Home › Blog Posts ›

Blog Posts in Human Rights

Groups Push for Unity of African States at A.U. 50th Anniversary Summit
Posted by David Carden on May 23, 2013
Heads of the African States pose in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

More than 70 Heads of State will gather this week to attend the 21st Africa Union summit which coincides with a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the continental institution.  The summit’s theme “Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance” will unfold with a call for Africans to “realize the dream of the founding fathers for a peaceful, prosperous, and united Africa”. 

Stars and Stripes Op-ed: More U.S. can do to reform Congolese military
Posted by Enough Team on May 23, 2013
Congolese government soldiers (FARDC) patrol the streets of Minova.

The Congolese military has again been accused of significant human-rights abuses, including mass rape. Recently, the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office released a report concerning abuses by the Congolese Army (FARDC) as it retreated from advancing M23 rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo between Nov. 15 and Dec. 2.

How Small Steps Lead to Giant Leaps in Friendship and Understanding
Posted by Guest Contributor on May 23, 2013
Guest contributor logo

Right now, in 2013, it has been ten years since the tragedy occurring in Darfur started. In 2003, the Sudanese government began supporting militia groups called the Janjaweed (“Devil on Horseback” in Arabic) to terrorize villages in Darfur because of their ethnicity and with goals of acquiring land and resources. These actions have been widely recognized as genocide. 

Field Update: Goma's Destiny
Posted by Timo Mueller an... on May 21, 2013
Displaced civilians in eastern Congo camped outside of MONUSCO military base.

On Monday morning, the M23 rebel group and the Congolese army, or FARDC, clashed in the village of Mutaho, approximately six miles northwest of the provincial capital of Goma. The fighting comes after six months of relative calm between the warring parties following the 12-day occupation of Goma by M23 in November 2012.

The Dark Side of Darfur's Gold Rush
Posted by Akshaya Kumar on May 9, 2013
Darfur Gold cover

Darfur is suffering its worst humanitarian crisis in years. Since the beginning of 2013, over 200,000 people have been displaced by what the government of Sudan dismisses as “inter-communal” violence. Ten years after the first reports of genocide trickled out of Darfur, an eerie echo of the past is sweeping across the region. The government of Sudan would like the world to believe that Darfur is plagued by intractable inter-tribal hatreds that inevitably lead to violent destabilizing conflict. But in a new report, “Darfur's Gold Rush: State-Sponsored Atrocities 10 Years After the Genocide,” Enough Project Senior Advisor Omer Ismail and I challenge that descriptive framework.  Our research shows that government-armed Abbala militias’ recent power play to displace the Beni Hussein people and thereby gain control North Darfur’s gold mines is not the product of inter-tribal rivalries. Instead, the Abbala offensive must be understood as a continuation of Khartoum’s campaign of state-sponsored atrocity and plunder in the region.