March 29, 2024

Let’s not get played by the “Abdalhaleem tactic”

After the Secretary General’s Nov. 16 report hit the news headlines this week, Sudan Ambassador to the UN, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, told Reuters: “One big fact should be the focus of the report — that the war is over . . .With peace in sight, the U.N. should, in coordination with the African Union and Sudanese […]

Who, exactly, represented Darfuris in Doha?

According to news reports, “around 170 civil groups from Darfur” were engaged in consultations in Doha last week. Having heard no real “buzz” about the first-ever, long-overdue, inclusion of Darfuri civil society in peace negotiations I was curious about who these 170 groups actually were. I remember the hype and excitement in the build up […]

Activists press U.S govt on supporting Darfuri survivors of rape

Readers of this blog know that the biggest takeaway for me from my time in Darfur this August/September was the impact that the post-ICC expulsions had on women, and in particular on survivors of rape. The women I spoke with were frustrated that the world writ-large seemed to have papered over this. While a joint […]

Panel of Experts: SGBV is “rampant” in Darfur

In what is surely the least surprising news of the month, the Sudanese government has rejected the Report of the UN Panel of Experts, released late last week. To my shame I am only reading it now. Not all the way through it yet, I stopped my reading to blog on the section I’ve just […]

#AskUS: Responding to activists or managing them?

There is much hype among advocates about the meeting that Save Darfur’s Jerry Fowler and STAND’s Layla Amjadi are scheduled to have with Gen. Scott Gration and Samantha Power  – a meeting that will be webstreamed in real time this coming Tuesday Nov. 10. STAND is giving advocates the opportunity to vote for what questions […]

Audience questions from Pledge2Protect

I started off this morning with a Plenary session on Sudan at the Pledge2Protect conference in DC, with Michelle Gavin and Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Abdallah. The conference organizers had audience members submit questions for us on pieces of paper, which were to be asked out loud to us at the end. Regrettably we ran over, […]

Getting Congress focused on sexual violence against Darfuris

A great effort underway by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today in D.C. They are giving a lunchtime briefing to Members of Congress on sexual violence against Darfuri women and girls. In the (unlikely) event that any members of Congress or their staffers are reading this, I urge you to attend.This issue is not covered […]

Time for a truce between Gration & the activists?

A day after all the hype and anticipation of the Sudan Policy Review announcement, I thought I’d share a few thoughts. Staff at Enough , GI-Net and Save Darfur have come out with disciplined, uniformly positive but cautious reactions to the Review (although as pointed out on Sahel blog,  John Norris and John Prendergast at […]

Working in parallel

What I liked most about the Obama administration’s Sudan Policy Review document was something very simple: the clear articulation of three objectives (Darfur, CPA, counter-terrorism) and a commitment not to trade them off against each other. In particular was nice to see the CPA getting equal billing with Darfur (I have a column on this […]

Fudge the analysis, fudge the policy

I think what surprises me most about the Sudan Policy Review is that a document that contains so many of the basic principles found in any “policy 101” textbook (mix of carrots and sticks, escalating series of responses, verification before acceptance etc.) took so long to be concluded. But the length of time it took […]