March 29, 2024

Global Advocacy: How useful are #hashtags and “likes”?

I spoke with Amy Costello at Tiny Spark podcasts about global advocacy movements and the challenges of mobilizing the goodwill of volunteers in a way that translates into real change for the people they are advocating on behalf of. You can listen to the podcast here. And more generally I’d encourage folks to check out […]

Crisis in the Nuba Mountains

Audio-visual for the Washington Post; a 101 backgrounder on the crisis in Southern Kordofan.

Peace agreements

So you can read them for yourselves: I’m uploading the signed agreement on Abyei (from June 20), which provides for the deployment of Ethiopian peacekeepers under a UN mandate. It is worth paying particular attention to para. 2 of this agreement. The reference to the 1956 border is another way of saying that Abyei belongs […]

Back to Sudan

Hi everyone Following the events in Abyei this weekend, I am heading back to Sudan. I remain hopeful that, peering over the brink to a return to war, cool heads will prevail and that the usual Sudanese style of “managing” the crisis, in lieu of actually solving it, will at least limit the devastation for […]

Sanctions and U.S. corporations in South Sudan

Today, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a brief guidance note on the situation for U.S. people and corporations interested in operations in the new country of South Sudan, following its formal birth on July 9. In short, OFAC explains that the sanctions that currently prohibit U.S. entities conducting business in Sudan and […]

Omar al-Bashir, fresh off press crackdown in Sudan . . .

Khartoum, Sudan Buoyed by a win in the disputed Sudan election in April, President Omar Al Bashir continues to thumb his nose to critics at home and abroad, jailing journalists and challenging an arrest warrant for war crimes and genocide. Read rest of article as it appeared

New report on disputed census results

The Geneva-based Darfur Relief and Documentation Centre has just put out a new report on the disputed Sudan census entitled An Incomplete Exercise. I don’t have time to summarize the report, which highlights a number of concerns raised to me when I was in Khartoum last year, but have pasted its recommendations below: Recommendations

The killing of Mohamed Musa Abdella Bahraldien

[Editorial note: There was date error in the email originally pasted into this post. I have since had it confirmed from several sources that Mohamed Musa was abducted on Wednesday Feb. 10 and was found dead yesterday Thursday Feb. 11. I have asked Dr. Gasim to send a corrected notification] I know you don’t know […]

Blog-free month

Hi everyone I’m entering into a blog-free month as I concentrate on book drafting. ln so doing I’ll miss all the commemorations (and commiserations) that have already begun around the fifth anniversary of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. At this time I find myself reflecting on my first trip to South Sudan in 2004, six months […]

Letter From Khartoum

Up now at Foreign Affairs, my piece “Letter From Khartoum” on the distinctly unfree and unfair conditions in which Sudanese people are being asked to go to the polls next year.