Blog Posts in Peace
Share Your Enough Moment
In their forthcoming book, The Enough Moment, John Prendergast and Don Cheadle present the stories of celebrities, activists and survivors who have dedicated their lives to advocating for human rights in Africa. It all begins with an "Enough Moment" -- an experience in your life when you realize you have to stand up, speak out, and organize with others on vital human rights issues in Africa.
The book hits stores Sept. 7, but you don’t have to wait to share your own Enough Moment. We’re interested in hearing your story now, so we’re gathering video versions of personal Enough Moments.
Just begin the video by introducing yourself: Tell us your name, where you live, and what you do. In three minutes or less, describe how you are involved in fighting for human rights in Africa, and the moment in your life that prompted you to take action.
Most importantly, be yourself. Film your video in a simple, natural environment. It's just you, on camera, sharing your story.
Want to see an example? Here's Enough's own Mari Wright sharing her Enough Moment.
When you're finished with your video, upload it to YouTube with the tag "enoughmoment." Please title it “[your name]’s Enough Moment.” For example, John would title his video “John Prendergast’s Enough Moment.” Finally, email the link to us at yourmoment@enoughproject.org.
Later this summer, we'll be launching a special Web site, www.enoughmoment.org, where your video will appear alongside other Enough Moments from celebrities, activists, and survivors.
To learn more about the book and to pre-order your own copy, click here.
Thank you, and we look forward to hearing about your Enough Moment.
Preparations Stall for Landmark Votes On Sudan's Future
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Five months and 11 days until Sudan is set to hold critically important votes for both the South and Abyei, much remains to be done. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon emphasized the desperate need to speed things up in his latest report on Sudan: “I urge the parties to recognize that the pending issues outlined must be addressed immediately in order for the referendum to be conducted within the Comprehensive Peace Agreement time frame.”
Here’s a quick look at the status of some of the remaining, major provisions in the CPA:
Post-referendum negotiations: Though the format of, and parties involved in the negotiations have been identified, substantive negotiations have not officially begun. Originally set to begin this past Tuesday, Ajras al-Hurriya, a pro-SPLM paper, quoted Pagan Amum saying talks are postponed to August 7. Amum is the South’s Minister for Peace and CPA Implementation and a lead negotiator for the South in post-referendum talks.
Referenda: The Abyei Referendum Commission has yet to be formed—an alarming seven-month delay that has led to concern and tension among the population in the oil-rich area. The commission is the body charged with managing the vote that will allow Abyei residents to decide whether they want to be part of the North or the South, if South Sudan secedes. The appointment of the commission has stalled on the question of who will be chairperson, an individual who will have considerable influence over defining voter eligibility, a controversial issue that will have large consequences on the vote’s outcome.
According to the secretary general’s report, both the North and South Sudanese governments want the U.N. to take on an expanded role in the conduct of the two referendums. A joint request from the two Sudanese parties detailing what this role would look like is forthcoming – Ban says he hopes soon. In the meantime, UNMIS is hoping to bolster its presence across the South in advance of the referendum, with plans to deploy small teams at the county level.
Popular consultations: Secretary General Ban reports that there has been no substantive progress on the implementation of popular consultations in Southern Kordofan – legislative elections have to take place before the process can begin. Elections will be held after a new state census is conducted; currently, the state is waiting for census results from the Central Bureau of Statistics. In Blue Nile, the popular consultation process is underway. The consultations are an opportunity for the states’ populations to give their view on the CPA and its implementation, though the specifics of how, and what will come of those opinions, are not specified in the peace agreement.
Border demarcation: An official on the joint technical border committee tasked with demarcating the North-South border was recently quoted as saying that demarcation cannot be accomplished by the set referendum date. The committee has just adjourned its activities until October because of logistical challenges related to the rainy season.
Photo: Abyei town (AP)
Vying for Leadership at the Expense of Peace
The U.N. Security Council is meeting today to discuss a recent report by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the peacekeeping force in Darfur. The report warned of the potentially grave impact nationwide of a stalled peace process for Darfur. "Without an inclusive and comprehensive peace agreement in Darfur, as South Sudan heads towards a referendum on its future status, there is a risk of increasing instability in Sudan,” the secretary general wrote. The report details numerous reasons why the process is faltering; however, media reports and impressions gathered from meetings and conversations suggest that leadership of the process is one of the major hurdles.
A senior official from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, Yasir Arman, recently announced that southern Sudanese President Salva Kiir has offered to serve as a mediator for the Darfur peace process. Arman stated that the president’s involvement had been invited by the A.U.-U.N. chief mediator, Djibril Bassolé, with the hope that his intervention could break the current deadlock. Although Arman asserts that Kiir is, “the only person who can talk to both parties,” signs thus far from Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party indicate that the idea will be rejected.
This latest development comes on the heels of a meeting called by UNAMID chief Ibrahim Gambari in El Fasher, North Darfur, in which tensions among the senior international principals to the negotiations were starkly revealed. While the meeting’s attendees included envoys from China, Russia, and the European Union (among others), as well as high level U.N. representatives, glaringly missing from the proceedings were the special envoys to Sudan from the U.S., the U.K., and France. Although these envoys all reportedly had genuine scheduling conflicts, there have been rumors that when they asked whether the meeting could be rescheduled to accommodate them, Gambari refused. The Sudan Tribune, which initially reported on the envoys’ absence, suggested that it was tied to a sense of competition among the key international players in the Darfur peace process.
While the details of what happened in the run-up to the meeting may differ from what has been rumored, the tensions among the international leaders are undoubtedly real. The rifts that have taken place between Gambari and some of the envoys have been noted in articles and conversations in recent months, as have tensions between Djibril Bassolé, chief mediator for Darfur, and Thabo Mbeki, head of the A.U. High-Level Implementation Panel, which is currently trying to secure a peaceful transition for all of Sudan. In both cases, the tensions seem to be the direct result of what can only be termed as “turf wars.” Gambari seems to want to play a more substantial role in the process, while Bassolé feels as if Mbeki is intentionally encroaching upon the mediator’s territory. Meanwhile, U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration, who has butted heads repeatedly with the other leaders working on a political settlement, now seems to be carving out a role in the post-conflict development realm – he recently returned from Darfur, where he looked at early recovery efforts already underway, according to a blog post ahead of the trip. It is difficult, at this point, to say where Kiir might fit into this dynamic, but safe to assume that adding another mediator to the mix won’t go over well with all of the other players.
Unfortunately, all this tension over who is most fit to lead the peace process has detracted from what is most important here: the peace process itself. While all of these international leaders fight to be the most important man at the table, the Doha process remains in tatters: the Justice and Equality Movement has abandoned talks all together and is clashing with the government in pockets throughout Darfur; there are rumors that the Liberty and Justice Movement may also be abandoning the talks, due to the arrest of some civil society leaders expected to travel to Doha; and the civil society talks are making little progress.
The inability of the international community to exercise the leverage necessary to bring the parties to the conflict back to the negotiating table is directly tied to its internal squabbling. Lack of consensus over who should lead, and how, directly impacts how the parties to the conflict view the international actors and their commitment to seeing a sustainable peace in the region. Furthermore, it creates more opportunities for the parties to the conflict to manipulate what is left of the process, making future negotiation that much more difficult.
The primary goal of these leaders should therefore be to coordinate among themselves and unify around the goal of pushing all parties to return to negotiations. This would demonstrate to the Sudanese parties that all the members of the international community want the same thing and will work together to ensure that they get it – a powerful message indeed.
Photo: A.U.-U.N. chief mediator Djibril Bassolé at the Darfur peace talks in Qatar, 2009 (AP)
Why We Should Care About the Congo
This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.
Deep in the mountains that separate the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Rwanda, largely hidden from public view, a war has been raging for the past 14 years. In this gruesome conflict, rape is frequently the weapon of choice, and a wide array of armed groups with many different patrons fight mercilessly for control of mineral riches.
There is no easy solution to ending the war in Congo, which has claimed more than five million lives, making it the most lethal conflict since World War II. But the Wall Street reform legislation signed into law by President Obama includes a far-reaching provision designed to reduce the horrific violence. Building on the work of a coalition of a dozen major humanitarian organizations and industry pioneers, the bill establishes a new mechanism that will limit the ability of armed groups to profit from the illicit mining and sale of cassiterite, coltan, and wolframite and other "conflict minerals."
My colleagues and I have been working for months to pass this provision, and by partnering with the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, and several other key allies in the House and Senate, including Rep. McDermott and Senators Brownback, Dodd, Durbin, and Feingold, we were able to secure broad, bipartisan support for a requirement that companies doing business in the Congo and adjoining countries disclose both the provenance of the minerals they use and the efforts they have taken to ensure that their dollars do not directly or indirectly support armed groups that employ rape as a tool of war and otherwise perpetuate the conflict.
Let there be no mistake: this is only one critical step of many that must be taken to stop one of the world's longest running wars. But it is a major step.
To be effective, this action must be paired with other efforts. By companies, who will need to build on the work of peers who have already started to develop conflict-free supply chains for the minerals they use. By consumers, who will need to make conscientious choices about the products they buy. By regulators, who will need to ensure that the disclosure process is taken seriously, and that loopholes are not reopened. And by Congress, which will need to carefully monitor the effectiveness of the new mechanism, and take other steps to enhance the ability of the United States to work for peace in places like Congo.
Several of those efforts are currently under consideration in the Foreign Affairs Committee. One that is a particularly high priority for me would overhaul U.S. foreign assistance programs for the first time since 1961, thus enabling our nation to more effectively and efficiently target and deliver our aid dollars.
In these difficult economic times, it is sometimes hard to understand why we should care about what happens in faraway and largely forgotten places like the Congo. But in our increasingly globalized world, conflicts in even distant corners of the world can create ripple effects – from mass migrations and the spread of infectious disease, to deforestation and the depletion of other key natural resources – that impact the current and future well-being of Americans.
Despite the difficult challenges we face here at home, Americans are a generous and compassionate people. Our values compel us to fight injustice wherever it occurs, and to reduce the suffering of innocents. The men, women, and children of the Congo have endured unimaginable hardships for more than a dozen years, and it is time for us to act. The conflict minerals provision in the just-passed Wall Street reform bill is an important first step in changing the situation in that beleaguered country.
The author is the Democratic Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He represents the 28th District of California.
On Wave of Financial Reform, Congo Captures Headlines
Working for an organization that has focused since its inception on drawing attention to conflicts that remain obscure to many Americans – despite being some of the world’s deadliest – it was remarkable to see Congo in so many prominent headlines recently.
One of the leading stories last week was of course President Obama’s signing of the Wall Street reform bill. But several news outlets delved into the 2,300-page bill and highlighted the provision that addresses the role that U.S. companies play in funding atrocities carried out by militias in eastern Congo.
In a front page story in The Washington Post, reporter Mary Beth Sheridan wrote about the impact the new law could have on thousands of U.S. companies:
"This is one of those issues that is below the radar for about 99.9 percent of Americans. . . . Everyone has their cellphone up against their ear, nobody is thinking of Congo or conflict minerals. But everybody's got some, potentially, right next to their ear," said Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), speaking recently at the Center for American Progress.
Although little noticed by the public, the provision in the regulatory bill could have a broad impact. It applies not only to electronics companies, which are major users of Congolese tantalum, but also to all publicly traded U.S. firms that use tin and gold.
"This is a law that is going to affect virtually the entire U.S. manufacturing sector," said Rick Goss, vice president of environment at the Information Technology Industry Council.
CNN’s The Situation Room also picked up the story and aired this segment by Mary Snow that features an interview with Enough’s John Prendergast and the viral “I’m a Mac” video by actress and activist Brooke Smith for the RAISE Hope for Congo campaign. (By the way, the video spoof now has an astounding 570,000 views.) Here’s the full clip:
One other prominent article was this analysis piece out of Kigali and Kinshasa by Reuters. Quotes from industry and mining interest groups in the region help illustrate the challenge ahead to ensure that the regulations enacted by the Securities Exchange Commission, the agency charged with devising the plan to implement the law, aren’t weakened by interests who benefit from Congo’s unregulated trade in minerals. Many of those groups seem to have quickly adopted the tactic of crying foul on behalf of the miners whose livelihoods depend on the minerals industry in eastern Congo.
On that point: In reality, of course, the well-being of miners in Congo is forefront on the minds of proponents of this new law. Across the board, from Congress, to advocacy organizations, to U.S. government agencies, to the Congolese government, people pushing for regulation of the mining industry in eastern Congo emphasize the importance of creating alternate employment opportunities and of working closely with industry leaders to ensure that the law doesn’t lead to a boycott. The status quo is far from defensible. The new law won’t be a silver bullet that ends the war in eastern Congo, but it is an important step that confronts some key components perpetuating the conflict: funding for armed groups and lack of Congolese government oversight.
The blogosphere too was abuzz with posts about the new conflict minerals law, culminating today with a post by Congo expert Jason Stearns. He summed up the various points of criticism raised in recent posts by writers critical of the law, and addressed them one by one. Stearns pointed out that while many issues need to be addressed to end the conflict in eastern Congo, regulating the supply chain for conflict minerals doesn’t preclude action on the host of other issues. He wrote:
Yes, I wish we could have greater engagement in strengthening the Congolese judiciary and police. I wish there could be meaningful land reform and that disputes over farming rights could be settled by expert mediators (UN Habitat is beginning to do this). I wish we could have transparent democratic institutions throughout the country. But none of those issues stand necessarily in contradiction with due diligence in the minerals trade. I can't tell you how often I have been in meetings with officials at the State Department, insisting that they help in security sector reform and in paying attention to the return of Congolese Tutsi refugees. Nothing much came of that. Now that we have a chance to help promote meaningful reform in the minerals trade, I think we should seize the opportunity.
