Laura Heaton's blog

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

For the second year in a row on Tuesday, shareholders of JPMorgan Chase had a chance to vote on whether the company would divest its $3.5 billion worth of holdings in PetroChina and Sinopec, Chinese companies connected to the financing of Sudanese government-sponsored atrocities against its own citizens. The proposal, which JPMorgan Chase lobbied against, failed, but the increased backing of shareholders and public support offered by high-value institutions, such as large state pension funds, marked a positive trend.  Read More »

The month-long mutiny orchestrated by Bosco Ntaganda has embroiled relatively peaceful areas of eastern Congo in conflict anew and, amid the uncertainty, reinvigorated some threats that previously seemed to be on the decline, most alarmingly spurring new attacks by the FDLR, as covered by Enough’s Congo research team yesterday. The rise in FDLR attacks and ongoing upheaval surrounding the Bosco mutiny makes news of new allegations of charges leveled by the International Criminal Court particularly judicious.  Read More »

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

After a five year long trial, warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor was convicted yesterday of “aiding and abetting” a rebels notorious for their use of child soldiers and favor terror tactic, amputation, in the vicious 1991-2002 civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone in which an estimated 50,000 people died. The conviction is the first by an international tribunal of a former head of state since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders, a development that was no doubt received with concern by the growing list of former leaders wanted for orchestrating atrocities.  Read More »

A weekly round-up of must-read stories, posted every Friday (or on occasion, on Saturday).  Read More »

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

Learning lessons from what did and did not work in the 2011 famine relief efforts in Somalia is a matter of urgent and immediate concern. A new field dispatch by the Enough Project illustrates how, on the most local level, deficiencies of the relief effort played out, based on research conducted in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.  Read More »

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

With 42 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity already alleged to his name, South Kordofan governor Ahmed Haroun was recently captured on camera inciting Sudan Armed Forces, or SAF, soldiers to commit war crimes in the ongoing hostilities with the rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Army-North, or SPLA-North. A spokesman for the Sudanese government said Haroun’s remarks were “not interpreted correctly” and that the governor was “not ordering the soldiers to kill civilians but to kill rebels.” But even this attempt to rationalize Haroun’s comments does not absolve the South Kordofan governor of the allegation that he could be inciting war crimes.  Read More »