NPR

For months, the White House has been saying that President Obama would personally roll out the results of his administration's long-delayed Sudan Policy Review, which will officially set the direction of U.S. policy for Darfur and South Sudan, a region that will soon decide whether to become an independent country.

Now, the review is finally here. It will be announced by Hillary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, and the U.S. envoy to Sudan, General Scott Gration. Obama does not plan to attend, most likely because the president's political handlers don't want to further associate him with a policy that has been an ongoing public-relations disaster. That's a shame, because it signals to the world and the government of Sudan that Obama himself is not particularly engaged on the issue, and it's a sad contrast to the deeply concerned speeches Obama gave in front of Save Darfur groups before he became president. (He even co-wrote an introduction to Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond, by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast.)

Continue reading here.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls the sexual violence in eastern Congo "one of mankind's greatest atrocities." An update on the security crisis and what the U.S. and other nations can do to help stabilize the Democratic Republic of Congo.

LISTEN Here.

The systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon in eastern Congo is "one of mankind's greatest atrocities," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday in a visit to a Congolese refugee camp to draw world attention to the problem.

But analysts say the U.S. must do more than treat the symptoms of a deep-rooted conflict that has taken more than 5 million lives in the central African nation in the past 13 years.

Continue reading here.

From President Obama on down, the administration is stacked with officials who have talked tough about ending what they have termed "genocide" in the Darfur region of Sudan. That made it all the more surprising this week when the administration's special envoy suggested holding out new carrots for Khartoum.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration suggested it was time to take Sudan off the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that has led to a whole series of sanctions.

To continue reading and to listen to an audio version of this story from All Things Considered, click here.