Enough Said

A recent letter cosigned by a venerable group of organizations, including Amnesty International, the Carter Center, Freedom House, and Physicians for Human Rights decries the current situation in northern Sri Lanka and calls on the Obama administration to “assume the leadership necessary to mobilize the international community to protect the surviving civilians and to hold accountable those responsible for mass atrocities.”

The letter speaks to how quickly the situation in Sri Lanka fell off the international radar. Mere months ago, a violent military campaign raged on a tiny swath of northeast coast, during which the Sri Lankan government went after Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam, LTTE, fighters with little regard for civilian protection. In turn, the LTTE resorted to its time-honored tactics of suicide attacks and using civilians as human shields to fend off the offensive. The conflict reached a dramatic climax when the LTTE’s longtime leader was killed and the LTTE structure disintegrated. But, after what was touted as the end to Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, the effects of the crisis on civilians are still unfolding. The Sri Lankan government has thus far been woefully cavalier with the lives of the more than 300,000 Sri Lankans who have been forced to remain in squalid IDP camps while the authorities work to filter out all former Tigers. Furthermore, impunity reigns, with both sides accused of violating laws of war and committing war crimes but little being done to investigate and bring to justice those responsible. The letter’s authors frame their concern in the context of a broader message sent by the international community’s inaction:

The failure of the international community to take concrete action to protect civilians in Sri Lanka has given the green light to regimes around the world and has signaled that there is nothing that the international community will do when a government kills its own people under the cover of sovereignty.

Time and again, human rights crises come in and out of focus even as they continue to burn. This letter is a powerful reminder that the international community must stay engaged if it hopes to respond to humanitarian crises in ways that are more meaningful than the typical “too little, too late.”

Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.

The latest installation of the bi-weekly podcast series Voices on Genocide Prevention is informative and worth a listen. Host Bridget Conley-Zilkic spoke with Joel Charny of Refugees International, who discusses, among other things, his concern about the “general erosion” of countries’ commitment to refugee rights.

In a recent post on his own blog, Sudan expert Eric Reeves weighs in on the ongoing and loudening discussion over next year’s national elections in Sudan. His post also serves as a useful repository of links to the various reports that have come out in recent months about the election – “all provide extremely gloomy outlooks,” Reeves cautions the potentially optimistic reader.

Keeping up with its recent solid reporting on Somalia, the Economist print edition this week offered this profile of the militant Shabaab group.  The report takes a look at one group – Sufis from the town of Dusamareb – with ambitions to challenge Shabaab. Amid the typical reports these days that pit Shabaab against the flagging Somali government, it is interesting to read about some of the other power dynamics at play in the anarchic country.

Michael Wilkerson of FP Passport provided a useful synopsis of the controversy swirling this week as the International Criminal Court came under attack at the African Union summit, hosted by one of the Court’s most vocal critics -- Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi. As Michael notes, a couple of prominent op-eds came out in support of the Court this week to provide a counter argument to Gaddafi’s din. The fact is, the Court does face some very real challenges, but that is all the more reason for member states to rally behind it.  As former U.N. chief Kofi Annan aptly asked in his op-ed:

One must begin by asking why African leaders shouldn’t celebrate this focus on African victims. Do these leaders really want to side with the alleged perpetrators of mass atrocities rather than their victims? Is the court’s failure to date to answer the calls of victims outside of Africa really a reason to leave the calls of African victims unheeded?

Finally, (though technically from last week,) a moving photo essay from Foreign Policy that illustrates and provides detailed captions about the countries that topped this year’s Failed States Index.  

It’s going to be a bit quieter from us this weekend, but we wanted to leave you with some good reads over the U.S. holiday. And a happy belated Independence Day to Congo, Rwanda, and Canada!

The Enough Team contributed to this post.

Celebrity poker players turned out in full force yesterday for the 3rd annual Ante Up for Africa, a charity tournament co-hosted by world poker champ Annie Duke and actor Don Cheadle.  Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Charles Barkley, Sarah Silverman, Jason Alexander, and Mike Tyson were just a few of the poker aficionados who took to the red carpet to talk about the importance of supporting humanitarian relief efforts in Sudan.

The tournament is part of the World Series of Poker, covered on ESPN. Players are asked to donate half of their winnings to Enough and Refugees International.

From Las Vegas, Enough’s Robert Padavick had this to say:

We know that the celebrities and poker stars that are part of Ante Up care about bringing peace to Darfur and to Sudan as a whole. We heard that refrain loud and clear. But Annie and Don were the talk of the red carpet. Almost everyone we interviewed said they were here to share in the excitement of this event they've built.

As Darfur’s humanitarian crisis continues, and the 2005 peace agreement that ended the war between the North and the South threatens to collapse, attention to Sudan is urgently needed. It will take a dynamic international effort to move beyond simply managing Sudan’s multiple crises and forge a lasting and equitable peace for all of Sudan that ensures genuine power-sharing, and the United States must be at the forefront of these efforts. Events like Ante Up for Africa are important for keeping the Sudan’s crises in the spotlight while also contributing to relief efforts that help to alleviate the day-to-day hardships.

Check this space early next week for full coverage of the Ante Up celebrity-charity tournament, including more pics from the red carpet.

A powerful statement out today from Human Rights Watch shines the spotlight on deplorable crimes perpetrated against civilians by armed groups throughout the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Notably, the statement describes in detail the “significant” uptick in violence in the wake of largely unsuccessful military operations against the rebel groups the LRA and FDLR and features an important quote from HRW Executive Director Ken Roth, who takes the United Nations to task for their support of the Congolese army, known as the FARDC:

UN peacekeepers should not support Congolese armed forces that are committing war crimes and failing to protect civilians and refugees, (…) By continuing to back such military operations, the peacekeepers risk becoming complicit in abuses.

No doubt in anticipation of the Human Right Watch report, Alan Doss, the head of MONUC, the U.N. mission in eastern Congo, wrote a letter to the editor that appeared in today’s Washington Post. Doss discusses the necessity of addressing mounting FDLR atrocities and implicitly defends MONUC’s support of the Congolese army while simultaneously calling for international efforts to professionalize the force:

The reprisal raids by the Hutu rebels of the FDLR have understandably created a lot of concern. But doing nothing is not a recipe for lasting peace either. Time and again the FDLR and other armed groups in eastern Congo have unleashed violence in the country and provoked conflict with neighboring states. Women and children have been the principal victims…We shall assess and adjust our support for joint operations with the Congo's military forces to ensure that such operations are conducted in accordance with international humanitarian law.

Doss takes pains to discuss atrocities committed against civilians, but his argument belies the realities of FARDC atrocities. Currently, the United Nations is supplying logistical support to the army for a three-month operation to rout out the FDLR in the Kivus region of eastern Congo. However, government soldiers meant to protect civilians from predatory groups are among the worst perpetrators of violence. War criminals, such as former rebel commander and ICC indictee Bosco Ntaganda, sit in positions of power within the army. Unpaid soldiers wreak violent havoc on communities. Furthermore, many soldiers have a history of working with the FDLR rebels they are attempting to combat, and benefit themselves from the illicit minerals trade that fuels the conflict.

While Doss is right that removing the FDLR from eastern Congo is critical, the international community and the United Nations specifically have to do better at ensuring that civilians are protected as those efforts are undertaken. That means ensuring soldier pay and training, and working to develop a better strategy to combat the FDLR that emphasizes the encouragement of FDLR defections. As my colleagues Colin Thomas-Jensen and Rebecca Feeley recently noted on the Huffington Post, in its current form, the operation will lead to “more atrocities against Congolese civilians, create greater numbers of displaced and desperate people, and, because of the U.N.'s involvement, do lasting damage to the efficacy of U.N. peacekeeping.”

Victoria Bosselman contributed to this post.

Could Zimbabwe’s diamonds be considered ‘blood diamonds’? According to a recently released report by Human Right’s Watch entitled “Diamonds in the Rough” the answer is yes. The report claims that since last year the Zimbabwean Army, controlled by ZANU-PF, the party of embattled President Robert Mugabe, has used violent and illegal methods to control the diamond mines in the Marange district in eastern Zimbabwe.

On the surface, the army’s decision to retake control of the diamond fields in October 2008 appeared legitimate. The state media depicted the military operation, called No Return, as an attempt to restore order and control to the lawless area. But in reality the operation was simply a way to access a previously untapped source of riches. The revenue gained from selling the diamonds has been used by ZANU-PF to maintain and reinforce their control over the army, which began to slip at the end of last year when soldiers rioted in Harare over their low salaries.

From the start, the army’s actions in Marange have been violent. During Operation No Return the army killed over 400 miners, shooting many of them from helicopters, and then dumping their bodies into unmarked graves. Since taking control of the area, the army has used members of the community as slave labor. Men, women, and children have been forced to work in the diamond fields and one witness stated that “if anyone resists, they risk torture, beatings or even death.” It is an intolerable situation that seems set to continue as the army and ZANU-PF officials continue to profit from selling the diamonds. It is a profit Human Rights Watch argues that could be used, if properly regulated, by Zimbabwe’s unity government to rebuild the country.

Yet Zimbabwe’s diamonds cannot officially, according to the Kimberley Process, be classified as ‘blood diamonds.’ The Kimberley Process was originally created to sever the link between the diamond trade, which was being used by rebel groups to fund their activities, and violent conflicts. Since Zimbabwe’s diamonds are being mined and sold by partners in the unity government – not a rebel group – they do not explicitly meet the Kimberley Process criteria for what constitutes a “blood diamond.” Experts, however, have been publically critical of the narrowness of the Kimberley Process. Talking about Zimbabwean diamonds, Ian Smillie, considered the ‘grandfather’ of the Kimberley Process expressed a strong opinion on the matter: “They are blood diamonds, they have blood all over them,” he said recently. Smillie and some nonprofit groups are lobbying to have Zimbabwe suspended from the Kimberley Process.

A team of representatives from the Kimberley Process is currently in Zimbabwe assessing the situation, and deciding whether or not the government is complying with the group’s standards. If the detailed evidence presented by Human Rights Watch factors into the team’s findings, it will be surprising if they conclude that diamonds from the Marange fields are even remotely “conflict free.” However, it remains to be seen how far parties to the process are willing to go. The Human Rights Watch report lobbies officials to expand the Kimberley Process criteria to include diamonds that fund violence and corruption on the part of government officials as well as non-state actors, but no such movement was made during a recent conference on the Kimberley Process in Namibia where the situation in Zimbabwe topped the agenda.

Rebecca Brocato contributed to this post.

Photo: Diamond mine in Marange. AP via Human Rights Watch

In a project focused on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice paid a visit to the Harlem Children's Zone to introduce students to the work of the United Nations. "Young people in this country have a great generosity and a great capacity - even when they have tough times themselves - to understand and be interested in the circumstances of kids in other parts of the world," Ambassador Rice told the 120 students at the charter school famous for turning out high-achieving students from low-income, minority families. As this CNN report by U.N. correspondent Richard Roth shows, Ms. Rice brought along staff from UNICEF to demonstrate the types of humanitarian aid the agency provides, such as food supplements and capsules to make water drinkable. Later, the children were asked to choose what items to include in packages that would be sent to Congo. Take a look:

Sudan’s National Electoral Commission, or NEC, this week made official what many analysts on the ground already considered a forgone conclusion: Sudan’s elections will not take place next February as scheduled, and instead have been pushed back to April 2010.

Sudan’s first democratic election in 24 years -- a central component of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the war between the North and the South -- was originally scheduled to take place no later than July 2009. This is the second delay of the nation-wide election, a dizzying series of up to 12 ballots in which the Sudanese people will choose their leaders at the local, state, parliamentary, and presidential levels.

The electoral commission attributed the date change to the delay in completing the national census and the need to reschedule voter registration for a time after the rainy season.

As our recent strategy paper on the elections highlights, these concerns voiced by the electoral commission are barely the tip of the iceberg. In “Sudan’s Election Paradox,” Adam O’Brien asked five important questions about Sudan’s ability to carry out credible elections:

• The NCP is notorious for ignoring the rule of law, persecuting dissenting Sudanese voices, breaking existing agreements, and using ruthless force against civilians. Why should international diplomats believe the NCP will behave any differently during the course of an election, and what guarantees and safeguards will be put in place to prevent cheating?
• How can a credible election take place in Darfur at a time when the international community is struggling to maintain even bare minimum levels of lifesaving aid there and more than 3 million people are still internally displaced or refugees?
• How can the national election be credible if a ballot does not take place in Darfur given its significant portion of Sudan’s total population?
• How do elections fit into a broader strategy of promoting the ultimate goals of power-sharing, governance reform, and the political empowerment of larger numbers of Sudanese citizens?
• How can the national election be effectively administered given the complexity of the voting systems, the challenge of conducting voter registration during the South’s rainy season, and the slow pace of voter education efforts?

Unsurprisingly, the movement to confront these major challenges has been painfully slow. Important deadlines continue to pass with little notice. For instance, voter registration was supposed to be finalized by June 1; it is now slated to begin in November, after the rainy season passes. Constituency demarcation was scheduled to begin in April; now, according to a revised timeline from the NEC announced yesterday, “the demarcation of the constituencies would be from Wednesday 10th of June 2009 to Thursday the 9th of July 2009.” No word on how that process is going.

At this rate, even the new April 2010 election date looks quite ambitious.

Maggie Fick and Katherine Wycisk contributed to this post.

Photo: Men gather under a tree in Juba, South Sudan. Enough/Maggie Fick

Increasingly frequent reports of violent clashes, deaths of women and children, and subsequent bouts of displacement in southern Sudan must not be ignored or dismissed as unrelated incidents. As the Economist recently noted, these episodes amount to “a sign of a wider breakdown of peace across southern Sudan.”

In early June, an attack by an armed Lou Nuer militia on a World Food Program river convoy carrying U.N. food aid reportedly killed at least 40 of the 150 southern soldiers acting as escorts. While intercommunal violence is not a new phenomenon in the southern Sudan, the attacks in 2009 have been characterized by the indiscriminate killing of women and children, which is a disturbing shift from the historical practices of cattle-raiding and other traditional issues related to land conflict.

So what is behind the recent violence in the South? At present, no news sources or analysts have been able to offer proof that the NCP-led government in Khartoum is arming proxy militias and deliberately attempting to destabilize the South. However, as we noted here yesterday, the NCP has a history of using brutal tactics to sow chaos throughout Sudan’s vast periphery, and one of these strategies is employing proxy militias to incite violence at the local level, from Darfur to the Nuba Mountains.

As a result of the mounting instability in the South, distrust between the NCP and the South’s SPLM-led government has grown.

While the NCP is likely at least partially responsible for the increased violence and security in the South since the beginning of 2009, the Government of Southern Sudan is also not acting under the assumption that the peace through the CPA is possible. A recent report by the Small Arms Survey warned that:

[GoSS] continues to be driven by the belief that a confrontation with the North is likely. This stance has shaped its current security strategy, which focuses on defending the border with the North and other strategic positions, as well as containing spoilers, including possible allies of Khartoum.

With its focus increasingly on these external pressures, the southern government is not devoting adequate attention to serious internal divisions and frequent violent flare-ups throughout the South. As Human Rights Watch noted in its latest report on the South, the attacks that killed more than 1,000 people in Jongeli state in March and April are evidence of the resounding failure of GoSS and the U.N. Mission in Sudan, or UNMIS, to protect civilians from the intercommunal violence threatening to engulf the South.

It is increasingly evident that there is a widespread breakdown of peace in southern Sudan, and that both the North and the South are bracing for war in 2011, regardless of concurrent recommitments to implementation of the faltering Comprehensive Peace Agreement. A major test to the ability of the parties to prevent a return to war will come in just a few weeks. No later than July 23, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague will issue its decision on the dispute over the boundaries of the long-contested, oil-rich area of Abyei at the crossroads of Sudan’s northern and southern regions. The aftermath of the Abyei announcement will be a gauge of the risk of violence in the remainder of the CPA’s interim period, and a bellwether for the prospects of peace when this period ends with the referendum on southern independence in 2011.

Katherine Carson contributed to this post.

Photo: A barge on the Nile flying the flags of both North and South Sudan. Enough/Maggie Fick

Care about how your buying habits contribute to deadly conflict? Know every word to “The Anthem?” Then we have the announcement for you: Joel and Benji Madden of Good Charlotte are heading to D.C. for the Campus Progress National Conference to speak about the deadly issue of “conflict minerals.“

The brothers will join human rights activist John Prendergast in a discussion about how these minerals – mined in Congo and used universally in small electronic devices like cell phones – are fueling a deadly war in central Africa, and how young people can become activists on this issue. Prendergast is the co-founder of the Enough Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress that works to end genocide and crimes against humanity.

Joel and Benji could simply be sitting back, enjoying the “lifestyles of the rich and the famous.” Instead, they are coming to D.C. to speak to you about making a difference on an issue that matters. And they certainly are ones to talk…

Joel is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and he and his brother, Benji, traveled to the Central African Republic with UNICEF last fall to witness the devastating impact that conflict and poverty have had on the region. The Madden brothers have been involved as “Enough Envoys” for the RAISE Hope for Congo campaign since last fall as well, raising awareness about the crisis at their concerts, creating public-service announcements, and educating lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

A former president, a Daily Show correspondent, the green job leader from the White House, rock stars, spoken word artists, progressive leaders, key youth activists, free food, and more.

Now all we need is you. (Hurry, the deadline is Friday)

The author is part of the Campus Progress team at the Center for American Progress, Enough's parent organization. The fifth annual Campus Progress National Conference will take place in Washington next Wednesday, July 8. Click here to register.

Unidentified gunmen fired on the joint U.N./African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur on Monday, wounding a commander.

The attack occurred in Ardamata, near El Geneina, the capital of    West Darfur, where the peacekeeping force’s camp is located. A commander from the Nigerian police unit was shot in the leg and taken to the mission hospital, where he was in stable condition, according to news reports.

Thirty-seven peacekeepers have died in Darfur since the joint mission deployed at the end of 2007 to relieve the beleaguered African Union force that had been in the region.