“Our world faces a common enemy: COVID-19. The virus does not care about nationality or ethnicity, faction, or face; it attacks all relentlessly. Meanwhile, armed conflict rages on around the world. The most vulnerable, women and children, people with disabilities, the marginalized, and the displaced, pay the highest price. They are also at the highest risk of suffering devastating losses from COVID-19.” – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

On March 23, 2020, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the international community to commit to a global ceasefire. All attention, he implored, should instead be turned to fight a shared enemy: COVID-19. Within days, governments participating in conflicts around the world began announcing that they would heed Guterres’ call for a ceasefire. Armed groups that have been fighting without stop for decades such as the New People’s Army (NPA) in the Philippines and the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Colombia put down their weapons. Even Saudi Arabia, a country responsible for indiscriminately bombing Yemeni markets, schools, and health care centers announced that they would adhere to a ceasefire in Yemen—albeit, a unilateral one. By early April, parties in an estimated 11 countries committed to a global ceasefire. 

At first, the shared pandemic experience appeared to mitigate conflict, serving as a cause for cooperation. The Colombian and Venezuelan governments reopened communication for the first time in over a year to discuss how they could work together to fight the spread of the virus across their border. For the first time in over ten years, the U.S. sent aid to the Georgian region of Abkhazia. The United Arab Emirates—the main backers of the Saudis in Yemen—sent over 30 tons of humanitarian aid to Iran. 

Yet, in Ukraine, where the fighting parties had verbally committed to the ceasefire, fighting continued as before. In other places, such as Yemen or Cameroon, ceasefires were either short-lived or ignored. In countries where ceasefires were agreed upon, they were mostly not renewed.

Now, months after Guterres’ call for a global ceasefire and the optimism of early March, the pandemic has proved that it is not, in itself, a path for peace. Indeed, there is no evidence global violence decreased in the past four months. Instead, conflict zones have seen the increased targeting of aid workers, massive displacement, and unabating outbreaks—factors only exacerbated by stanched aid flows and the international community’s reticence to take concrete and sustainable action to promote cooperation and prevention. On a broader level, a ceasefire does nothing to protect states classified as “fragile” who, being vulnerable to shocks like health crises, are among the most susceptible to future conflict.

The international community has had ample opportunity to learn how conflict and disease act like fuel and flint, feeding into each other’s worst effects. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where conflict has raged on for nearly three decades, fractionalization of power and the devastation of infrastructure has rendered health care and aid practically inaccessible. As such, thousands of Congolese lives have been lost in the country’s ten-plus major outbreaks of Ebola. In Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition’s blockade and airstrikes have destroyed water sources, razed hospitals and clinics, and manufactured a man-made famine—factors credited with generating “the largest cholera outbreak in epidemiological recorded history.” 

One clear lesson is that mass displacement invites outbreak among conflicts’ most vulnerable: displaced persons and refugees. Since late March, approximately 480,000 people have been displaced due to violence in the Congo—a region that must simultaneously battle Ebola, conflict, and now COVID-19. Similarly, in refugee camps, cramped and unhygienic conditions make following World Health Organization guidelines like “social distancing” a laughable impossibility. Perhaps most worrying, because conflict zones render conducting and processing testing difficult, we cannot yet quantify COVID-19 infections in conflict-affected regions. When surveyed in mid-April, around one-fourth of Rohingya refugees in camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh reported experiencing at least one common symptom of COVID-19. 

Even in places where WHO guidelines could theoretically be enforced, COVID-19 has proved to be a trust exercise between governments and the governed—meaning that in conflict zones where authority is ambiguous or viewed as unjustified, people are less likely to adhere to safety guidelines due to a lack of trust. Many of the same states that struggle with citizen-state trust internally are likely underreporting their COVID numbers internationally. Many suspect that the Burundi president’s recent death—supposedly from cardiac arrest—was the result of COVID-19. After the government vehemently refused to impose health and safety regulations, the president’s sudden death by illness suggests that the disease had a much further reach than the government has reported. Similarly, Yemen currently touts incredibly low COVID-19 numbers compared to its Middle East neighbors. This is most likely not a sign that the warzone has miraculously been spared; as of May 28, authorities had conducted less than 1,000 tests across the entire country. Reports abound of hospitals and health care centers turning away people with symptoms common to COVID-19. 

While the concept of trust allows us to understand how conflict has shaped the pandemic experience, it, perhaps more importantly, suggests how the pandemic experience might shape future conflict. COVID-19 has already caused extensive individual health, social, and economic damage. We cannot predict its trajectory. This latter fact presents more troubling uncertainties. We can only hypothesize the extent of the consequences that this disease will have on the world order, the shape of our societies, or even the health of those it infects. Already, governments like Russia have been curtailing human rights in the name of preventing COVID-19. Across the world, major elections have been rescheduled or delayed indefinitely. Especially in states with broad emergency powers, this opens up opportunities for unpopular or exploitative governments to stay in power. 

Source: Foreign Policy

How many will die or be displaced not by COVID-19, but by the world’s response to it? On the Venezuela/Colombia border, a bridge closed, diverting the estimated 35,000 Venezuelan refugees who used it daily to dangerous illegal crossing points. The world’s response has already triggered a global recession with profound effects: according to a USIP report, “nearly half of all jobs [in Africa] could be lost, and nearly half of the global population could be living in poverty—on less than $1.90 a day—as a result of the pandemic.”

Not since the Spanish Flu have we seen a pandemic that has so ravaged the global economy, interrupting flows of aid and sowing the seeds for future conflicts. Just in time for a swelling need, foreign aid workers have been airlifted out of conflict zones—both due to safety and the evaporation of funding. Those who remain on the ground face overwhelming hurdles to receive aid and make it accessible while still maintaining their own lives as funding dries out and the pandemic rages on. 

If there is one lesson that we learned in the 20th century, it is that it is far cheaper to prevent conflict than to mitigate it. In light of dwindling funding and growing need for aid, the United States has an unprecedented chance to implement the Global Fragility Act to counter some of the effects of the pandemic on the world’s most fragile states. Since the bill passed as a part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act in December 2019, its funding can work against the global downward capital flows of the COVID-19 pandemic today and continue to provide a stable foundation of aid in target regions in the years to come. 

Abby Edwards is STAND’s co-Student Director and a senior in the Dual BA program between Sciences Po Paris and Columbia University, where she is pursuing degrees in Human Rights and Politics & Government. In addition to her work with STAND, Abby is currently a research fellow with the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at  Columbia University and an intern at the Embassy of France in the United States. 

To support implementation of the GFS, we are asking Congress to appropriate (set aside in law) the funds that the GFA authorizes (establishes). These include $50 million annually to the Complex Crises Fund (CCF), $200 million annually to the Prevention and Stabilization Fund (PSF), and $25 million total to the Multi-Donor Global Fragility Fund. Further, legislative report text must ensure a substantial portion of the CCF and the PSF is available for implementation of the GFS.

“They had virtually no personal belongings, a man told me. The men passed around one electric razor every two days, and sometimes were given a nail-clipper, though it was quickly taken back after use. Women combed their hair with their fingers and were given one pad per day of their periods, and one more at night. One woman told me she was given only two minutes to use the toilet. If she took longer, she was hit with an electric baton. They showered once a week. Each inmate was issued a toothbrush without a handle. Sometimes they were forced to stand still or sit in their rooms; other times they were supposed to do calisthenics in close quarters. Some told me of being forced to memo­rize and recite rules. Some described abysmal sleeping conditions — packed 50 people to a room or forced to sleep in shifts.” –Sarah A. Topol, New York Times Magazine

This is what life looks like at a Uyghur detention center in the Xinjiang province of China.

China’s creeping control over the Uyghurs—a Turkic Muslim ethnic group—began in 1949 when the People’s Republic of China annexed Xinjiang, making the province an “autonomous region.” However, the Uyghur Head of the Region effectively lost all power as national and party solidarity became policy. In order to dilute Uyghur influence in the region, the Chinese government encouraged the country’s majority Han ethnic group to migrate to Xinjiang where the state favored them for business and employment At the time of its annexation, Xinjiang’s population was 76% Uyghur and only 6.2% Han Chinese. Today, official statistics show Xinjiang’s population to be about equal parts Uyghur and Han Chinese. 

Persecution of the Uyghurs became policy during the Communist Party’s Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). Religious and ethnic distinctions were characterized as threats to the progress of the Communist Party and the Chinese Nation. In the 1990s, Xinjiang saw a resurgence of Islam, which the government responded to with violent crackdowns. Tightened government control was met with protests and sometimes violent riots, leading the government to brand the Uyghurs as “terrorists.” 

Linking the Uyghurs with terrorism has been a key element in the Chinese government’s attempt to justify the growing surveillance state in the Xinjiang region. In the past three years, the state has arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned, or disappeared over a million Uyghurs for engaging in behavior the state deems suspicious. These suspicious acts could include anything from refusing to watch Chinese news to growing a beard. In October 2019, 23 United Nations member states led by the United Kingdom released a statement condemning China’s counterterrorism policy for its abuses of human rights. This was followed by an in-depth report on the policy from twelve UN experts. However, 54 other member states led by Belarus spoke out in approval of China’s policy, demeaning the accusations against China as “baseless.” 

A recently leaked document from inside the internment camps details investigations into 3,000 individuals, of which the 311 principal subjects all came from a county with a 90% Uyghur population. As it delves deep into the background of each person to form bases for arrest, the intricate records of their personal lives provide some of the strongest evidence that these centers target Uyghurs on a religious basis. One woman was arrested for having worn a veil a few years ago. Another Uyghur man, described in the document as posing “no practical risk,” was arrested for applying for a passport. 

Alarmingly, these behaviors are being monitored through a complex surveillance system employing “face and voice recognition, iris scanners, DNA sampling, and 3D identification imagery of Uyghurs.” A 2019 Human Rights Watch report examined how Xinjiang serves as an incubator for the latest Chinese surveillance technology. Through the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), the state is able to collect extensive personal information and link it to identifying information, such as a national identification card or license plate number. Of 51 online applications labeled as “suspicious,” many are foreign messaging apps, and thus continuously surveilled. Mobile phones are also physically monitored through random searches by authorities. Anyone contacted by a non-Chinese number is at risk of instant arrest, thus strangling contact between Uyghurs and the outside world, including family and friends who have fled the country. Those arrested or brought to a police station during “random checks” are often subjected to face and body scans and forced to give blood samples.  

Garnishing the greatest attention in the west, an estimated one million Uyghurs—10% of Xinjiang’s Uyghur population—have been held in what the Chinese government claims are “reeducation camps.” Despite denial from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there is clear evidence that at least 28 of these centers exist across the region, resembling high-security jails fit with guard towers and barbed wire fences. Daily life in detention is focused on indoctrination in Communist ideology as a means of “eradicating minority culture, language, and religion.”  Human Rights Watch found evidence that detainees “are subjected to forced political indoctrination, renunciation of their faith, mistreatment, and, in some cases, torture.”

Children of those detained are held in boarding schools and state institutions. Similar to their detained parents, they are taught patriotic songs, communist ideology, and allowed only to speak in Mandarin—a means of “sinocizing” the Uyghurs. In households where the father has been detained, the state might replace him with a “relative,” a Han Chinese party loyalist who is meant to integrate into and monitor the family, even sleeping in the same bed as the Uyghur women. 

For many Uyghurs outside of China, the whereabouts of their family and friends are unknown. Uyghur diaspora have resorted to contacting the Chinese state for “proof of life” of their family members who have gone silent for months or even years. Out of fear of information spreading over social media platforms, the Communist Party developed scripts for answering the questions of those with missing family members. Yet even Uyghur diaspora abroad are not safe. Furthermore, even in places like the Netherlands, they must live knowing that they are being watched by Communist Party spies. They must live knowing that if they return to China, they might be detained at the border. If they speak out, they must live knowing that their family members in China will face punishment and possibly even disappear.

How can we take action? 

The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) has a comprehensive outline of actions we can take as US citizens to end human rights abuses against the Uyghurs: 

1. “Call or write your Senators, Representatives, and the White House. Ask them to support the bipartisan UIGHUR Act of 2019 (S.178). Ask the President to impose Global Magnitsky sanctions on perpetrators”
2. “Write to companies with operations and sourcing in the Uyghur Region and urge them to cease operations and sales as long as the Xinjiang Regional Government continues to operate concentration camps and total-control measures of collective punishment. Included are: Coca-Cola, Adidas, IKEA, UNIQLO, Kraft, Muji, Siemens, H&M”
3. “Write to the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies and urge action to trace missing family members of Uyghurs.”

If nothing else, we must continue to spread awareness about the crimes being perpetrated against the Uyghurs, bearing witness and building a movement for lasting change in China and beyond.

Abby Edwards is a junior in the Dual BA program between Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris and serves on the STAND USA Managing Committee. Prior to this, Abby served on the Managing Committee of STAND France and worked as an intern for the Buchenwald Memorial, the Journal of European and American Intelligence Studies, and conducted research for the US Department of State – Office of the Historian. This summer, Abby conducted research on memorialization and reconciliation in Cambodia as a Junior Research Fellow with the Center for Khmer Studies.

Sudan

Protests continue in Sudan after a power-sharing deal with the Transitional Military Council (TMC) signed on July 17. The power-sharing agreement is expected to be formalized with a constitutional agreement between opposition and military leaders to begin a three-year transitional process to civilian rule. Protesters remain concerned that this agreement will benefit politicians and military leaders without addressing their demands.

Armed groups based out of Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile signed on to the agreement after previously refusing due to ongoing conflicts in their regions. In Addis Ababa talks, they reconciled with the rest of the opposition over an agreement to address the causes of conflict and establish a peace accord. 

The United States decided not to sanction Sudan over last month’s attacks on protesters, citing concerns that sanctions might damage ongoing peace talks between protest leaders and the TMC. They did, however, back the investigative committee appointed by the public prosecutor looking into the attacks. The senior investigator, Fath al-Rahman Saeed, recently reported a higher death toll than former official estimates. According to the committee, 87 people died and 168 were wounded during the violent breakup of the Khartoum protest site. However, these new figures are still controversial. An opposition representative claims that the death toll is closer to 130 and that the committee was formed to “conceal the truth.” While the committee did charge some officials with crimes against humanity, they did not uncover any incidents of rape despite reports from local medics and protestors clearly stating otherwise. The TMC, meanwhile, arrested at least 16 military officials over a coup attempt on July 11. They claim that the officials were attempting to fully restore the former regime. 

South Sudan

Since the South Sudanese civil war began in 2013, around 400,000 people have been killed. In a July 3 report by the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), new statistics show that nearly 56,000 civilians have been displaced internally, with another 20,000 refugees in neighboring Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The conflict has only intensified since the signing of a peace deal last September: the UN reports 175 cases of rape between September and December 2018, 49 of which involve child victims. Sexual violence remains a major issue as survivors are often ostracized by their families and communities. In the same period, at least 104 people were killed and 187 abducted. Today, a record 7 million people—over 60% of South Sudan’s population—face severe hunger. While largely derivative of the ongoing conflict, late rainfall and continuing economic crisis led to food shortages that further increased hunger levels.

Crackdowns on opposition members have escalated with recent door-to-door searches of homes believed to house suspected members of the Red Card Movement (RCM), a youth movement which organizes peaceful protests. Last May, the South Sudanese Information Minister threatened members of the RCM with deadly consequences if they continued to organize and take part in protests. Meanwhile, South Sudanese president Salva Kiir has encouraged the return of opposition leader Riek Machar. Machar stated that he would be willing to enter peace talks if certain conditions, such as the lifting of his house arrest, are met. 

Near the border with Sudan last week, a UN peacekeeper and six civilians, including one child, were killed during a routine patrol. The identity of the attackers remains unknown. On the border with DRC, the neighboring country’s deadly Ebola outbreak is a growing concern. Despite increased border screenings, infected persons could feasibly cross the border without detection during the disease’s 21-day incubation period. At least one case of Ebola has been reported near the border. South Sudan is highly unprepared to face an Ebola outbreak due to the damage and destruction of many health facilities during the civil war.

Great Lakes of Africa

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Security threats continue to hinder the capacity of Ebola response efforts following the long-awaited global health emergency declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO). Two attacks in the North Kivu region targeted health workers soon after President Tshisekedi announced he would spearhead Ebola response alongside a team of experts. This decision shifts responsibility for managing DRC’s Ebola crisis from health minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga, who has resigned. In his resignation letter, Kalenga criticized the President’s creation of competing chains of command and denounced outside pressure to deploy a second vaccine. 

Eradicating the Ebola virus in the DRC has continuously proven to be not only a medical issue, but a political and social one as well. DRC faces concurrent and interconnected emergency situations. Mass displacement, food insecurity, sexual violence, health epidemics, increased armed group activity, and lingering election questions exacerbate humanitarian needs, with violence as the main driver. According to the UN, at least 350,000 people in the Ituri province and more than 180,000 people in the South Kivu province have been displaced by the surge in intercommunal and armed group violence. The increase in ethnic clashes, especially between Lendu farmers and Hema herders, is also interrupting the return process which had been slowly increasing in 2018 for refugees affected by decades of conflict. 

Middle East

Yemen

On July 15 and 16, representatives of the Saudi-backed government of Yemen and the Houthi rebel group met on a neutral UN ship to negotiate the withdrawal of forces from Hodeidah. This could indicate a de-escalation that the UN hopes will allow for food and humanitarian aid to be brought into Yemen and one set forth by the Stockholm ceasefire deal made last December. Despite the attempt at peace and negotiation, both sides continue fighting. The Saudi-led military coalition sent airstrikes to target five Houthi air defense sites in Yemen’s capital of Sana’a while the Houthis take credit for drone attacks in the King Khalid Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Following the recent partial withdrawal of United Arab Emirates forces from Yemen, which reduced military presence there but did not withdraw all troops, Sudan also declared a withdrawal from the Saudi-led coalition and claims to have already removed forces from three unnamed areas.

For the third year in a row, on July 26 the UN blacklisted the Saudi-UAE coalition, the Houthis, and Yemeni government forces for the killing and injuring of children throughout 2018. Of the 1,689 children killed and injured in Yemen last year, the coalition caused 729, Houthi rebels were responsible for 398, and Yemeni government forces caused 58. These tragic and preventable casualties often resulted from attacks on civilian areas such as schools and hospitals. Despite pressure from the UN to end these atrocities, no change has occurred. 

Recent statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) report that 24.1 million Yemenis are in need of some form of aid and 3.65 million are displaced, over 80% of whom have been displaced for over a year. Yemeni civilians continue to face the brunt of the violence of the five-year war as airstrikes repeatedly target schools, hospitals, and healthcare facilities. Humanitarian aid is obstructed and millions live in near-famine conditions. The humanitarian crisis is only worsening. 

Syria

The Russian-led bombing campaign which began in April continues in the northwestern province of Idlib. Most recently, the Syrian air force conducted an airstrike on a popular village market, killing an estimated 31 people. Both the Russian defense ministry and Syrian state media deny targeting civilians, asserting that their campaign is focused on destroying terrorist strongholds in the region. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) reports that the Russian and Syrian coalition targeted 31 civil defense facilities, 37 medical centers, and 81 schools since the beginning of the campaign. In addition to airstrikes, Russia has deployed ground troops to fight with Syrian troops in the rebel-held region. 

Violence continues to escalate on all sides of the conflict. Najat Rochdi, Senior Humanitarian Advisor to the UN Special Envoy to Syria, reports that nearly 12 million people need humanitarian aid in Syria. Many refugee camps are overcrowded and operating unsustainably. In the Al Hol camp in northwestern Syria, for example, over 11,000 family members of IS fighters, including 29,000 children, are virtually stateless—their home nations refuse to repatriate them for fear of the complications of trying IS fighters in court. 

Southeast Asia

Burma

Recent statistics from Human Rights Watch show that since August 2017, more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape genocide in Burma. Rohingya refugees living in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps are at risk of further injuries and displacement due to impacts from monsoons. Since the beginning of July, 136 natural disaster incidents have affected 18,000 refugees in Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee settlement. Landslides and flooding during the first week of July displaced 6,000 refugees, damaged over 3,500 shelters and facilities, and killed two people. Although aid agencies have improved living conditions, established monsoon preparedness within camps, and strengthened local infrastructure, their efforts have been critically underfunded. The 2019 Joint Response Plan for the humanitarian crisis has only received $301 million out of the $920 million needed to fully assist Rohingya refugees and communities in Bangladesh. 

Violence in Burma continues to surge as new allegations of war crimes arise. In Rakhine state, Burma’s military is engaging in renewed conflict with the Arakan Army. The Arakan Army, an armed insurgency group comprised mostly of ethnic Rakhine people, has been fighting for self-determination and promoting national interests of the Rakhine. UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Yanghee Lee stated that both sides of the conflict may be committing war crimes after multiple reports of deaths during army interrogations. These crimes have flown under the radar because of the Burmese authorities’ internet shutdown in late June. 

Thousands of citizens demonstrated in the streets of Yangon, Burma’s largest city, both in favor of and against proposed amendments to the constitution which would lessen military power. Hundreds of citizens and activists in support of the change gathered at the Sule Pagoda wearing red headbands that read “Amend the 2008 Constitution.” State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi is advocating for amendments despite opposition from military lawmakers. Her party, the National League for Democracy, holds the majority seats in parliament but without the support of fellow lawmakers, the amendments will fall short of the required 75% majority needed to pass. In a separate protest, several thousand citizens rallied against the reform calling for limitations on presidential candidates and preservation of the 2008 Constitution. 

Emerging Crises

Venezuela

Venezuelan refugees are a part of Latin America’s largest forced migration flow in history. The refugee crisis is second worldwide only to that of Syria with over four million Venezuelans fleeing the country to date. There is little to no indication that the crisis will improve anytime soon. Within Venezuela, political and economic crisis has manifested through corruption, another nationwide blackout, food insecurity, and the potential reemergence of the black market. A third round of talks between the Maduro government and a team representing Juan Guaidó was held in Barbados last week. There was slight movement, but still no sign of the concrete agreement needed to move forward.

A week after the U.S. accused a Venezuelan fighter aircraft of “aggressively shadow[ing]” an American jet on July 19, Maduro’s party claims that it is “likely” that U.S. marines will enter soon. U.S. officials have recently attributed a massive corruption scheme to Maduro and his family, business partners, and government colleagues, that stripped away millions of dollars from a program meant to feed Venezuela’s malnourished population. The Trump administration continues to hold contradictory policies. While denouncing humanitarian abuses and corruption, the administration refuses to grant temporary protected status to Venezuelans in the U.S. 

On July 22, 14 Venezuelan states lost electricity in the second widespread blackout since the nationwide failure in March. Experts predict that these widespread blackouts could become the new normal after years of corruption have eroded Venezuelan energy capacity. The blackouts have only exacerbated the hyperinflation that has caused food shortages and lack of medical provisions. Maduro blames the country’s economic failure on U.S. sanctions aimed at removing him from office. While the sanctions, which target corrupt individuals in state-run oil entities, did not instigate the collapse, they give Maduro the opportunity to displace blame from his government onto countries issuing sanctions. 

Mali

The Islamic State in West Africa has established a strong presence in Mali, despite a 2015 peace deal signed between the Malian government and internal separatist forces to quell the country’s internal conflicts. Rates of ethnic and jihadist violence have increased greatly since the beginning of 2019, with the killing of 110 Malian villagers by Islamic extremists in late March a standout example of the violence. In response, the United Kingdom announced on July 22 that it would be deploying 250 troops for a UN peacekeeping mission in early 2020. British concern of the violence in Western Africa and the greater Sahel region is also seen through the formation a Joint Sahel Task Group in London, which aims to address areas that have been hard-hit by al Qaeda and Islamic State-linked attacks. 

On July 16, the US State and Treasury Departments announced that they would be blacklisting two individuals for allegedly leading al-Qaeda’s Malian branch. The move serves to counter the growth of Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, the official al-Qaeda branch in Mali designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization in September 2018. French efforts to reduce violence in the Sahel can be seen through Operation Barkhane, a cross-border counter-terrorism effort headed by France and five West African nations. On July 19, an aircraft organized with Operation Barkhane killed 9 alleged terrorists on the Mali-Niger border, the most recent action in a string of Barkhane force activity within the past month, including the 20 alleged terrorists killed in early June and 18 more in late June. 

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Alison Rogers is a junior International Studies and Journalism student at Baylor University, and the STAND Advocacy Lead for Texas. She is also an Enough Project Student Upstander. Alison contributed the Sudan portion of this update.

Abby Edwards is a junior in the Dual BA program between Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris and serves on the STAND USA Managing Committee. Prior to this, Abby served on the Managing Committee of STAND France and worked as an intern for the Buchenwald Memorial, the Journal of European and American Intelligence Studies, and conducted research for the US Department of State – Office of the Historian. This summer, Abby will be conducting research on post-conflict education in Cambodia as a Junior Research Fellow with the Center for Khmer Studies. Abby contributed the South Sudan and Syria portions of this update.

Megan Smith is a rising senior at the University of Southern California, where she will be working to reestablish a STAND chapter, and is an incoming member of STAND’s Managing Committee co-leading education and outreach. Previously, she has served on the Policy Task Force of STAND France during her junior year and as California State Advocacy Lead during her sophomore year. Outside of STAND, she interned at the nonprofits DigDeep (Los Angeles) and HAMAP-Humanitaire (Paris) and currently works at Dexis Consulting Group (DC). Megan contributed the DRC and Venezuela portions of this update.

Grace Harris is an incoming junior at Tampa Preparatory School in Florida, where she serves as the president of her STAND chapter. She also serves on STAND national’s Sudan and Yemen Action Committees, and will be STAND’s State Advocacy Lead for Florida in the 2019-2020 academic year. Grace contributed the Yemen portion of this update.

Claire Sarnowski is a STAND Managing Committee member and a rising sophomore at Lakeridge High School in Oregon. In 2019, Claire introduced legislation to make Holocaust and genocide education mandatory in Oregon schools. Over the 2019-2020 academic year, Claire will be working to boost STAND’s grassroots fundraising efforts and work with communities to launch their own genocide education initiatives. Claire contributed the Burma portion of this update. 

Caroline Mendoza is a STAND Managing Committee member and an incoming senior at Cerritos High School in California. She served as STAND’s 2018-2019 West Region Field Organizer, and on STAND’s Burma and Yemen Action Committees. In her free time, Caroline participates in Model United Nations, marching band, and Girl Scouts, and pursues Holocaust and genocide education. Caroline contributed the Mali portion of this update.