Building a genocide monitoring and alert system is one of 16 top ideas shortlisted by Google’s ‘10 to the 100‘ initiative, after reviewing more than 150,000 ideas submitted by people in 172 countries. Google will give $10 million to organisations in the best position to help implement the five ideas that receive the most votes by Thursday [...]
UN appeals for 3,000 extra peacekeepers for eastern Congo have yet to be answered. A proposal to send European troops was blocked by Britain and Germany, prompting the London Director of Human Rights Watch to denounce what he calls “Britain’s cowardice“:
“In speech after speech, the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, talks up human rights and his [...]
Avaaz (a bold new campaigning organisation with over 3 million members worldwide) is collecting a million messages of congratulation to display on a wall in the heart of Washington DC, in the hope that the site will become a focus for US media reporting on global reactions to Obama’s election success. Add your own voice here. [...]
New arrivals in a camp for displaced people in the market town of Masisi, North Kivu, last December. Having offered a semblance of refuge from the fighting and lawlessness surrounding it, Masisi was emptied by fighting in September 2008. (Photo by Fred.)
The last time eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had this much media attention, [...]
Three years after saying “We accept that responsibility”, the United Nations General Assembly will soon debate how to put ‘the Responsibility to Protect‘ into practice. How do we know this? Because UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon plans to present to the General Assembly some proposals on the subject by the end of 2008.
Forget about UN procedures, complicated politics and differing [...]
Yuri Fedotov, who is the Russian Federation’s Ambassador to the UK, has written to The Guardian to defend his country’s decision to veto Security Council sanctions on Zimbabwean officials responsible for political violence since the elections. In aside, he writes:
“There is an important technical point at stake. UN security council resolutions exist as a mechanism to address [...]
In this video, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) say the fighting in Somalia is more intense than it has been in 15 years. Hundreds of thousands have fled Mogadishu. A single clinic has treated over a thousand civilians for war wounds since September. Malnutrition indicators are above the emergency threshold; a third of the population are in urgent [...]
Video: Appeal by Zainab Bangura, Sierra Leone’s Foreign Minister (a former civil society activist)
Avaaz is organising a petition to world leaders at this week’s emergency UN summit on the skyrocketing world food crisis: “There is a real danger that rich country leaders will push half measures and band-aid solutions – we need a huge global [...]
United for Africa is a collaborative effort to map incidents of xenophobic violence in Southern Africa, including by SMS.
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A coalition of human rights, legal and union activists has succeeded in preventing a Chinese ship from delivering 77 tons of weapons and ammunitions to Zimbabwe’s army via the South African port of Durban. South African President Thabo Mbeki had earlier said that the government was “powerless” to stop the transfer, but activists obtained a [...]