On Saturday, the US Mission to the AU hosted a screening of Obama’s Ghana speech for AU staff, and a friend who works there invited me along. With rain delaying the speech, there was time for an unofficial tour. We walked up three flights of stairs to look out over a construction site. “China has […]
What next?
July 13, 2009 by 5 Comments
Alex de Waal and Nick Kristof come from relatively different ends of the Darfur advocacy spectrum. Yet last week de Waal’s Making Sense of Darfur piece asked “Can Sudan Activism Transform Itself for the Obama Era?” and last month Kristof’s On The Ground blog began by saying “The Save Darfur movement seems to be losing […]
A picture worth a thousand words
July 12, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Walking up the stairs to the office of the Acting Head of the AU’s Conflict Management Centre you come across multiple, almost life-size photographs, of AMIS officers proudly standing to attention in El Fasher.
Reactions at the AU to Obama’s Ghana speech
July 11, 2009 by 4 Comments
ADDIS ABABA – I spent this afternoon in the Plenary Hall of the African Union, watching Obama’s Ghana speech and listening to the responses it drew from some hundred of the AU and local embassy staff in attendance. The broadcast quality was bad from the Ghanaian end due to the rains, and we all strained […]
AU corrects Reuters
July 11, 2009 by Leave a Comment
The continuing saga . . . As it happened I was at the AU this afternoon to listen to Obama’s speech in Ghana. It was delayed because of the rain, and so a friend who works at the AU took me to the Commission’s Situation Room. It’s really just an office with a couple of […]
Seems Reuters got it wrong
July 11, 2009 by Leave a Comment
* 10.30am UPDATE This just through from someone who was actually at the press conference Reuters was reporting on: During that briefing, Pres. Mbeki was asked about the warrants. He said that the ICC warrants are part of the reality with which the Panel has to work but that the Panel has not yet formed […]
AU Mbeki-led panel supports ICC on Bashir case
July 10, 2009 by 1 Comment
Reuters is reporting that the AU Panel of “eminent Africans” led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, and tasked by the AU with “looking into ways to balance accountability with bringing peace into Darfur” has come out in support of the ICC case against Sudanese President Omar al Bashir. This contradicts the “AU decision” […]
Kenyan post-election violence: The ICC at its best
July 10, 2009 by 1 Comment
As readers of this blog will know, I think one of the most important and useful aspects of the ICC is its complementarity provision (which is why I am worried about the ICC’s recent justification for its jurisdiction over the case against Germain Katanga). The ICC should only ever be a court of last resort, […]
Salt
July 9, 2009 by Leave a Comment
I had a solid few hours today with a couple of the advocates here working on Darfur. I thought I’d share the way one of them conveyed his point about locally contextual approaches to advocacy: “If I tell you that salt cleans your teeth, but you tell me that in your village salt is very […]
Tim Nonn: Civil disobedience
To start us off, here is Tim Nonn’s piece – unabashedly focused on the question of what advocates can do to strengthen the movement and increase political will, it does not attempt to come up with policy solutions. Engaging with this within those parameters: I recall some discussions of civil disobedience for Darfur a few […]