, JOHN PRENDERGAST AND THE SISTER SCHOOLS PROJECT

2008-11-12T10:49:00.000-08:00

TRACY MCGRADY SCORES 3 POINTS WITH HIS FILM ON DARFUR

by Wendy Cohen

takepart.com

November 12, 2008 | 12:29 am EST

When NBA stars make headlines off the court, it often involves scandal but this weekend Tracy McGrady received media attention for his amazing work to help raise awareness on the genocide in Darfur. Tracy visited Darfurian refugee camps (along with super-human rights activist, John Prendergast) in Chad last year. His physical and emotional journey is captured in the fabulous documentary, "3 POINTS".

I had the great pleasure of meeting Tracy and seeing the film this weekend at a private screening at CAA headquarters in LA. Some 200 attended the event last Saturday including actor Emmanuelle Chriqui, the legendary Reggie Miller, and fellow NBA stars Baron Davis and Carl Landry. As well as dozens of young people from high schools across LA.

Tracy is candid about his fears of traveling and camping in Africa and about his confusion of the very complicated situation. What he learns while he is there- and what we learn from the film- is that the children in these refugee camps have strength way beyond their years. And what they need most (in addition to the 3Ps: Peace, Protection and Punishment) is education. And this became Tracy’s call to action.

At the screening, Tracy unveiled his “Sister School” initiative which pairs students in the US to children in Darfur. He is calling on NBA stars to help raise awareness and funds and to schools and young people who can bring the film to their community.

And you too can takepart with the Sister School Initiative.

(Photo: NBA and Houston Rockets star Tracy McGrady hosted a screening of 3 POINTS, documenting his trip to a Darfurian refugee camp in Chad (North Central Africa). Pictured with McGrady are human rights activist John Prendergast (co-founder ENOUGH Project) and student activists. The Sister Schools Project, an initiative that will link American students with Darfurian children in the camps, was announced at the screening.)

Conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo w/Mvemba Dizolele, Jennifer Cooke, Edmund Sanders, John Prendergast and Kevin Kenndry

2008-11-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

The Diane Rehm Show

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

http://wamu.org/programs/dr/08/11/11.php#23686

Recent violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has displaced an estimated two-hundred-fifty thousand people and threatens to spread to a wider region of Central Africa: An update on the complex crisis in this mineral rich area.

Guests

Mvemba Dizolele, fellow, Hoover Institution

Jennifer Cooke, director, Africa Program, CSIS

Edmund Sanders, Nairobi, bureau chief, Los Angeles Times

John Prendergast, co-chair of the ENOUGH Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity

Kevin Kennedy, chief of public information, UN Peacekeeping Operations, Democratic Republic of Congo

Ann Veneman, Ex Dir, Unicef former Secretary of Agriculture, 2001–2005

Save Darfur Conference 2008: Prioritizing Darfur in the Obama Agenda

2008-11-10T16:00:00.000-08:00

by Michelle

www.change.org

Published November 10, 2008 @ 10:02AM PST

The Save Darfur conference in Washington, DC this weekend was dominated by talk of shaping the Darfur agenda in the new Obama-Biden Administration. Given both President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice President-Elect Joe Biden's stated commitment to ending the genocide in Darfur, as well as to renew American diplomacy and world leadership after years of noncooperation with the international community, the U.S. political transition represents a real opportunity--the first in a long time--for activists to change U.S. policies towards Sudan.

But as was frequently stressed at the conference, this will be no easy task. Conflict resolution in Darfur is itself a bit of a diplomatic nightmare, and Obama will face a variety of other challenges once in office. The lunch plenary of the Save Darfur conference, in conjunction with the STAND student conference, urged activists to use our voice to ensure that Darfur remains a priority for the new administration.

The panel of speakers--including Jerry Fowler and Amir Osman of Save Darfur, Omer Ismail of ENOUGH, and Sam Bell of the Genocide Intervention Network--identified several key priorities for activists and the new adminsitration:

The U.S. needs to lead the international community in developing a sustained, comprehensive initiative to bring peace to all of Sudan, including Darfur--to end the genocide, rather than continue to manage the consequences. Without attacking the root causes of Sudan's multiple, overlapping conflicts, the genocide in Darfur and instability in the rest of the country will continue indefinitely. The U.S. spends over $1 billion a year in Sudan, but as panelist Omer Ismail asked, "To what end? At the end of the day, the genocide is continuing into its sixth year, with no end in sight."

With support of the Arab League, African Union, China, and Russia, the Government of Sudan is far from isolated. Accordingly, the U.S. needs to work with a variety of world leaders--not just France and the UK--to push Khartoum into a meaningful peace process. According to Amir Osman, many individual African states are displeased with the AU's support of Khartoum. Additionally, the Chinese will support the position of African states. The U.S. should use its new diplomatic clout in Africa, under Obama, to engage leaders in Sudan's immediate region as well as throughout the continent in seeking a comprehensive solution to the genocide in Darfur.

The U.S. should support the investigations of the International Criminal Court, which create an important point of leverage over the Government of Sudan. Khartoum understands the consequences of a possible indictment of President al-Bashir--as evidenced by their ardent effort to suspend the proceedings.

Many other policy points were addressed, but the crux of the issue is the need for a comprehensive solution crafted and implemented in coordination with the international community, and particularly leaders in Africa. If African states are on board, Khartoum can no longer accuse the U.S. of pursuing a hidden neo-colonial agenda. And with any hope, China might also fall in line, and Khartoum will become increasingly isolated and forced to negotiate.

As Osman said, "President Bush called it genocide, but didn't end it." Now it's time to end it, and it's not overly idealistic to say we stand a real chance.

[Photo: Barack Obama visits with Sudanese refugees at a camp near Guereda, Chad, during a trip to Africa. (Pete Souza/Tribune / September 2, 2005)]

I Needed to Say This

2008-11-07T06:42:00.000-08:00

This is not the usual Connecticut Save Darfur Coalition posting, but in light of the historical election that just took place I needed to post these thoughts from Deacon Arthur Miller, the mainstay of the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur.

I needed to say this:

I have ruminated… deeply…deeply ruminated within the depths of my soul why. Why now am I different? After all, I spent four years serving this country during the Viet Nam war. I would have died for the people and idea of this country called America. So why now am I different? I always stood along side others at football games or at school pledging allegiance or singing about the home of the free…Yes I always stood, but proudly? Then, I ask…Why now am I different?

Great-great-great granddad Hiram fought for the union in the war that Lincoln said freed us.

Uncles and cousins…my brother…my son served this country. Why now am I different?

Maybe it's all those scars, not on my skin but in my heart, in my bones, in my sinew, in my remembrances, DR. King, James Meredith, George Wallace, Bull Connor, Little Rock nine.

Vicious fire hoses held by adult firemen spraying water on children. Police men with their dogs grabbing children with American flags in their hands because they wanted to be Americans. A black man being struck by a white teenager…he struck that black man with the American flag… The flag that I saluted, the flag that I fought for…that my son fought for…that my brother fought for…that my ancestors fought for. Then why now am I different?

Those scars put a strange membrane around me and mine… It insulated me from America. I fought for it…paid taxes for it…sang the songs and pledged the pledge. I did it all while looking at white folk's teary eyes for a beloved country that I saw, that I lived in, but I was invisible to, unless some black fool did something ignorant…Then oh yes then I was always visible. Having to answer questions about why do my people…? Or drove in a town where we didn't live… Or walked into a restaurant where we didn't go…or into a meeting where I was the only one…Those meetings where all the eyes turned and conversations stopped, Oh yea I was truly visible then.

That membrane not only insulated me from America…but it insulated America from my love… America, why now am I different?

Because America apologized, America apologized without knowing how much I needed that… America apologized to me without knowing it. America apologized for my scars…the scars that I have endured, the scars that my mother bore, the scars that my father bore…the scars of all those who suffered, whose yearnings to be free were denied.

America apologized even though many do not believe she needed to apologize. But that's ok too because America apologized anyway.

America, magnificent America lived up to what it started out to be and became in one night what it had never been. In one night a people were healed. That healing will unleash a love and patriotic fervor it did not know existed… The face of America has changed, it has become wider and broader and now includes all of me.

That is why I am now different. Today for me and those who preceded me, for those black and brown children who follow me… You're freed from the past scars of our generations… It was all done for you.

Go out and love this country…fight for this country…Pledge and sing, for America is now beautiful for all of its children.

Deacon Art Miller

President-Elect Obama Asked to Take Quick Action on Darfur By Joe DeCapua

2008-11-06T16:03:00.000-08:00

Washington
06 November 2008

De Capua interview with John Prendergast - Download (MP3)
De Capua interview with John Prendergast - Listen (MP3)

While president-elect Barack Obama faces the challenges of a global economic crisis and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one group, ENOUGH, is asking that he also tackle the crisis in Darfur.

ENOUGH is a project of the Center for American Progress. Co-chair John Prendergast tells VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua that a letter is being sent to Mr. Obama calling for a "peace surge" in Sudan.

"We've seen the military surge in Iraq. We've seen the development surge that NATO's

The area of Darfur lies in the west of Sudan and it is as big as the country of France

announced for Afghanistan. What's really needed in Sudan and the broader Horn and East Africa region is a peace surge. And for Sudan specifically that means a sustained high-level peace process that will get a resolution of the various issues that are embroiling Darfur and will redouble efforts to implement successfully the peace agreement that solved the war in southern Sudan that was signed in 2005," he says.

Prendergast calls it "cost effective and smart diplomacy." The ENOUGH letter calls for Mr. Obama to set up a panel to focus on Darfur.

"It's about putting a few people, a team of people on the case with the objective to end the crisis in Sudan, not simply manage the symptoms through massive amounts of humanitarian aid and peacekeeping support," he says.

He would like to see such a team in place within the first 100 days of the Obama administration. "…This is the time to set the parameters and set the agenda. There will be much bigger issues, much bigger fish to fry in the kitchen for the new Obama administration. No question. But part of governing is walking and chewing gum and eating crackers and doing all this stuff at the same time. And we think the administration can make the creation of a sustained serious peace process for Darfur a top priority," he says.

Asked whether the United States must lead the peace effort for Darfur, Prendergast says, "The US ought to be a partner in a broader global effort. The US doesn't need to be the negotiator, but what the US can bring is a coherence, a strategic coherence to international efforts. What we're missing right now is any kind of a strategy about how to deal with the parties in Sudan. We don't have anyone who's put forward an approach that makes sense that key countries with influence can buy into. But at this point, there is no plan."

ENOUGH has made a number of recommendations to the incoming administration, such as continuing the International Criminal Court investigation. Prendergast says, "It's crucial that this era of total impunity for crimes against humanity of incomparable magnitude comes to an end. The International Criminal Court provides the first tool, the first lever, in our lifetimes, to begin to address this culture of impunity that reigns today with the regime in Sudan."

He says that the ICC prosecutor should proceed with the case against Sudanese president Omar Hassan al Bashir and continue investigating rebels as well. "It's up to the (UN) Security Council and the larger international community to address the peace question. There has to be a peace deal," he says, "before consideration can be given to suspending the case, once it's brought, against President Bashir," he says.

The ENOUGH co-chair says the current arms embargo has failed to stop weapons from flowing into the western Sudanese region. He says the embargo "has become a bit embarrassing. There has to be a much greater effort on the part of the sanctions committees that are established by the Security Council to figure out how you're actually going to implement this and what the penalties are for violation."

ENOUGH also calls for a ban against "offensive military flights," but not a no-fly zone similar to those that existed in Iraq before the US invasion in 2003.

Prendergast says, "I really have to parse this one carefully. I don't think the no-fly zone is the first line of defense. I think we haven't undertaken the kind of significant diplomacy that is necessary. If that diplomacy, once utilized, fails, then you begin to put forward the military options. What is needed, and President-elect Obama has said this during the campaign, is some capacity to threaten those planes that actually carry out offensive military attacks in violation of United Nation Security Council mandates."

However, it's a complicated and risky policy. "The big elephant in the living room with the no-fly zone is if you do that, which is a very big stretch from where we are now, then the very clear possibility exists that the Sudanese regime will take the step of closing air space to humanitarian operations. And if they do that then the international community has to be prepared to escalate on Khartoum with some significant military actions in response to the cutoff [of] the aid system because hundreds of thousands of people will die. This is one of those cases where you first don't make matters worse," he says.

Prendergast says China and the Gulf States should be involved in the Darfur peace process. China has a vested interest in Sudan through its involvement in oil production in Sudan. "I think an Obama administration could do well to engage very closely with the Chinese and say, 'Let's do this together.' The other way to do it is through multi-lateral pressures…to build that coalition of the willing, that wouldn't probably include the Chinese or the Arab countries, but other countries who would be willing to go along with multi-lateral measures that imposed a cost on the regime and the rebels for their escalation of military actions," he says.

More information on ENOUGH's position on Sudan can be found at www.enoughproject.org.

Letter to President-Elect Barack Obama: A Peace Surge for Sudan

2008-11-06T15:07:00.001-08:00

by John Prendergast, John Norris, Jerry Fowler

Date: 11/06/2008

The message of Sudan activists all over The United States is clear:

Don’t try to contain the damage from the war in Darfur—end the war.
Don’t just declare that genocide is taking place—end the genocide.
Don’t just manage the consequences of crisis after crisis in Sudan—end these crises.

In short, President-Elect Obama must lead a concerted international peace surge for Sudan, and diplomacy must be backed by well-conceived and consistently escalating pressure on Khartoum and other combatants to create the proper conditions for a lasting peace. More effective protection of civilians and continued steps toward accountability for crimes against humanity, which are vital in their own right, will help advance this peace surge.

Five-and-a-half years into Darfur’s crisis, and three-and-a-half years after the signing of a peace deal for southern Sudan (the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA), there is no prospect of a peace deal for Darfur and no coherent effort to ensure that the CPA gets implemented. This is a damning indictment of U.S. and international efforts in Sudan to date. Despite an abundance of rhetoric, it is clear to all parties, including the Sudanese government, that the United States government and its international partners are content simply to manage the consequences of the crisis in Sudan, rather than resolve the situation.

The costs of this approach have already been immensely painful for the Darfuris, who continue to be killed and driven from their homes in large numbers by government and rebel attacks as a U.N. force is incapable of protecting them. Equally important, without a substantial investment in peacemaking in Darfur and peace implementation for all Sudan, the facts on the ground have the potential to become much worse: Darfur’s war likely will continue to escalate, the CPA may collapse and reopen a direct north-south conflict, many more people may die, rebel groups will become larger and even more lawless, and Sudan will potentially disintegrate as a state. In addition, a wider war could also open up fronts in eastern and northern Sudan; continued war in Darfur will further fuel proxy war in Chad and the Central African Republic; and north-south tensions in Sudan could lead to the Lord’s Resistance Army becoming more active in northern Uganda and southern Sudan. Sudan’s potential fracturing in particular has a range of serious international security implications ranging from disruptions in oil supplies to the increased ability of terrorist groups to operate within such chaotic settings.

Certainly, protecting civilians is an important goal that will require significant energy and resources for the foreseeable future. But it is not sufficient. Protection efforts must be buttressed by a broader approach to end Sudan’s multiple conflicts. Pursuing the goal of civilian protection during the conflict should not obscure or divert energy from the larger and ultimate objective: bringing peace to Sudan by securing a credible deal for Darfur and implementing the terms of the CPA. As the two most influential countries with Sudan and two countries with the most to lose if the CPA collapses, the United States and China have compelling reasons to work jointly for lasting peace.

The CPA itself—the agreement to end the 22-year war in southern Sudan and establish a framework for democratic transformation of the country—was reached in 2005 after a sustained investment in diplomacy, led in part by the United States and backed by significant incentives and pressures. That hard-won agreement would not now be in jeopardy if the investment in diplomacy had been maintained and the international community had continued its pressure to ensure that the agreement was implemented.

Now is the Time for Action on Darfur

2008-11-05T05:17:00.000-08:00

Now is the Time for Action on Darfur

Tuesday 4 November 2008 05:00.

Sudan Tribune

By Anne Bartlett

November 3, 2008 — There has never been a more important time in the history of the Darfur conflict than the present one. Never before has there been an alignment of forces that are likely to be hostile to the interests of the Sudanese regime and that have the potential to bring about a rapid change of policy from the NCP. Change can occur and occur quickly if leverage is used in an intelligent way to ensure that Al-Bashir’s alternatives are closed down. However for this to occur, all areas of pressure must align themselves and work in a concerted manner to generate the leverage needed.

On the political and diplomatic front, the likely installation of an Obama/Biden presidency in the US could have significant impacts on the ability of the Sudanese government to operate. Known to be a hawk on Darfur, Biden has repeatedly stressed the need for tough action, including his view that military intervention should not be taken off the table. The fact is however that military intervention in Darfur is not necessary, provided the US uses its diplomatic credentials to weaken the Sudanese government’s position. Since Obama/Biden’s goal is to resolve pressing foreign policy concerns so that they can concentrate on issues at home, there will be a willingness to engage regional superpowers to lessen the support for conflict. In particular, this means an active engagement with the Chinese and Russians to take away their military and logistical support for the Sudanese regime. Intelligent negotiations over the situation in Georgia and the escalating tensions round the Caspian region over access to oil and gas will encourage the Russians to step back from aggressive posturing against the West through dictators such as Al-Bashir. Where Chinese support is concerned, this can similarly be scaled back with active support of the ICC process. An indicted Bashir is an imperiled China and this is evidenced by China’s attempts to back off from its public support of Al-Bashir in the last few days, in order to ensure that future supplies of oil remain constant.

For activists on Darfur, it is important to make Biden aware that Darfur is a top priority and that it should be treated as such on the U.S. foreign policy agenda. During the first 100 days of a new presidency, the foreign policy agenda of the government will be re-worked and decisions will be made that can have ramifications for the next 4-8 years. It is important to remind the new incumbent that Darfur can produce a significant foreign policy win (in a way that entrenched wars like Iraq and Afghanistan cannot), if the right leverage is applied at this time. A foreign policy win on Darfur brought about on the back of a concerted effort at this point can not only produce a helpful dynamic for Sudan and its immediate neighbors, but also elsewhere in the region. Serious attempts to solve a major conflict in Africa, coupled with the election of an African American with a lineage from within the continent, will make it much harder for authoritarian forces to line themselves up in the kind of damaging way that they have in recent history.

For the movements in Darfur, now is the time to approach the incoming US government with a view to seeking an expedited settlement. Early face to face meetings with the incoming team members can produce fruitful results. In particular this means producing a workable interim security plan from the movements’ side detailing exactly what is needed to secure the lives of local people in the short term. This plan needs to address security in the camps and elsewhere where there are significant numbers of displaced Darfurians. This will then give the international community leverage which they can use in tandem with the ICC process to press the NCP for concessions and to enforce pre-existing UN resolutions. Once security has been resolved, the larger issue of power sharing and the peace process can be addressed later in a meaningful way.

With the removal of the Bush administration, the international community must take their own responsibility on Darfur seriously. This means a concerted effort to move away from the geopolitical realities brought about by the Bush doctrine — particularly where the “war on terror” is concerned. It is highly unlikely that the intelligence gained from the likes of Salah Ghosh is worth the price that Darfurians, Southerners and Easterners have had to pay to pay for it. The Sudanese government, as instigators of jihadist policy are unlikely to be first in line to stop the war on terror and this point needs to be borne in mind at all times in any negotiations going forward.

Finally the peacekeeping force in Darfur must be radically overhauled. It is manifestly preposterous that the architects of genocide are being allowed to dictate which forces will prevent the slaughter of innocent civilians in Darfur. Resources and logistical support are urgently needed if protection is to mean anything. It was stunning today that David Millband, Bernard Kouchner and others have stepped up to the plate in Congo and yet singularly failed to do so in Darfur. It is not as simple as saying that Kabila is more cooperative than Al-Bashir, even if superficially at least, that is true. Britain in particular bears significant responsibility for the inequitable distribution of power in post-colonial Sudan and should take that responsibility seriously. It is not enough to offer to host peace talks when the world is watching and then withdraw the offer at a later date. Sudan listens only to those who are serious and the international community needs to take a much tougher stance with the regime if change is to occur.

Today, it is more than 5 years since the start of military hostilities on the ground and those living through this nightmare deserve better. The people of Darfur have been left to believe that the international community has abandoned them to their fate and no longer cares about their survival. In the 21st century this is an appalling position which threatens the credibility of the international community and its allied institutions. At this historic moment we must seize the day, use our considerable power for good so that we can change the trajectory of the Darfur crisis once and for all.

Listen to John Prendergast on Ending Genocide, 28 October 2008, Dallas

2008-11-03T12:18:00.000-08:00

www.kera.org/video.php?cat=1

www.mirpod.com/spip.php?page=mirpodplayer&id_article=...

Commentary: Stop the 'vampires' in the Congo

2008-10-27T19:49:00.000-07:00

By Javier Bardem and John Prendergast

Special to CNN

Editor's Note: Oscar-winning actor Javier Bardem produced a documentary, "Invisibles," on suffering in the Congo and four other regions of the world. John Prendergast is co-chair of the Enough Project, an initiative to end genocide and other crimes against humanity. Prendergast was director of African affairs at the National Security Council and special adviser at the Department of State during the second Clinton term. He has written eight books on Africa.

(CNN) -- Over the past decade, waves of violence have continuously crashed over eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, in the world's deadliest war.

A study by the International Rescue Committee says the war has led to the deaths of 5.4 million people.

The human wreckage that washes ashore in displaced settlements and shattered communities has few parallels in terms of pure suffering.

With the most recent escalation in the conflict during September and October, another tidal wave of destruction is hitting the embattled population of eastern Congo, with devastating consequences.

The perpetrators and orchestrators of this violence do so primarily in a mad scramble for one of the richest non-petroleum natural resource bases in the world.

All kinds of minerals are mined in the Congo that end up in our computers, cell phones, jewelry, and other luxury and essential items of everyday use. Because there is no rule of law in the Congolese war zone and no ethical code impacting the international supply and demand for these minerals, the result is that anything goes.

In Congo, this means the vampires are in charge.

Vampires take many forms in Congo. They are the militia leaders who control the mines, and who use mass rape as a means of intimidating local populations and driving people away from areas they want to control.

Vampires also include some of the middlemen based in neighboring countries who arrange for the purchase and resale of Congo's resources to international business interests, run by people who are often accomplices. They need to acquire minerals like tin and coltan to be able to satisfy the insatiable demand for these products in North America, Europe and Asia. It leads them to ask no questions about how the minerals end up in their hands.

Then there are innocent consumers like us -- completely unaware that our purchases of cell phones, computers and other products are helping fuel a shockingly deadly war halfway around the world, not comprehending that our standard of living is in some ways based on the suffering of others.

The suffering of the people of the Congo is unnecessary. If there was a functioning government there, and the rule of law, the minerals could be mined in a legal and orderly way.

If there was a peace agreement involving the main armed groups, the use of sexual violence as a tool of war would end. If there was a cost for committing the kinds of atrocities that have become common in Congo, they would end.

There are many Congolese community leaders, churches, politicians, human rights activists, women's organizations and others who are struggling to create a future Congo that is defined by peace and security. Around the world, we can play a major role in supporting these everyday heroes.

The Enough Project is launching a campaign called RAISE Hope for Congo, aiming to build a permanent and diverse constituency of activists who will advocate for the protection and empowerment of Congolese women and girls.

Women and girls have become primary targets in the war of attrition between the armed groups in eastern Congo. Congo's transformation must begin with them.

Over a century ago, tens of thousands of people across the world joined together in what would be the 20th century's first great international human rights movement to protest the bloody reign of Belgium's King Leopold II over the Congo.

In a murderous effort to exploit the central African nation's vast natural resources, half of the Congo's population would be decimated by King Leopold's personal rule -- an estimated 8 million people. The resulting public outcry helped curb the worst abuses of that period. A century later, the people of the Congo need a new popular movement to end the atrocities once and for all.

So, the good news is there are answers to what is happening in Congo. A determined peace process can end the war. Support for Congolese institutions can help build the rule of law and economic opportunities. And a focus on crimes against women by the International Criminal Court could help introduce some accountability and justice to a place that has little.

But these things won't happen unless voices are raised all over the world against the injustice occurring in the Congo. If we make enough noise, we can influence politicians to pay a little more attention to the deadliest war in the world. With a little attention and some effective action, that war could end, and the era of vampire rule in eastern Congo would come to an end.

In The Public Interest: Political Equivalence by Ralph Nader

2008-10-27T19:32:00.000-07:00

I wish to declare the principle of political equivalence as grounds for the moral authority to govern through shared benefits and sacrifices between these in Washington, D.C. who rule and the citizens who are ruled.

Two simple, short bills in Congress will illustrate this major way to improve the quality of public deliberation, enhance the well-being of the populace and provide equity, now sorely lacking as the gap between Congress, the White House and the people widens recklessly.

The first legislation would state that anytime the Congress and the White House plunge our country, either constitutionally or unconstitutionally, into a war or significant armed conflict beyond our borders, all age-qualified and able-bodied children and grandchildren of all members of Congress and the President and Vice President will be conscripted immediately into the armed forces.

President George W. Bush, who took our country into an illegal, continuing war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 on a platform of lies, deceptions and cover-ups, has caused the loss of 4,200 American lives, 100,000 injuries and over one million civilian Iraqi lives.

At $14 million per hour, plus the long term expenses, this war will cost taxpayers three trillion dollars according to Nobel Laureate economist, Joseph Stieglitz. Imagine how many public facilities throughout America such a sum could repair, expand and modernize. Imagine the well-paying jobs in every community.

Mr. Bush has stated often that the Iraq war and occupation has been “worth the sacrifice.” By whom? Certainly not the Bush and Cheney families. Their children, starting with Jenna and Barbara, are enjoying their comfortable lives far from the horrors inflicted on that distant country and its people.

The clear anticipation that the politician’s offspring be at risk or, at the least, be very inconvenienced by commencing their military career, would induce much more careful public deliberations on Capitol Hill and in the White House.

As long as the political rulers, with the savoring corporate profiteers by their side, can send other young Americans to die and kill – mostly poor whites, African Americans and Latinos—they will be more susceptible to be swept by emotions of giving over their constitutional responsibilities to presidential warmongers who bully and stampede them toward funding violent follies.

Equivalence would provide members of Congress with incentives to avoid the triad of being gutless, spineless, and deliberately clueless so as to acquire deniability.

The second bill would stipulate that no member of Congress, and no President, Vice President or Cabinet member would have any health insurance, pension or other benefits until all Americans are provided these long overdue essential benefits of a giant, modern economy.

With such equivalence, members of Congress would not be so cavalier about indexing their salaries to inflation but denying such to the federal minimum wage now wallowing at $6.55 per hour. Inflation-adjusted since 1968, when labor productivity was half of what it is today, the minimum wage would now be $10 per hour. Even at that level, it would still be far less than the $100 per hour, including benefits that Senators and Representatives now receive.

In the nineteen thirties, John Maynard Keynes thought it would not be long before high-productivity economies would solve what he called “the economic problem.”

After World War II, Western European peoples, rising from the ruins of that conflagration, secured for themselves universal health insurance, decent wages, decent pensions, four-week paid vacation, paid maternity and family sick leave. Most of these nations abolished the chronic poverty such as that which exists and is growing in our country.

Who will introduce these two legislative bills? Congressman Dennis Kucinich? Senator Russ Feingold? Will readers of this column communicate with their members of Congress about the wondrous effects of political equivalence on a much needed sense of community between the rulers and the ruled?

END.

Tell your friends to visit Nader.Org and sign up for E-Alerts

PROTECT AND EMPOWER CONGO'S WOMEN

2008-10-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

October 21, 2008

Dear Friends,

This past summer, I traveled to eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to see firsthand the impact that the decade-old conflict has had on women and girls. The pain and suffering that I saw and the stories of rape and violence that I heard during those two weeks shook me to the very core. But there was something else lingering in every conversation I had with the many women and girls I met, peeking through every smile I encountered, and motivating every Congolese activist whom I had the pleasure to meet.

It was hope.

Hope for an end to the violence, hope for the country's future, and hope for peace. I saw hope in the many doctors who work tirelessly to treat and heal survivors of rape. I saw hope in the children who could spend hours laughing and playing with a nearly deflated ball. I saw hope in the eyes of a 15 year-old girl who, despite having been raped and having experienced unimaginable injustices, wanted nothing more than to give her baby a better future. I saw hope in the sweet face of a newborn girl, born in an overcrowded and impoverished internally displaced persons' camp, whose mother named her Tumaini, which means "hope" in Swahili. I saw hope in the women who for years have been fighting tirelessly for the rights of women and who refuse to be thwarted by intimidation and arrest.

Because the women of Congo have hope, they are fighting for a better future for themselves, their children, and their country. But they want our help. And they need to know that they are not alone.

And so the Enough Project is thrilled to launch the RAISE Hope for Congo campaign. To protect and empower Congolese women and girls, the RAISE Hope for Congo campaign will work to:

* Raise awareness about the crisis, the resulting widespread sexual violence against women and girls, and the solutions that are necessary to end the conflict.

* Increase news coverage of the conflict in eastern Congo.

* Build a movement of activists who can advocate effectively for change.

* Influence and change policy on the Congo through promotion of the 4Ps - Peace, Protection, Punishment, and Prevention - the four ingredients necessary to END the mass violence against women in Congo.

We've got a lot of great activities planned, which you can stay up to date on by checking out our website at www.raisehopeforcongo.org. You'll also find educational tools about the conflict and its impact on women and girls, toolkits that provide advocacy and media tips, as well as videos, podcasts, and other interactive tools to help you raise awareness in your community.

Here's a snapshot of what's in store for the campaign:

* Get updates on what activists like Emmanuelle Chriqui, Joel Madden, Emile Hirsch, Dayle Haddon, Robin Wright Penn, and Mia Farrow are doing to RAISE Hope for Congo.

* Sign a petition to the next president of the United States urging him to take strong action to protect and empower Congolese women and girls and promote peace in eastern Congo. We hope you'll add your name to the petition and then share it with your friends and family. Help us send a strong message to the President that the time is now to act!

* Host RAISE Hope for Congo…On the Road! The campaign is launching a speakers' tour of college campuses across the country to raise awareness and enlist college students to join the movement. This fall, we're heading to Swarthmore College on October 28, University of San Diego on November 13, and University of Massachusetts at Amherst on December 3.

* Organize your own Congo Teach In! Enough has teamed up with V-Day and STAND to create "Congo Teach In: Educate and Activate," a PowerPoint presentation to help you educate your campus or community about the history and current situation in eastern Congo, and motivate the public to put pressure on their elected officials.

* Check out our latest interactive tool - "10 Reasons Why Eastern Congo Is the Most Dangerous Place for Women." Through this tool, you can learn about all the different factors at play that lead to the insecurity of women and girls in the Congo.

So we hope that you will join us to demand an end to the violence and advocate for the protection and empowerment of Congolese women and girls. Each day that goes by without action, thousands more Congolese are displaced or killed, and countless women and girls are raped. But the good news is that Congo is not hopeless. There are solutions, and each and every one of us is a part of that solution.

Sincerely,
Candice Knezevic

RAISE Hope for Congo Campaign Manager, The Enough Project

p.s. I hope you'll check out CNN.com's special series on the Congo and RAISE Hope for Congo Spokesperson Dayle Haddon's commentary!

MESSAGE FROM DAVID VITA, darfursupport@igc.org

2008-10-19T19:42:00.000-07:00

While these are not "public events", they are meetings for people interested in the genocide in Darfur. So please pass this on to anyone that you know who fits that description. Thank you. David

YOU ARE INVITED...

to meetings with Congressman Christopher Shays and Green Party candidate Richard Duffee

The Darfur Support Coalition of Fairfield County is meeting with 4th Congressional District candidates. We've met with Jim Himes and now we'll be meeting with Congressman Shays and Green Party candidate Richard Duffee to discuss the genocide in Darfur. This is an opportunity not to be missed if you're concerned about Darfur, to hear Chris and Richards thoughts on the genocide, in a small group setting.

___________________

Meeting with Congressman Christopher Shays

Date: Monday, October 27th

Time: 6:00-7:00 pm

Location: UCONN-Stamford campus

Parking: Free parking in the UCONN parking garage on Washington Blvd., across the street from UCONN

PLEASE RSVP SO THAT WE'LL HAVE AN APPROPRIATELY SIZED ROOM. THANK YOU.

___________________

Meeting with Green Party candidate Richard Duffee

Date: Thursday, October 30th

Time: 7:00-8:00 pm

Location: UCONN-Stamford campus

Parking: Free parking in the UCONN parking garage on Washington Blvd., across the street from UCONN

PLEASE RSVP SO THAT WE'LL HAVE AN APPROPRIATELY SIZED ROOM. THANK YOU.

Chasing The Flame - Building a Movement for a Smarter Foreign Policy

2008-10-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

Please check out this website:

Over the next two years, three high-profile media products will tell the story of the peace-maker Sergio Vieira de Mello and introduce audiences to the kind of conviction and insight that inspires movements. This site is where our movement begins. www.chasingtheflame.org

Samantha Power Delivers Forceful Lecture on Human Rights in the Age of Genocide - News

2008-10-03T21:35:00.000-07:00

Samantha Power Delivers Forceful Lecture on Human Rights in the Age of Genocide - News

In September of 2008, ENOUGH launched a multi-year campaign to protect and empower the women of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2008-09-30T18:46:00.000-07:00

FROM: RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO

http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/

Sign Up to Host our Speakers' Tour
RAISE Hope for Congo...On the Road.

Apply Now!

What is it?

In September 2008, ENOUGH launched a multi-year campaign to protect and empower the women of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As part of the campaign, ENOUGH is partnering with STAND – the student-led division of the Genocide Intervention Network - to launch a speakers’ tour of college campuses and high schools across the country to educate students about the conflict in eastern Congo, the resulting epidemic of sexual violence against women and girls, and how they can be a part of the solution that will bring lasting peace to this central African nation.

Potential speakers will include ENOUGH co-Chairs John Prendergast and Gayle Smith, as well as prominent experts, journalists, and Congolese activists. The event will also include video clips of interviews from the field and messages from celebrities and other spokespeople.

At most stops, the tour will be accompanied by “CONGO/Women,” a traveling photography exhibit highlighting the beauty and strength of the girls and women of the Democratic Republic of the Congo who are currently battling an unprecedented wave of gender based violence and a lack of essential medical care. The installation will weave life size color images printed on fabric and paper panels by photographers Linsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, Ron Haviv, and James Nachtwey.

How much will it cost? ENOUGH will provide the speakers and cover their costs. All you have to do is reserve the event space and promote the event on your campus and in your community.
If you would like to host the CONGO/Women exhibit with the speakers’ tour, there will be a minimal cost to cover the production and shipping costs of the exhibit.

What support will I get from ENOUGH and STAND?ENOUGH will line up the speakers and their travel needs. You will also be provided with an event-planning checklist and promotional guide to help walk you through the process. ENOUGH and STAND will work with you to advertise the event to the press, as well as line up a local high-profile speaker to introduce the event.

Why DR Congo? Between 1996 and 2002, the Democratic Republic of the Congo played host to the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II. More than 5.4 million people have died from the ravaging effects of war and its aftermath. Today, DR Congo is caught in an epidemic of appalling sexual violence and is on the brink of its third major war, yet the international response has been solely inadequate. Following a landmark peace agreement and a tumultuous political transition backed by the world’s largest United Nations peacekeeping operation, DR Congo held largely successful elections in 2006. However, elections were not a panacea to Congo’s ills; 45,000 people die each month, mostly from hostilities and the crippling effects of widespread displacement in the country’s eastern provinces. Some 500,000 people were displaced in 2007, and women and girls are routinely subjected to appalling acts of sexual torture.

Darfur activists are learning that their concern for the crisis in Sudan stretches beyond the country’s borders. Crimes against humanity taking place in Uganda, the Central African Republic, Chad, and Congo, help maintain instability and bring about further human rights abuses to Sudan and these surrounding countries. Crimes against humanity must be addressed and prevented wherever they occur.

The CampaignThe RAISE Hope for Congo campaign aims to develop a permanent and diverse constituency that will work to protect and empower Congolese women and girls. The Enough Project will collaborate with national and grassroots organizations, across various constituencies and the political spectrum, to build this grassroots movement. Enough will also continue to provide policy analysis and recommendations, focusing on the 4Ps – Peace, Protection, and Punishment – plus Prevention.

This multifaceted and multiyear campaign will provide a menu of opportune options, from which activists can select ways to get involved, including:

RAISE Awareness: The campaign will provide activists with informative tools to educate themselves and their communities about the conflict in eastern Congo and the epidemic of sexual violence against women and girls.

RAISE Your Voice: The campaign will provide a menu of actions that activists can take to raise their voices and call for an end to the conflict and sexual violence in eastern Congo. This menu will include a petition to the President of the United States, as well as tools for supporting legislative efforts, such as the International Violence Against Women Act.

RAISE the Profile: The campaign will work with activists to raise the profile of the Congo conflict in the media and on the national stage. In addition to encouraging activists to write sample op-eds and letters to the editor, the campaign will ask supporters to urge the major broadcast news networks to increase their coverage of the Congo through the “Be a Witness” campaign.

If you are interested in hosting the RAISE Hope for Congo Speakers’ Tour, please fill out the application and return it to congocampaign@enoughproject.org.

For more information about:
The Enough Project
STAND
Genocide Intervention Network

ENOUGH PROJECT LAUNCHES DARFUR DREAM TEAM SISTER SCHOOLS INITIATIVE

2008-09-30T18:21:00.000-07:00

From the ENOUGH Project

Our goal is a simple one: we want to establish sister school relationships between middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities throughout the U.S. with schools in the Darfurian refugee camps.

In the wake of his journey to the Darfurian refugee camps in Chad with John Prendergast and Omer Ismail of the ENOUGH Project, Tracy McGrady of the Houston Rockets is actively recruiting NBA players to support a sister schools initiative linking schools in Darfurian refugee camps to American middle schools, high schools and universities. The initiative will support specific educational programs in a number of the refugee camps in Chad through an online registry that will allow schools in the U.S. to fund specific items needed for the refugee camp schools -- everything from $50 for a student's books for a year, to $250 for teachers' training, to $1500 to fully furnish a school. This initiative represents an important opportunity to both improve the lives of refugees from Darfur while educating young Americans about the world and their place in it.

A dynamic partnership of diverse organizations is working together to launch the sister schools initiative. Partners include Participant Productions, the National Basketball Association, UNHCR's Ninemillion.org, Angelina Jolie's Education Partnership for Children in Conflict, the ENOUGH Project, and Stop Genocide Now.

McGrady and Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers will recruit athletes to participate, and other schools throughout the U.S. will join in and make commitments to the refugee camp schools. Several NBA players have already committed to the initiative. They will be able to engage their fans and raise awareness through involving schools of their choice, and the NBA will sponsor a week focusing on Darfur during the 2008 season which will incorporate movie clips, dunk competitions, and the distribution of activist packets at arena events.

What we need are students and schools throughout the U.S. willing to partner with schools in the Darfurian refugee camps in Chad. We need YOU to volunteer your class or your school to participate. All you have to commit to is to raise a little money for your sister school in Chad, and raise awareness of the crisis and what needs to be done to resolve it.

DEEPENING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN SCHOOLS IN AFRICA AND THE U.S.

The Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools Initiative will connect schools in the U.S. and the Darfuri refugee camps by viral activities including video so the students can establish a personal connection. The videos will be used to create a new online community forum that will allow U.S. sister schools to maintain profile pages through which they will be able to blog, upload photos, movies, join groups, and communicate with the students from Darfur. Member schools will be able to highlight their fundraising efforts and encourage friends to support the initiative.

The online component will give U.S. students the opportunity to connect directly with Darfuri refugee students. This will help sustain their interest in and support for the awareness-raising and advocacy necessary to end the suffering of Darfur and help Darfurians return home.

Once each American school joins the project, it will receive a package of information and material (video, pictures, and text) about the refugee camp where their sister school is located along with stories about the refugees. The students will also be able to share a little about their school and the people that make up their community by sending them a "care package" with video, pictures, and/or letters.

Soon after, students will be able to exchange regular video and picture messages through web-based technology. Each school will have access to technology (a CommKit) which will allow them to maintain regular contact with their sister school, so that the relationship grows. U.S. students will be connected with one specific Darfuri student and his or her family in each of the camp schools. The relationship will be rich in growth and educational opportunities for both sister schools.

Through this relationship, the Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools Initiative will also provide American schools with educational resources, expert advocacy tools and fundraising information and opportunities. They will become part of an unprecedented movement to help bring to an end the crisis in Darfur.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

Creates mutually beneficial relationships between schools across continents;

Strengthens existing primary schools in the refugee camps;

Builds secondary education facilities, curriculum and the number of trained teachers in the camp schools;

Addresses the diverse needs of each camp by working with and involving Darfurians;

Uses schools as a foundation for other community services and needs;

Prepares refugees to return home with applicable skills and knowledge to participate in a stronger Darfur; and

Helps build a permanent constituency speaking out against genocide and crimes against humanity.

For more information on how you can become involved in the Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools Initiative, please contact Molly Browning at the ENOUGH Project at mbrowning@enoughproject.org.

Everyone Can Invest Terror-Free

2008-09-14T05:05:00.000-07:00

[This was sent by my wife Marsha to one of her specialized email lists. It's highly relevant to the genocide in Darfur.--Alan Stein]

Dear Friends,

One of the most important pieces of information that Alan and I got from the most recent AIPAC Policy Conference we attended in Washington DC came from a session we selected on Terror-Free Investing. While this topic had come up at previous Policy Conferences, there had never before been any concrete information about how to ensure that one's investments were, indeed, not aligned with any terrorist group or genocidal state.

A new organization, called Conflict Securities Advisory Group, now exists whose purpose is to certify various funds as terror-free. They can be accessed at www.conflictsecurities.com. Members spoke to us at the session we attended. CSAG does NOT sell securities. They have worked to develop their list for 7 years. This firm has been termed the "Gold Standard" on Terror-Free research and screening by United Jewish Communities.

You can also learn more about terror-free investing at www.terrorfreeinvesting.com.

Alan spent some time doing research into some of the funds listed by CSAG and found that many are meant for large investors like states or pension funds, thus excluding the participation by individual investors. Most were not available through traditional brokerage houses.

He did find that individual investors can use FirstFocus Funds for as little as $1,000. See www.FirstFocusFunds.com for details. Shares can be purchased direct from this company.

Here is some information from CSAG's brochure, given to us at AIPAC:

Terror-free investing is the use of an investment strategy or product that excludes companies doing business in or with Iran, Syria, Sudan or North Korea--each a U.S.-designated government sponsor of terrorism.

There are many reasons people and institutions choose to invest terror-free. For some, it is the desire to defund terrorist states such as Iran or genocidal governments such as Sudan. For others, it is an ethical objection to owning stock in companies that partner with countries that threaten our security interests and those of our allies. For yet others, it is a financial consideration to avoid the risks of investing in companies whose operations, reputation and share value may be exposed to significant risk--the focus of the Securities and Exchange Commissions's Office of Global Security Risk.

What began as a whisper--a few isolated conversations among investors--has grown into a chorus, reinforcing market pressures that have already contributed to companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, UBS and Halliburton pulling up stakes from Iran among other U.S.-sanctioned countries.

CSAG's research, screening, certification and advisory services are relied upon by scores of asset managers, institutional investors, corporations, foundations, hedge funds and government agencies. GSAG began researching corporate involvement in terrorist states before 9/11 and continues to have the most thorough and well-tested research process available in the market, honed over the longest track record of performing such research.

*****

The speakers from CSAG, whom we heard in early June, told us that if these terror-free funds were not heavily subscribed within the next few months, they might disappear. IF they took off, then other companies would seek to put together terror-free investment instruments, much as the "green" funds took off when environmentalism became the talk of the day. That is why we decided to transfer some of our investments to a terror-free fund NOW.

If you are interested in investing terror-free, we encourage you to look at the websites we list here sooner rather than later so that this trend can take off!

B'shalom,

Marsha

Connecticut Save Darfur Coalition

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Establishing American Leadership in Genocide Prevention, Part I

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