Five Stories You May Have Missed This Week
Posted by Cody Leblanc on Jul 19, 2013
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.
This week, Enough Project Field Researcher Timo Mueller was featured
in an IRIN Africa briefing that examined the recent developments
surrounding the stalled peace talks between the Congolese army and the
M23 rebel movement in Kampala, Uganda and the renewed fighting between
the two groups in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. His
analysis concluded that the Congolese army's strategy of pursuing
military confrontation with M23 undermined the peace talks; however,
it is unlikely that Congo will withdraw from talks favored by the
international community.
In Sudan, new satellite imagery reveals the Government of Sudan is
violating a September 2012 agreement by maintaining infantry, tanks,
and artillery in a demilitarized border zone between the Sudans. In an
interview with allAfrica, Enough Project Director of Research Mark
Quarterman states:
"The continued violations by Sudan of its agreement with South
Sudan jeopardize the peace process between the two countries. The
presence of Sudanese troops in the Safe Demilitarized Border Zone
raises the chance that this border flashpoint could be the spark for
renewed armed conflict."
The new images released by the Satellite Sentinel Project show that
Sudanese military installations remain active and are manned with both
infantry and heavy artillery.
Global Post reports that African insurgencies are cashing in on the
lucrative ivory trade to fund their violent operations across the
continent. Enough Project Field Researcher Kasper Agger explains:
“We know how minerals fuel conflicts, but with the growing prices,
ivory is also starting to fuel conflict. We have to see it in that
context — that it is equally damaging to regional security.”
Partly in response to new developments where armed groups like
Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Somalia's Al Qaeda-linked Al
Shabaab, and Sudan's Janjaweed militias are joining organized criminal
networks to profit from the illicit trade, President Obama established
earlier this month a high-level Presidential Task Force on Wildlife
Trafficking.
The Washington Post reports that Samantha Power's Senate confirmation
hearing to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations began this
week with a welcome show of bipartisan support that contrasts with the
recent filibuster fight over the blocking of other presidential
nominees. Power, a liberal academic, is best known as the author of A
Problem From Hell, a powerful study of American inaction in the face
of genocide. Despite initial criticism from Senate Republicans, Power
has also received the public backing of key Republican lawmaker
Senator John McCain.
Max Fisher in a blog post for The Washington Post examined the recent
projections by the United Nations Population Division on the
demographic future of the Earth, noting that Africa will see a
population explosion nearly unprecedented in human history. Africa's
population boom will be largely sub-Saharan, and by 2100 Africa will
be nearly as populated as Asia. In a chart-by-chart breakdown,
Fisher's blog post examines key country population growth,
immigration, life expectancy, and dependency ratios.
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