Big week for the ICC. A few things to keep an eye on: 1.      The Assembly of States Parties is meeting in New York this week. This is the annual meeting of all the states that have signed up to the Rome Statute, plus accredited observers. One of the issues they’re looking at is forming […]

The Center for Global Development has just put out a hugely useful report laying out the various options for dealing with debt in a post-referendum Sudan. Sudan Debt Dynamics: Status Quo, Southern Secession, Debt Division, and Oil—A Financial Framework for the Future is the best one-stop overview I’ve seen so far for anyone interested in […]

It seems everyone in the blogosphere has an opinion of Wikileaks latest release of classified U.S. State Department cables. Adding one more voice to the mix, I come to this as someone who has spent the past four years going through the tedious process of getting these kinds of U.S. cables declassified through the legal […]

#UPDATE: Adam Kanzer from Domini Social Investments, who is also testifying at the hearing today, will be speaking specifically to the Ruggie framework referenced below. Tune in at 2pm EST (10pm Sudan) U.S.-based citizen advocacy for Darfur has not had the impact on Darfur that activists who first got involved had hoped. But what it […]

There are an estimated 20,000 Sudanese in my homeland of Australia – and the vast majority are refugees from southern Sudan and thus eligible to vote in the upcoming referendum on southern independence. But when polling centers opened last week, it was tough luck for any eligible Sudanese who happened to be living in say, […]

For the Pulitzer Center, Abyei, Sudan Published on November 2, 2010 Abyei has always been a special case. In a united Sudan its borderland position led writers to infuse it with a somewhat romanticized notion of a bridge between two cultures. But with southerners pressing for autonomy since Sudanese independence, there has been ever-increasing pressure […]

For the Pulitzer Center, Abyei, Sudan Published on October 27, 2010 Scheduling was such that I did not reach Abyei until the weekend, and while I have press accreditation from the government of southern Sudan in Juba, telling me I am free to work as a journalist anywhere in the south, Abyei is a unique […]

For the Pulitzer Center, Agok, Sudan Published on October 25, 2010 As I write, high-pitched chanting from the girls of the Agok primary school fills the air. They are cheering on their male classmates in the school’s soccer match. It’s a still evening. The sunset has just reached that special moment when it transforms the […]

For the Pulitzer Center, Juba, Sudan Published on October 20, 2010 Flying into Juba last week was surreal. I haven’t been back here since 2005 and it is the most remarkable five-year transformation I have ever witnessed. As our plane circled in towards the runway, the bird’s eye view showed Juba no longer to be […]

For the Pulitzer Center, Khartoum, Sudan Published on August 17, 2010 Last week I met the parents of one of the Girifna activists, who I will call Nahid. It was a couple of the best hours of this trip. They have been studiously apolitical for years – the same tack taken by many Sudanese who […]