Field Dispatches

In a new Sudan field dispatch, “Refugees Provide Details of Attacks in Isolated Blue Nile State,” the Enough field team documents accounts of refugees fleeing violence in Sudan’s Blue Nile state. Refugees recounted the brutality of Sudan’s military tactic of targeting civilians as well as shed light on the reasons for the influx of nearly 35,000 refugees into South Sudan’s Upper Nile state over a three-week period from late May to early June.  Read More »

Today, July 5, representatives from Sudan and South Sudan recommenced negotiations in Addis Ababa following a week-long break for high level political consultations in Khartoum and Juba. A new Enough field dispatch, “A Comprehensive Agreement for the Two Sudans: Is It Possible?,” reviews the conversations that occurred during the last round of negotiations on the definition of the administrative common borderline, the modalities for determining the final definition of the north-south border, and the recent pace of the negotiation process.  Read More »

BENTIU, South Sudan – On April 29, the 4^th division of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, or SPLA, operating around Panakuac—a South Sudanese town in northern Unity state, located about 23 kilometers away from Heglig where SPLA troops recently withdrew—came under attack from Sudan Armed Forces, or SAF.  I, along with a group of international journalists embedded within the 4^th division, was caught in the crossfire.  Read More »

In his latest field dispatch, Enough Project field researcher Nenad Marinkovic reports on recent violence in Sudan’s Blue Nile state, including attacks from Sudanese military forces spanning from September 1 to November 3, which resulted in a prolonged destabilization of the region.  Read More »

With voting just three weeks away in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s only second multi-party election since independence, Enough Project field researcher Fidel Bafilemba considers incumbent President Joseph Kabila’s legacy and the way the election process has shaped up to strongly lean in his favor. Bafilemba, who was born and raised in eastern Congo, reflects on the ambitious plan laid out by Kabila five years ago and about how, in the absence of much to show for his tenure, the president is looking for other ways to secure is re-election.  Read More »

The nation of South Sudan has come into existence with many unresolved issues threatening the stability of the new state. One of the greatest of these is the continued activity of seven South Sudan rebel militias, in addition to the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA.  Read More »

With yet another Sudanese agreement dishonored, tensions between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, or SPLM-N, continue to rise in the country’s border states, and violence threatens to spread from South Kordofan to Blue Nile.

Malik Agar, SPLM-N chairman who is also the governor of the Blue Nile state told the Enough Project in Juba that there were no attempts of disarmament by SAF on the ground but he anticipates such action, saying they “do not fear SAF and have a contingency plan in place.”  Read More »

In contrast to recent U.N. statements downplaying insecurity in eastern Congo, local civil society and humanitarian groups continue to be alarmed by violence by numerous armed groups operating in the region. The number of displaced civilians remains unconscionably high, and fighting along key roads frequently cuts off access for aid groups.

Reporting from Uvira, the capital of South Kivu province, Enough’s Congo researcher Fidel Bafilemba described some of the most recent sources of instability and the resulting backlash against the U.N. peacekeeping force there, which continues to struggle to carry out its civilian protection mandate.  Read More »

In his latest dispatch from the field, the Enough Project’s Goma-based field researcher Fidel Bafilemba reports on a coalition of prominent Congolese civil society organizations working to address the linkage between natural resource exploitation and human rights abuses in the region. Their partnership is known as the Support Platform for Traceability, and Transparency in the Management of Natural Resources, or GATT-RN.  Read More »

Last week, Enough released a field dispatch by policy analyst Laura Jones, which delves into the situation in Malakal based on field research conducted just days after the attack on the town. “Lessons from Upper Nile” not only provides an in-depth look at the reasons behind this attack, but also delves into the SPLA’s approach to dealing with the militia problem, which ironically is in some ways to blame for the increase in militia-related violence.  Read More »