Coming up today we’ll hear about the Conflict in the Congo- in which more than 5 million people have been killed. It’s one of the world’s most under-reported stories… Later we’ll talk with some parenting experts on raising children in a peaceful and productive way…

But first some listener comments about yesterday’s program. All five of the comments were about the last few callers who were urging low income people to go to college and who were defending controversial talk show host Alex Jones….here’s what some listeners had to say…

John prendergast speaks to the oklahoma hold out

Enough Project co-founder John Prendergast offers encouragement to the activists braving the cold and holding vigil, for days on end, outside Sen. Tom Coburn’s office in Oklahoma City. The “Oklahoma Hold Out” aims to secure Senate passage of the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, which Sen. Coburn (R-OK) is single-handedly blocking. To learn more, visit

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One Small Step Toward Peace in Sudan

David Goodman

There was a rare flash of good news about Sudan recently. The government of Sudan and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of the two main rebel groups who have been fighting against the government of Sudan and has been backed by the government of Chad, signed a preliminary cease-fire at a meeting in Doha, Qatar. As the BBC reports, the deal "includes a framework for further talks, during which issues such as the sharing of power and wealth, and the return of internally displaced people and refugees will be discussed."

As a Save Darfur blog on the "peace deal" notes, "Any time the Government and the rebels agree to stop fighting, the innocent civilians of Darfur and Chad benefit," and this is no doubt true this time. However, there is a reason that advocates are not celebrating this as an end to conflict. Firstly, it is by no means a comprehensive deal: the government of Sudan has no such cease-fire deal in place with the other main rebel group, the Abdul Wahid al-Nur faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement. This group has recently blocked humanitarian groups trying to get to internally displaced persons (IDP) camps and is not known to be overly anxious to sign a peace deal. Secondly, ceasefires like this one have not been properly adhered to in the past. (The BBC has an excellent analysis on the new "peace deal" here.)

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Working Toward a Conflict-Free Mineral Trade
 

Thu, Mar 4, 2010
 

By Melissa Pistilli—Exclusive to Tantalum investing News

With respect to companies that are responsible for what are now being called conflict minerals, I think the international community must start looking at steps we can take to try to prevent the mineral wealth from the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund the violence here. —U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

The phrase “conflict minerals” is quickly becoming a much more familiar term as concerned consumers, organizations and politicians begin to raise public awareness of the role the mineral trade plays in fuelling the violence raging in the eastern provinces of the DR Congo.

While the “conflict” in the Congo has been labeled a war, Enough Project Co-Founder John Prendergast recently said it’s actually more “a business based on violent extortion.” Prendergast appropriately dubs it a “mafia-style economy.”

Unfortunately, it is not just the FDLR militia or the Congolese army who profit from this violent business of forced labor and institutionalized rape. Also profiting are the governments of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda as well as the companies that purchase and refine the metals, those that fabricate electronic components such as tantalum capacitors, and those that produce electronic devices like cell phones and laptops.

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Most governments don’t acknowledge it. The Sudanese president dismisses it. Darfurians demand that it be recognized. Academics, activists, and lawyers dispute whether it is still occurring or whether it occurred at all. International Criminal Court (ICC) judges debate standards of evidence surrounding it. The nature of recent attacks this past week by Sudanese government forces and militia allies against defenseless civilians potentially augurs its resurgence. And if a fledgling peace process continues to move forward, then any evidence of it ever happening may well be swept under the rug.

The “it” in question is Darfur’s genocide. Seven years after a small rebellion in western Sudan by Darfurian insurgents unleashed a massive counter-insurgency strategy by the Sudanese government and its Janjaweed militia allies, the debate continues: What should be done about the genocide? How can justice and peace simultaneously be pursued?

Continue reading here.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is not an obvious candidate to be Africa's turnaround story of the coming decade. This is a country that has been pillaged by outsiders for more than a century, cursed by its extraordinary natural resource base to unparalleled levels of death and destruction. With a seemingly intractable war in the east, one of the worst corruption-fighting records in the world, and some of the highest rates of sexual violence ever recorded, Congo does not, understandably, lend itself well to optimistic prognoses. But sometimes a situation deteriorates so badly that it catalyzes transformative responses. And things can actually change, no matter how entrenched the troubles. That opportunity for real progress is exactly what I found on my recent visit to Congo.

Congo's conflict, the world's deadliest since World War II, is not really a war -- it's a business based on violent extortion. There are numerous armed groups and commercial actors -- Congolese, Rwandan, and Ugandan -- that have positioned themselves for the spoils of a deliberately lawless, accountability-free, unstable, highly profitable mafia-style economy. Millions of dollars are made monthly in illegal taxation of mining operations, smuggling of minerals, and extortion rackets run by mafia bosses based primarily in Kinshasa, Kigali, and Kampala. The spoils are tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold, minerals that go into laptops, cell phones, MP3 players, and jewelry stores in the West. Armed groups use terrifying tactics such as mass rape and village burning to intimidate civilians into providing cheap labor for this elaborate extortion racket.

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Congo-Kinshasa: 'Blood Diamonds' Inspire 'Conflict Minerals' Campaign

Kevin J. Kelley

15 February 2010

Nairobi — A campaign is growing in the United States to end wars and atrocities in eastern Congo by discouraging the export of what organisers describe as "conflict minerals."

The effort is inspired by the movement a few years ago that helped stop murderous conflicts in West Africa by successfully targeting the "blood diamonds" that were financing them.

The Congo initiative is also modelled on the influential US varsity-based campaign to halt mass killings in Darfur as well as on the earlier push against US corporate investment in apartheid South Africa.

Prof Herbert Weiss, a Congo expert at a Washington think tank, noted at a US university forum last week that an increasing number of Americans are at last paying attention to Congo.

The organiser of the conflict-minerals campaign John Prendergast told activists to rally behind proposals in the US Congress to create a global certification system for four valuable metals found in large quantities in Congo.

Monitoring would be put in place to ensure lawful control of these minerals, which are essential for the manufacture of telecommunications devices, Mr Prendergast said.

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When Shouting Doesn’t Seem to Stop War

by Sidney Traynham

Published February 12, 2010 @ 07:40AM PT

After attending two American rallies to ‘Save Darfur’ back in 2006, I decided I would not attend another.

I had been to Darfur some months earlier and I wanted to make a difference. I wanted my voice to count. But as I swarmed with the masses on the DC Mall and later in New York’s Central Park, I found something a bit hollow in the emcee-induced shouting of “Hey-ho, hey-ho, Al-Bashir has got to go.” I was left wondering what the amassed voices were changing or accomplishing.

To be fair, I do believe that awareness and advocacy efforts in the U.S. have slowly made a little known regional obscurity like Darfur close to a household name. But I still ask: Have most displaced Darfurians returned to their homes? Is there widespread security for civilians? Do humanitarian aid groups not get massively kicked out of the country as a repercussion of International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for its leaders? Was Sudan not the chair of the G77 body at the Copenhagen climate summit, while these same arrest warrants sit idle?

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Early this year, the United Nations sent its favorite dictator-whisperer, Nigerian diplomat Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, to Sudan, hoping to nudge the country's leader and alleged war criminal, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, toward peace. Gambari, a veteran of U.N. missions from Zimbabwe to Myanmar, has developed his knack for counseling autocrats on the job -- by working for one, Sani Abacha, the notorious late strongman president of Nigeria, whom Gambari served as U.N. ambassador from 1990 to 1999.

Anywhere else, Gambari's Abacha connection might be a career breaker. But since joining the United Nations in 1999, Gambari has thrived, managing crises from Angola to Cyprus and raising money for Iraq's reconstruction. According to U.N. staffers, his old-school capabilities as a diplomat, coupled with his Muslim faith and eminent standing in Africa, make him a formidable mediator. The Sudan assignment provides an opportunity to test whether Gambari's experience and easy rapport with unsavory political players can translate into concrete progress on the main challenges of the day: a settlement in Darfur and resolution of the standoff over the South's quest for independence.

Continue reading here.

Georgetown and Duke Team Up for Darfur

February 1, 2010

The Georgetown basketball team may have won against Duke on Jan. 30 in front of a capacity crowd that included President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, but students from both schools have put aside rivalry to become partners for a common cause -- Darfur refugees.

Through the Darfur Dream Team’s Sister Schools Program, students from the two universities are raising money for two schools located among the 12 refugee camps in nearby eastern Chad.

“Access to education will give refugee kids the tools they need to move out of the camps and support themselves,” said Carolyn Shanahan (C’12), president of Georgetown STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur). “Many of the children have also expressed a desire to return to Sudan and rebuild the Darfur region. They need education in order to help stabilize their country.”

Sister’s a Father, Too

Nearly 3 million people have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan. There are now 250,000 refugees from Darfur in eastern Chad. Children account for more than 60 percent of the population of Darfuri refugee camps and face major educational challenges from lack of infrastructure and funding.

Georgetown’s sister school, Aboutalib -- which means father of scholars in Arabic is located in the Goz Amer refugee camp; Duke is raising money for another refugee school.

“Duke and Georgetown are fierce rivals on the court, but they’ve decided to partner off the court to provide a quality education to kids from Darfur who otherwise would have no opportunities,” said John Prendergast, co-founder of Enough.

Enough, a Center for American Progress project to end genocide and crimes against humanity, joins students from Georgetown STAND and the Duke for Darfur Coalition, NBA stars Tracy McGrady and Dikembe Mutombo (I’91) and former Georgetown Law Center Dean Alexander Aleinikoff, in effort to assist the refugees of Darfur. Aleinikoff is the newly appointed United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees.

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