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 […]
Palgrave Macmillan to publish The Promise of Engagement
July 17, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Hi everyone With thanks to Robert at Sterling Lord Literistic, I have just accepted with Palgrave Macmillan* for world-wide English rights. In their words they are “a cross-market publisher specializing in cutting edge academic and trade non-fiction titles. Our list consists of top authors ranging from academics making original contributions in their disciplines to trade […]
The Red Terror: On memory & “progress”
July 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Odds & ends
July 6, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Apologies for the lack of updates. A friend told me that while the Kenyan government held a ceremony in honor of the arrival of fiber optic cable, their party was premature and the much-anticipated cable is not yet in the country. This didn’t seem implausible given that accounting for things not actually present is something […]
Liberia TRC Report no longer publicly available . . .
July 2, 2009 by Leave a Comment
**UPDATE2: The report is now publicly available again – and still contains the recommendation with President Johnson-Sirleaf be barred from public office. *UPDATE 1: July 3 Finally one news report on this thanks to Voice of America but no info yet on what (no-doubt heated) discussions are going on behind the scenes . . . […]
errr . . . really?
July 2, 2009 by 2 Comments
The Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established three years ago through a piece of legislation called the TRC Act. It has been supported and funded by the government of Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (a.k.a. Africa’s first female President). This fact, in combination with the widely accepted sense that Johnson-Sirleaf is the best thing […]
Conflict in Congo Rages on Despite 49 Years of Independence
July 1, 2009 by 1 Comment
Thanks to HuffPost for publishing this: Goma, DRC – Jimmy Makozo is ten years old. He should be in school. Instead, he is on the streets of Goma desperately reaching out to strangers like me. Throughout Congo, celebrations are underway for the 49th anniversary of independence from colonial rule. It was in the midst of […]
Rob Crilly: The Analysis is the Problem
Rob Crilly is a British journalist I met in Nairobi. He has spent the past five years covering Darfur, and has his first book coming out later this year, entitled Saving Darfur: Everyone’s Favourite African War. He and I disagree on several things (the value of the ICC for instance) and he, like many, has […]