This coming Wednesday, July 22, a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, will render its decision on the dispute between the Government of Sudan (GOS) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) over the boundaries of the Abyei area. The decision – regardless of what it is – is anticipated to […]
So you think you’re busy?
July 18, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Mr. Wane has quite a job, as the Acting Head of the African Union Conflict Management Centre. Immaculately dressed in a slate-grey suit, he was finishing a meeting with a staffer as I was coming in. I have met a lot of busy people in my time, but he may just take the cake. Over […]
AU Commission reacts to civil society support for ICC Bashir case
July 17, 2009 by 1 Comment
Following a flurry of media reports indicating that some South African civil society organizations want President Zuma to distance himself from last week’s AU decision to oppose the arrest warrant for President al-Bashir, as well as a poll released yesterday indicating that the general public in some countries is not as opposed to the Bashir […]
Gacaca decision
July 16, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Earlier this month I attended an all-day Gacaca court appeal by former sous Préfet Béatrice Nirere against her conviction on genocide charges leading to a sentence of life imprisonment with “special conditions” (isolation). As I commented, during the first day of the appeal the case against her consisted primarily of hearsay evidence, if that. With […]
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 […]
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 […]
Activism under Obama
July 7, 2009 by 1 Comment
Where does one end a book about Darfur and advocacy? I have this very nice proposal which concludes neatly with the expectations around the incoming Obama Administration. But – unfortunately for my timeline and budget – the events since Obama came into office make it just too interesting to stop the story there. Related to […]
Aid expulsions: Are we missing the real story?
Fellow bloggers over at Change.org have been running a couple of posts trying to get at the thorny question of just what the impact of the NGO expulsions has been on the provision of aid in Darfur. It’s been a question of intrigue ever since US Special Envoy, Scott Gration, came out with a strange […]