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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.

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.

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.

When women in Congo asked playwright Lynn Nottage to share their stories of surviving violent rape, Nottage said she worried that she was “just” a storyteller and hoped she’d be able to find an audience with the ability to affect change in Congo.

But these powerful stories found an impressive audience recently when the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay were in the audience at the Manhattan Theater Club to see Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama ‘RUINED.’ Secretary-General Moon reacted to the play, saying:

This drama will give a very powerful message. This is a very compelling story which everybody should know (…) There are so many people who need our hands, our helping hands.

The play tells the fictional story of a Mama Nadi, who operates a brothel in war-ravaged eastern Congo. At once, she provides for and exploits the three young women in her charge – both shielding them from the daily hardships playing out in the surrounding jungle, and forcing them to use their bodies as commodities in the mounting chaos. As the war heats up, Mama Nadi’s attempts to keep the brothel neutral and safe become increasingly futile.

The play also focuses on the dramatic and corruptive struggle over natural resources in Congo and highlights the link between the minerals trade and rampant sexual violence in the region, which the growing activist and consumer movement to halt the trade in conflict minerals seeks to address. In an interview at the theater the night of Secretary-General Moon’s attendance, Nottage indicated that she hopes audience members will look for ways to be involved in ending the violence after connecting with the characters on stage.

I hope people, when they read the newspaper, actually engage with [stories from Congo] in a more profound and complicated way, and that when they’re reading about women in Congo they think of them in three dimensions and not just merely as statistics, and I ultimately hope that they will be compelled to act…

Nottage made impressive inroads toward that goal with the visit by Secretary-General Moon and High Commissioner Pillay. Watch how they reacted in this video by Broadway Magazine.

One doesn’t have to be a high-ranking advocate to make a positive impact on the grave situation in Congo. Join the movement that is doing just what Nottage suggested: Empowering individuals to translate their alarm about rape in Congo into meaningful action.

Photo: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and playwright Lynn Nottage at a performance of RUINED. Credit: Joseph Marzullo/MTC

Yesterday morning, John Prendergast spoke about U.S. policy and ending the war in eastern Congo at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.  Drawing on experiences from his recent trip to Congo, Prendergast spoke about the realities on the ground in Congo and offered some policy recommendations for U.S. and international actors.

Prendergast began by discussing the “severe indiscipline” and internal divisions within the Congolese army that have been exacerbated by the recent attempted integration of militia groups into the army. With war criminals wanted by the International Criminal Court serving in leadership positions within the Congolese army and some rebel units still effectively intact, Prendergast asked, “How can you stop impunity?”

Prendergast also spoke at length about one of the most brutal rebel groups operating in Congo, the FDLR, whose leadership was responsible for carrying out the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Prendergast emphasized that, until recently, the Congolese army had been supporting the FDLR, and since not all army officers have severed ties with the rebels, the FDLR is routinely warned of impending government attacks. These cozy relations, coupled with rebels’ involvement in the highly profitable trade in conflict minerals and external support from FDLR leaders in the diaspora, has allowed the rebels to intensify their attacks against civilians in eastern Congo.

The reason behind these increased FDLR attacks is the MONUC offensive currently being waged by joint U.N. and Congolese forces, as Prendergast explained. The offensive takes what Prendergast called a “whack-a-mole” approach to weeding out the FDLR, killing as many individual rebels as possible using a purely military strategy.  Prendergast denounced this offensive as inadequate, and instead offered a more comprehensive approach for addressing the FDLR and broader challenges in eastern Congo.

To defeat the FDLR, Prendergast said, the international community needs to enhance pressure on the military to go after rebels, target and prosecute war criminals living abroad, strengthen exit opportunities for militia members, improve civilian protection, and secure and legalize former FDLR mining operations. For the region as a whole, Prendergast proposed a “3P” approach: protection of people, punishment of war criminals, and peacemaking by promoting transparency of supply chains for conflict minerals and improved Rwanda-Congo relations. For conflicts like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, such comprehensive approaches are undertaken as a rule. In contrast, international actors simply “fling one thing at Africa and hope [the problems] will go away.”

Indeed, convincing the international community – and even our own U.S. government – to rethink this approach is a challenging feat, but deep-seated conflicts like Congo’s demand this shift if its interconnected causes are ever to be dealt with conclusively.

Check back soon for the video of the event. We'll bring it to you as soon as it is available.

With an emphasis on the “tight timeline” in Sudan, U.S. Special Envoy on Sudan Scott Gration outlined the effort he is leading to re-engage the numerous key actors needed to undertake a comprehensive peace process for Sudan during a State Department press conference earlier today.

Special Envoy Gration recently returned from a multi-country trip aimed at drumming up renewed support for the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended the North-South civil war in 2005 but now seems at risk of collapsing. Among its wealth and power-sharing provisions, the CPA mandates national elections in 2010 and a self-determination referendum for the South in 2011. Gration summed up the administration’s strategy by saying:

With these events fast approaching, it’s absolutely critical that we work together, that we seize every opportunity to save lives and facilitate a lasting peace in Sudan, and to promote stability and security in the entire region.

The special envoy emphasized the priority he has placed on getting various parties to talk, employing phrases such as “constructive dialogue” and “dialogue and engagement.” It is a strategy that many Sudan watchers worry is too soft on the government in Khartoum, but one that Gration puts forth as the cornerstone of his approach to tackling the challenges of both the Darfur conflict and the increasing tension between North and South.

Dialogue and engagement will be critical as we implement all aspects of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement before the referendum for self-determination is held in January 2011, we have a lot of work to do. We have to secure agreements on border demarcation, wealth-sharing, and power-sharing. In addition, we need to make sure that all parties are involved and ensure that places like Abeyi do not become the next war zone in Sudan. To successfully tackle these challenges, we need the support of the international community. We must continue to deepen and broaden international coordination in Sudan.

And...

Constructive dialogue will help us negotiate a ceasefire in Darfur so that people living in IDP camps and refugee camps have the opportunity to move back to the place of their own choosing. To be able to live in safety and security and dignity. This dialogue and engagement is also helping us in the second round of talks in Doha, a process that’s designed to produce a political settlement in Darfur…

Gration highlighted the upcoming Forum for the Supporters of the CPA, an event taking place in Washington next week, that Gration said he hopes will “restore the international commitment” and “rekindle the passion” that participants felt at the Naivasha conference in 2005 that led to the signing of the CPA.

When asked by a reporter whether the special envoy’s focus would now be directed primarily at bolstering the CPA, Gration said that a siloed approach to Sudan’s challenges is impractical, given the challenging events on the horizon.

Our approach is one that we do multiple things at the same time, just because our timeline is so short and the challenges are so great that we no longer have the luxury to focus on one thing and then switch to the other. We must work all these at the same time, in an integrated way, where all parties are part of the solution and the international community comes together in a unified way to bring about the results that we all want to see.

Without offering specific details about the nature of his meetings with various actors, Gration emphasized the all-encompassing nature of his recent efforts and his strategy moving forward. In response to a question, he clarified that his approach is indeed dynamic and results-driven.

We’re using all methods to accomplish this – whether they be carrots, or whether they be sticks. (…) We want to get results. We’re taking a look at all the elements of national power that we can bring to bear to get results to change the situation [in Sudan].

Gration also touched on some of the more contentious aspects of the situation that have recently taken center stage in discussions about how to resolve Sudan’s various challenges. On the topic of the return of expelled aid agencies, Gration emphasized that the agencies going in to Darfur would be “new” and spoke confidently about their capacity, which was a noticeable contradiction of reports last week from the U.N. humanitarian chief who said that four agencies would be returning to Darfur with new names and logos:

It appears that the 13 NGOs that were expelled will not be allowed back into the country.  But you should note that right now, we are near a hundred percent capacity returned. We have – on the food side, we’re providing the same food resources as we were prior to
expulsion, a hundred percent.  And in the WASH, which is water, sanitation and hygiene, we’re at about 95 percent, and the other services about a hundred. Now I must say that some of this is being done through emergency methods.  In other words, it’s not sustainable.  But with the new NGOs that are going back in right now, we believe we’ll be able to sustain these operations and actually get more capacity than we had on the third and the fourth when these were expelled.

The special envoy also weighed in on the question of whether the violence in Darfur today should be characterized as genocide:

What we see is the remnants of genocide.  What we see are the consequences of genocide, the results of genocide.  We still have thousands of people living in camps as IDPs.  We have women who are still afraid to go out and collect firewood.  And we have children that are not having the benefits of growing up in their homeland -- that are growing up in these camps. (…)The violence still exists where bandits and Janjaweed and warlords and those kinds of folks do conduct terrorist activities on these folks and do increase terror.  But it doesn’t appear that it is a coordinated effort that was similar to what we had in 2003 to 2006.

Watch for some reverberations on those last two points.

Click here to listen to a full audio recording of the speech.

In an piece on Foreign Policy's The Argument, Enough's Colin Thomas-Jensen and Rebecca Feeley challenge the impression that nothing can be done to end the violence that has long plagued eastern Congo. Their overview of the current conditions on the ground is indeed grim, but they offer a host of challenging yet feasible steps that key actors could take to end the rampant violence and address the deeply ingrained dynamics that have perpetuated conflict in the region. The major obstacle, as Colin and Rebecca put it, boils down to this:

Doing research and advocacy to help end the crisis in the Great Lakes region around Congo can feel like screaming into an empty room. The region has been so violent for so long that the United Nations, donor governments, and the press have become numb. But there is a cure to even the worst cases of "conflict fatigue": an understanding that solutions are within reach if we just have the will to pursue them -- solutions that can prevent thousands of senseless deaths.

(...)

[I]n a place like Congo -- a desperately poor country where nearly 6 million people have died from 13 years of chronic conflict -- the world has a lot of work to do. Anyone advocating for an end to the conflict must be content with slow and steady progress and not expect a quick fix.

Check out the full piece to learn about the numerous paths the United Nations, diplomats, and the Congolese and Rwandan governments could pursue to stop the deaths and move the region beyond its bloody status quo.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is stepping up efforts to bring Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to justice for allegedly orchestrating war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said last week that he expects the court to rule “within weeks” on the appeal he filed that would revise the charges against Bashir to include genocide. According to Reuters, Moreno-Ocampo expects that the ICC will accept the appeal and add genocide to the list of charges against the Sudanese president.

The absence of this genocide charge in the original arrest warrant became the focus of much news and controversy stirred up by the issuance of the warrant in March. But just days later, Moreno-Ocampo filed an appeal, asking the judges to reconsider the genocide charge.

While many Sudan watchers welcomed the news of an imminent decision on the appeal, there is also a renewed fear of backlash from the Sudanese government. Following the March 4 arrest warrant, the Sudanese government expelled the many of the leading aid agencies responsible for providing basic services to displaced Sudanese throughout the country. The ICC’s decision on the genocide charge could spur Khartoum to similarly devastating action. Whether the court accepts the genocide charge or not, many fear the response from Khartoum, which could result in either a government seeking retribution or a government emboldened. As one source put it: “I read this as a warning to the international community to get prepared.”

Last week, Moreno-Ocampo briefed the U.N. Security Council on the ongoing case against three Sudanese leaders accused of masterminding the violence in Darfur. Citing legal obligations rooted in the U.N. Charter and U.N. resolutions, Moreno-Ocampo said that the government of Sudan has the responsibility to arrest Bashir and two alleged accomplices – Ahmad Haroun, the former minister of humanitarian affairs and current governor of South Kordofan, and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb.

"We are at a crossroads," the prosecutor told reporters after the Security Council briefing, according to AFP. "There's a chance to stop the violence (in Darfur). Crimes have to be stopped."

Photo: Posters of ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. AP

To commemorate International Day of U.N. Peacekeepers last Friday, the United Nations Association of the USA brought a diverse group of experts together to discuss the current state of U.N. peacekeeping. The forum highlighted the difficulties inherent in transnational nature of peacekeeping forces, which can become confused and ineffective due to language and training gaps as well as how peacekeeping will change now that a new administration is in office. While the speakers expressed optimism at the promises made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to make peacekeeping more central to U.S. foreign policy in coming years, they also acknowledged that other international and domestic issues may hamper those promises.

After failures in places like Somalia and Rwanda, U.N. peacekeeping has gotten the reputation of being ineffective and, in some cases, partly responsible for tragedies perpetrated on its watch. Ron Capps of Refugees International attributed some of the negative opinion to a misunderstanding peacekeepers’ mandate in many previous conflicts, which typically asked troops to maintain ceasefires, not to address the underlying causes of conflict. Cox added that missions are often hindered by the crippling costs inherent in shipping supplies to remote areas that have little infrastructure.

Participants countered critics and offered their personal stories of peacekeeping successes. Retired U.S. army officer Wayne Long spoke of peacekeepers “adopting” neighborhoods in Somalia and setting up literacy programs and basic health care services. Coulter Tillet of AECOM described his experience in Mogadishu, where peacekeepers ambushed by rebels worked together to make sure everyone got out of the situation alive, even when that meant returning to the danger zone to find their colleagues. Capps spoke of the lengths one peacekeeper went to in order to ensure the safe evacuation of a dangerous and under-supplied refugee camp in the jungles of Congo. These stories highlighted the fact that the value of peacekeeping comes not just from the work that missions do to protect against rebel incursions and secure borders; personal relationships forged among peacekeepers and with the people they are commissioned to protect help missions succeed, build a positive image of the United Nations among local populations, and keep peacekeepers returning to the trenches conflict after conflict. 

Stories of bravery are often overlooked in the midst of dire humanitarian catastrophes. In both Congo and Darfur today, U.N. peacekeeping missions operate under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which gives them the authority to use force to protect civilians. But even with this full authority, peacekeeping missions must have substantive backing from leading U.N. member states to have any hope of success. As civilians continue to die under the watch of the world’s largest peacekeeping missions in Darfur and Congo, successes like those profiled at the conference on Friday are, sadly, only a small consolation.

Rebecca Brocato and Laura Heaton contributed to this post.

Over the next week, President Obama’s Special Envoy to Sudan, General Scott Gration, will make stops in four different countries considered key to reigniting a comprehensive peace process for Sudan.

He sets off this weekend for China, where he will meet with senior Chinese officials, including China’s representative to Darfur, Liu Guijin. Special Envoy Gration and Representative Liu will then meet with Darfur special envoys from Russia, the United Kingdom, France and the European Union in Doha, Qatar, “to align positions on the Darfur peace process under the leadership of United Nations-African Union Joint Chief Mediator Bassolé,” according to the U. S. State Department statement about the trip.

From Doha, Special Envoy Gration will travel to London, where he will meet with senior British officials, reconvene the Sudan Troika – Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States – and take part in a meeting of the Sudan Contact Group that includes officials from Canada, the European Union, France, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States. These high-level meetings will focus on issues related to the implementation Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), according to the State Department.

As Enough advisor Omer Ismail explained:

This is a very important trip because it is critical to get China engaged and to push the Troika – the group that originally provided the will and support of the international community to get actors in northern and southern Sudan to negotiate the CPA – to ensure that the CPA is implemented in good faith. The Troika, with the leadership of the United States, will also be instrumental in brokering a just, equitable, and lasting peace in Darfur.

Photo: President Obama and Sudan Special Envoy Scott Gration  AP/Evan Vucci