As we mentioned yesterday, Foreign Policy magazine’s The Cable blog reported divisions in the Obama administration over Sudan policy decisions. At a time of escalating violence in Darfur and the potential for all-out war between Northern and Southern Sudan, STAND activists are organizing in their communities to convey the urgency of the situation to administration officials.

Facebook events have already developed for Kentucky, North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia, Eastern and Western Massachusetts, Boston, Washington, DC, and New York vigils–further events are developing in South Carolina, Chicago, Minneapolis, and the San Francisco area. It is crucial that Sudan activists demonstrate the widespread public support for a holistic, comprehensive policy on Sudan. The situation has never been more urgent.

Join Sudan activists on Facebook, Twitter, and in your communities to urge President Obama to demonstrate leadership on Sudan.

Contact a STAND Outreach Coordinator for more information about organizing in your community this week.

A recent report by Foreign Policy magazine’s Josh Rogin suggests that the Obama administration is divided over the implementation strategy for the administration’s Sudan policy, which was released to last October. The administration–in particular, President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, retired Maj. Gen. Scott Gration–has received much criticism from the Sudan advocacy community for its unwillingness to leverage diplomatic and economic pressure against the Sudanese regime.

The schism reported by Mr. Rogin will endanger the effectiveness of President Obama’s Sudan policy. This is indeed a problematic prospect, given recent reports of escalating violence in Darfur, a worsening humanitarian situation in the region, and the various political risk factors associated with the upcoming referendum on Southern Sudanese independence. According to Foreign Policy, the policy divide manifested itself during a principals-level meeting on Sudan last week. Gen. Gration and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, clashed over the special envoy’s incentive-based Sudan policy recommendations: 

The news comes in the wake of a contentious principals-level meeting at the White House last week, in which Gration clashed openly with U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice over the direction of Sudan policy.

At the meeting, Rice was said to be "furious" when Gration proposed a plan that makes the January referendum a priority, deemphasizes the ongoing crisis in Darfur, and is devoid of any additional pressures on the government in Khartoum.

According to multiple sources briefed on the meeting, Gration’s plan was endorsed by almost all the other participants, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and will now go the president for his approval. Rice was invited to provide a written dissent. Vice President Joseph Biden did not attend.

STAND has repeatedly emphasized the importance of the upcoming referendum to the Obama administration’s Sudan policy. However, it is crucial that the administration recognize the potential for conflict in both Darfur and Southern Sudan, and act to prevent such conflict from occurring. The administration must leverage the pressures and incentives mentioned in last fall’s Sudan policy. Sudan is teetering on the brink of all-out war; clear international leadership from President Obama and Vice President Biden is needed to ensure that such a war does not occur.

Stay tuned for further updates on opportunities for you to ring the alarm on the administration’s stagnating Sudan policy.

Big news for the anti-genocide movement!

Yesterday afternoon, Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced a resolution calling for the development of an interagency genocide prevention strategy. The resolution is the result of extensive work by the anti-genocide community to develop a bipartisan consensus around genocide and mass atrocities prevention. Students have played an integral role in this process.

This resolution, based in the recommendations of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, is an important first step in the development of a coordinated U.S. government strategy to prevent and end genocide and mass atrocities. As the Genocide Intervention Network recently wrote on Facebook, this resolution will facilitate "long-term structural change" in the U.S. government’s approach to these issues.

Read the full text of the resolution here. 

The Enough Project’s John Prendergast, and Sasha Lezhnev, of the Grassroots Reconciliation Group, have published an op-ed on CNN’s website lauding Congress’ recent progress on conflict minerals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Prendergast and Lezhnev are optimistic about the impact of the conflict minerals legislation on the conflict resolution process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo:

By requiring that publicly listed manufacturers who use these minerals conduct independent audits of their supply chains, this legislation will help curb the conflict minerals trade.

Courageous members of Congress from both parties fought hard together with a coalition of faith-based organizations, women’s rights advocates and student groups for the past two years to enact this law, standing up for what is right and bravely battling against special-interest lobbyists.

Meanwhile, a debate over the conflict minerals legislation is taking place across the human rights and Congo-interest blogospheres. Andrew Sullivan, of the Daily Dish, aggregates the most recent posts here. Responding to the critiques of bloggers like Laura Seay, at Texas in Africa, Jason Stearns, at Congo Siasa, expresses his confidence in the legislation, as a preliminary step towards commercial accountability in the Congo:

Yes, I wish we could have greater engagement in strengthening the Congolese judiciary and police. I wish there could be meaningful land reform and that disputes over farming rights could be settled by expert mediators (UN Habitat is beginning to do this). I wish we could have transparent democratic institutions throughout the country. But none of those issues stand necessarily in contradiction with due diligence in the minerals trade. I can’t tell you how often I have been in meetings with officials at the State Department, insisting that they help in security sector reform and in paying attention to the return of Congolese Tutsi refugees. Nothing much came of that. Now that we have a chance to help promote meaningful reform in the minerals trade, I think we should seize the opportunity.

Read Stearns’ summary of the legislation here. 

Last week, STAND hosted over sixty chapter leaders from around the country at STAND Camp 2010. Over four days at a retreat center in Maryland, students heard from John Prendergast, Omekongo Dibinga, Carl Wilkens, and many other anti-genocide activists and policy specialists. Students participated in community organizing and advocacy training sessions from STAND partners and alumni at the New Organizing Institute, USAID, and Organizing for America. After a fulfilling (and exhausting) weekend of campaign strategizing, policy debates, and movement building, STAND chapter leaders took to the Hill to lobby their elected officials on Sudan, Burma, and genocide prevention.

Students met with 16 Senators and one Representative on Monday. They urged their Senators to take action on Sudan by pressing for a greater U.S. role in the Darfur peace process, the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and the fulfillment of the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir. Students urged their Senators to sign Senators Feinstein and Gregg’s recent Dear Colleague letter supporting a UN commission of inquiry into crimes in Burma.

This week’s STAND Lobby Day demonstrated the power of political will to effect change in U.S. government institutions. The Senators and Representatives responded to student advocacy–32 Senators, many of whom met with STAND students on Monday, became signatories of Senators Feinstein and Gregg’s Dear Colleague letter. Senators and Representatives engaged STAND chapter leaders on critical legislative and policy issues, as in STAND Outreach Coordinator Mac Hamilton’s conversation about the commission of inquiry with Sen. John Kerry’s foreign policy team.

These next several months will be critical moments for the movement to prevent and end genocide. We need to continue to pressure our elected officials to take an active role in supporting genocide prevention and civilian protection worldwide. Continue to lobby your elected officials on these critical issues–your voice can tip the scale.

In a decision today, the International Criminal Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber I issued a second arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. The arrest warrant adds three counts of genocide to the previous warrant’s charges for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

In March 2009, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for President Bashir on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, the first such warrant for a sitting head of state. Though the initial warrant decision rejected the Prosecutor’s genocide charges, the ICC’s Appeals Chamber reversed the Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision and sent the case back to the Pre-Trial Chamber for review. Upon reconsideration and use of the Appeals Chamber’s mandated standard of proof, the Pre-Trial Chamber has determined that,

there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Al Bashir acted with specific intent to destroy in part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups.

President Bashir remains at-large. The genocide charge is one among many steps required to bring the Sudanese president to justice for his role in the crimes against Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups in Darfur. The United States government must continue to support the ICC’s case in Sudan, and work with the United Nations Security Council to ensure the fulfillment of all outstanding arrest warrants in the case of Darfur.. 

However, the United States government must also work with the international community to ensure that the Sudanese government does not use the ICC’s most recent arrest warrant as an excuse for renewed conflict in Sudan. We cannot permit a similar humanitarian catastrophe to that which occurred in March 2009, when the Sudanese government expelled several aid agencies from Darfur. The United States government must be prepared to leverage pressure against the Sudanese regime to ensure that such a crisis does not occur.

Take Action Now

Click here to urge the U.S. State Department to take decisive action to prevent an exacerbated humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

Tweet about it: The ICC issues a 2nd arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir – for crimes of #genocide http://ow.ly/2aaO0 #Sudan @statedept & @whitehouse

Facebook: Post a link to the ICC’s press release on your Facebook page.

Email: Send an email to your listserv, chapter, and friends. You can include the quote from the press release or use language from the action alert below:

“there are reasonable grounds to believe [Omar al-Bashir] responsible for three counts of genocide committed against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, that include: genocide by killing, genocide by causing serious bodily or mental harm and genocide by deliberately inflicting on each target group conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction.” 

Update: The State Department has responded to the ICC’s second arrest warrant for President Bashir. In a press briefing yesterday, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said that President Bashir should appear for trial at the Hague:

We continue to support this process. We have, in our previous discussions with Sudanese officials, strongly encouraged Sudan to cooperate fully with the ICC. Scott Gration, who will be leaving for the region later this week, has repeatedly told Sudanese officials that at some point, President Bashir has to present himself to the ICC and be held to account. And he will reiterate that message when he meets with Sudanese officials later this week.

Update II: The Genocide Intervention Network has compiled a helpful summary of the central issues related to the ICC’s arrest warrant. The Save Darfur Coalition has compiled a set of immediate reactions to the ICC’s warrant for President Bashir, as well as responses to the warrant by Sudanese government officials.

In an editorial today, the San Francisco Chronicle applauded Stanford University’s recent approval of a proxy voting guideline that may cause electronics companies to become more transparent about the presence of minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in electronics products. In the editorial, the newspaper recognized Stanford STAND’s campaign as a catalyst for the Board of Trustees’ approval of the proxy voting guideline:

Stanford University has taken the lead, thanks to its engaged and informed students. The university’s board of trustees recently approved a new proxy voting guideline for the university’s investments. The guideline would support any shareholder efforts to make companies account for the supply chain of minerals used in their products.

"It’s a reasonable request that the university can actually commit to with the amount of information that’s actually available about conflict minerals," said Mia Newman, a junior at Stanford and the incoming co-president of student group Students Taking Action Now for Darfur [sic], which raised the conflict minerals issue with the university. "The real power of the statement lies in the fact that no other institution or university has, to our knowledge, made any kind of statement about conflict minerals before."

The editorial also called on electronics companies in the Silicon Valley, many of whom have close ties to the university, to revise their corporate responsibility practices to restrict the impact of company activities on violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo:

Now it’s up to Silicon Valley’s many technology companies to pay attention. The technology industry has been late to engage in politics and larger global issues, but this one is tailor-made for its attention.

Through their buying decisions, Silicon Valley companies could help to curb human rights abuses. Plus, there’s a technological problem to be solved: How can we create transparency in the mineral supply chain? Surely the Silicon Valley brain trust could work to solve this.

Becoming the first university to adjust its investment policy in light of the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Stanford’s Board of Trustees approved a proxy voting guideline that will require the university to vote "yes" on shareholder resolutions requiring companies to disclose the use of minerals from eastern Congo in electronics products. Stanford’s Board of Trustees, which adopted this proxy voting guideline in response to a campus-wide campaign by Stanford STAND, thanked student activists for raising the issue: 

"Stanford students, through diligent research and constructive advocacy, played a key role in bringing this issue to the attention of both the university’s Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility and Licensing, and to the board’s Special Committee on Investment Responsibility," [Board of Trustees chair Leslie Hume] said.

In the chapter’s press release, incoming Stanford STAND co-president Mia Newman called on anti-genocide activists across the country to mobilize around conflict minerals in the Congo:

“We call on the students, faculty and alumni of other academic institutions to hold accountable companies in which their schools invest for unknowingly funding the ongoing atrocities perpetrated by Congolese armed groups. We hope that the story behind Stanford’s unprecedented action can serve as a model for similar efforts elsewhere."

The New York Times recently reported on Stanford STAND’s efforts to change its university’s investment strategies regarding electronics companies, which may use minerals extracted by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in various electronics products. Stanford’s progress in this matter is particularly significant, as much of Stanford’s research and funding stems from Silicon Valley technology companies. If Stanford’s Board of Directors approves the guidelines, it will be the first university to revise its proxy voting guidelines in order to account for the potential humanitarian impact of its investments on conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Times article featured a quote from Nina McMurry, STAND’s former National Advocacy Coordinator and an active member of Stanford’s STAND chapter:

“This is a huge humanitarian crisis, and if Stanford can have an impact at all, we should try to,” said Nina McMurry, a senior and a member of Stand, a student organization that raised the conflict minerals issue with the university.

STAND National and the Genocide Intervention Network continue to support the efforts of student activists around the country, particularly on such a crucial issue as the impact of conflict minerals on conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.