Imagine this. Close to a small lake, there is a little building. It has stood there for 120 years – ever since your ancestors, who lived off fishing and foraging, built it. Your grandmother brings you to this place to pass your people’s traditions on to you. You go there in order to preserve knowledge,… Read more »
Month: May 2018
This Week in South Sudan – Week 21
Monday 21 May The Government of South Sudan (GoSS) considers a referendum on the configuration of states in the country. Tuesday 22 May Members of the Former Political Detainees deny having withdrawn their membership of the South Sudan Opposition Alliance. This comes after the Addis Ababa peace talk where the group reportedly required separate representation… Read more »
This Week in South Sudan – Week 20
Monday 14 May SPLM accuses SSUF/A of carrying out attacks in Raja, Western Bahr el Ghazal, but the SSUF/A rejects these allegations. Thursday 17 May The UN Security Council extends the mandate of UNISFA in Abyei for one year. The UN deploys 150 additional peacekeepers to the Unity area due to continuous clashes between SPLM… Read more »
‘Ideal Perpetrators’ How we decide who is accountable for mass violence: A study of the French National Railways
In the wake of mass violence, holding every complicit person or group accountable is impossible. Rwanda discovered this after its 1994 genocide with an estimated 1,000,000 collaborators. Many still try to make sense of accountability for the Holocaust. Ultimately, only a few face trial. How are these few selected? Are they the guiltiest and does their… Read more »
Does hunger cause conflict?
One of the consequences of war is disrupted food provision. The connection between conflict and hunger is indisputable when we look at today’s locations of the major global hunger emergencies: Rakhine in Myanmar, the Kasai Region in DR Congo, north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It is estimated that 80 percent of the World… Read more »
Climate and Security: Bridging the Policy-Academic Gap
In March, I argued that the connections between climate change and security are complex, contingent, and not fully understood. Most of the academic literature has firmly focused on conflict onset with the broader security consequences largely understudied. For policy audiences, the nuance can be frustrating. It is difficult to know what to do with such… Read more »
This Week in South Sudan – Week 19
Monday 7 May The SPLM-IO faction led by Taban Deng Gai announced that it has officially joined the country’s ruling party SPLM, under the overall leadership of President Salva Kiir. President Salva Kiir accepted that Riek Machar could come to Juba under the protection of the Regional Protection Force. President Kiir did not accept however… Read more »
This Week in South Sudan – Week 18
Monday 30 April South African telecom operator MTN will expand its operations in South Sudan. There is a rising demand for mobile services, conceivably linked to the expulsion of Vivacell. Tuesday 1 May SPLM-IO has released the 10 aid workers abducted in Central Equatoria. A border dispute caused soldiers from the SPLA to halt a… Read more »
The Moscow–Washington Hotline Worked – This Time Around
In the war in Syria, the two globally most militarily active superpowers – Russia and the United States – have soldiers actively deployed on opposite sides on the same battlefield. This is the first time this has happened since the end of World War II, and it is a dangerous situation. At the same time,… Read more »
Can Moon Jae-In Remove the Stumbling Blocks to Peace in Korea?
Donald Trump is the unknown factor in the South Korean president’s peace diplomacy. Friday 27 April 2018 was a new historic day for Korea. Even before he had completed the first year of his five-year term as president of South Korea, the 65-year-old human rights lawyer Moon Jae-in succeeded in holding a summit with the young… Read more »