John Prendergast's blog

2011 was a year of unprecedented action on behalf of freedom and human rights. When citizens flooded streets throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. and other countries dropped their long-standing presidential allies and demanded new leadership. When massive human rights abuses loomed in Libya and Ivory Coast, the international community acted decisively. That backdrop makes it all the more puzzling why the two countries where human rights abuses are worst in the world—Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo—have received such comparatively tepid international responses.  Read More »

You'd think by the second decade of 21st century — with the development of international accountability and prevention mechanisms — that the use of starvation would have disappeared from the arsenal of war weapons because it bears too high a cost for the perpetrator. The people of Sudan would beg to differ, George Clooney and I write in an op-ed appearing on TIME.com today.  Read More »

Last month, I had the honor of presenting my friend and talented musician Emmanuel Jal with a 2011 Common Ground Award at the annual Search for Common Ground awards ceremony, where he performed his hit song “We Want Peace” that brought the entire crowd to its feet.  Read More »

I lost my dear friend Howard Wolpe yesterday. Many of you might not know that name, but he was one of the heroes of making U.S. policy toward Africa more compassionate.  Read More »

In deciding to send U.S. military advisors to assist in tracking the Lord's Resistance Army, President Obama said, "I believe that deploying these U.S. armed forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy." As actress and activist Mia Farrow and I write in this op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, there is a very compelling human interest as well.  Read More »

Since South Sudan became the world's newest nation in July, the state of Sudan it left behind has become engulfed in a civil war of its government’s own making.

The Khartoum regime’s report card during the past four months includes an invasion of Abyei, a war-crimes spree in the Nuba Mountains, ongoing attacks against civilians in Darfur, and most recently an assault on the Blue Nile border state.  Read More »

This post originally appeared on The Hill:

How could U.S. policy toward South Sudan over the last decade be so successful, and its policy toward Sudan be such an abject failure?  The answer to that question partially holds the fate of millions of Sudanese who remain trapped in a state at war with its own people on four fronts and ruthlessly repressing all forms of unarmed opposition.  Read More »

Why would the regime in Khartoum decide to escalate right before the South’s independence?  There are tactical and strategic reasons. Tactically, the regime is bullying for a better negotiating position on where borders will be drawn and how oil revenues will be shared, with billions of dollars at stake. Regime officials are probing, attempting to ascertain whether deploying a total strategy aimed at setting the South, border areas, and Darfur on fire will draw any reaction beyond rhetorical concern from the international community. Strategically, the regime is doing what it does best: ruling by arson.  Read More »

Unfortunately, when we hear about Sudan these days, it is usually about the escalating crises between North and South Sudan and in Darfur. But as we pause to recognize the millions of refugees around the world today on World Refugee Day, we also want to point out that all is not gloom and doom. There are ways we all can get involved to make a difference in the lives of those forcibly uprooted from their homes in Sudan.  Read More »

Sunday, as the Khartoum regime was solidifying its military occupation of Abyei and beginning to loot and burn the town, I heard from one of the foremost experts on Sudan in the world, Dr. Douglas Johnson. We agreed that Bashir's government felt certain that it would face no international consequences for its attack on Abyei, which threatens to plunge the North and South back to full-scale war. In the absence of any cost or accountability, to have believed that Khartoum would NOT strike would have been foolhardy.  Read More »