“I have both the right and the duty to write to you, for my heart is seething with indignation, and I was not endowed with the gift of speech merely to make myself an accomplice by remaining silent.”
So wrote Armin T. Wegner in 1933, in an open letter to Adolf Hitler to express his deep [...]
The UN General Assembly is not an easy place to find consensus on anything, so it came as a welcome surprise to hear that its member states have agreed to work to further international understanding on effective collective action to prevent and (failing that) to halt mass atrocities. During the debate in July, numerous statements [...]
iR2P is a multidisciplinary network because multidisciplinary agility is needed to understand and encourage change. This point is captured well in How Change Happens, a report by Roman Krznaric for Oxfam. Here’s an extract:
The development of independent academic disciplines over the past century has resulted
in isolation and overspecialisation. Economists, for example, have learned very little
from [...]
It’s been far too long. Sorry about that. I can hardly claim there’s been any lack of developments to write about, what with the arrest of Nkunda and subsequent operations against the FDLR in eastern Congo, the sad loss of Alison des Forges, all the recent controversy surrounding the ICC’s indictment of the President of Sudan, and [...]
This satellite picture from UNOSAT is one of a series showing the destruction by arson and shelling of over 2,170 buildings and tent structures in three camps for displaced people in the Rutshuru area of North Kivu (as originally reported by the UN refugee agency). Information from human rights observers is that the camps were [...]
In the video below, Francis Deng, the respected Sudanese scholar and diplomat who is UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, explains how he interprets his challenging job description. (”Of course I felt honoured, but I soon began to ask myself, what have I got myself into?”)
He emphasises the importance [...]
“Hundreds of thousands of people are on the run, fleeing a war that rages in eastern Congo, in the provinces of North and South Kivu. They are frightened. Many are sick or wounded. Others have been harassed or raped, or have had everything they own stolen. The people of the Kivus are in a critical [...]
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. [...]
Kenya’s National Commission on Human Rights has released its report into January’s post-election violence. Entitled On the Brink of the Precipice, the report (promised to appear on the KNCHR website shortly) concludes that some of the violence was premeditated, financed by local politicians and business people, and included crimes against humanity. Naming planners and perpetrators, and making recommendations on changing [...]