International Institutions

Amid faltering efforts to end the violence caused by the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, the United Nations Security Council met last month to discuss the LRA issue. The meeting referenced many of the critical issues stymieing current efforts, and some specific plans were agreed to.  Read More »

At the end of last year, long simmering tensions between ethnic groups in South Sudan’s normally peaceful Western Bahr El Ghazal state ignited. Sarah Cleto Rial, who is a Wau native and program director of My Sister’s Keeper, commented on the recent violence in Western Bahr El Ghazal and the diaspora community’s response in this guest blog post.  Read More »

The U.N.’s senior operational coordinator for humanitarian assistance briefed the Security Council on Tuesday on the unfolding travesty in Sudan’s southern states: South Kordofan and Blue Nile. With unusual candor, John Ging, the operational director of the U.N.’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told the Security Council: "So far we have failed, […] we don’t need more process but more access, and we need it urgently and desperately."  Read More »

"The words of the government of Sudan representatives, promising further peace initiatives, are undermined by actions on the ground that show an ongoing commitment to crimes against civilians as a solution to the government's problems in Darfur," said ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to the U.N. Security Council last month.

Longtime Sudan specialist and Smith College professor Eric Reeves stresses the same conclusion, without having to conform to diplomatic pressures, in his extensive, recently released archive of state-sponsored violence across Sudan over the past five years.  Read More »

Before "Gangnam Style," there was the viral Kony 2012 video, which made Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony the world's best-known international war criminal overnight.  Read More »

A weekly round-up of must-read stories, posted every Friday.  Read More »

The top commander of the South Sudan army’s controversial disarmament campaign in Jonglei state recently announced a shift in the strategy for dealing with the most troublesome challenge to their “Operation Restore Hope”—the David Yau Yau rebellion in Pibor. The SPLA will now “launch aggressive attacks” against the rebels, said Lt. Gen. Kuol Deim Kuol, effectively ending what the SPLA previous said was its plan to only assume defensive positions to allow the necessary space for an initiative that saw local elders travel to their communities to convince the population not to join Yau Yau or to be in possession of guns.  Read More »

There’s broad consensus among Sudan watchers that the country is in crisis, emanating from the 23-year rule of President Omar al-Bashir. The question is: What to do? The Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, hosted a panel discussion in D.C. last week about the ongoing crisis in Sudan.  Read More »

Traveling to Jonglei state during a relative lull in the clashes, the Enough Project sought to examine the South Sudanese government’s responses to the violence and its efforts to prevent further bloodshed, especially during the upcoming dry season when communities migrate in search of water and pastureland. The findings are published today in a new report titled, “’Sometimes We See Ourselves as Apart’: South Sudan’s Response to Violence in Jonglei.”  Read More »