With the G-20 summit in our backyard last week, we, members of the University of Pittsburgh’s STAND chapter, knew that we had a unique opportunity to deliver our message to the world’s most powerful leaders. This message was that we, as members of developed economies, hold links to all genocides that make us complicit in their implementation and maintenance. These links also provide us with crucial opportunities to debilitate these genocidal regimes
For the Eastern Congolese, peace is clearly not anywhere around the corner. What they might have recently viewed as a liberation offensive on the FDLR by the UN and Congolese military has brought them more grief than they were beginning to settle for. The offensive, code named Operation Kimia II and launched in January 2009, is currently responsible for the displacement and fleeing of over 800,000 civilians, from areas in both the South and North Kivu.
DR Congo is a large country, which also happens to centrally located on the African continent. As such, its ongoing conflict has come to involve and affect as many as eight countries, both neighboring and far away. DR Congo borders Congo Brazaville, Central African Republic, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia and Angola. This blog looks at how some of these countries have tried to manipulate Congo’s conflict and how others have been pulled in by virtue of being African.
Yesterday’s Washington Post[1] says so (quotes below).
More than 1,000 leaders of the worldwide movement to end genocide will convene in Washington, D.C. on November 6-9th for Pledge2Protect, and you want to be there! The discount expires in 2 days! Don’t forget to register before 11:59pm on Wednesday, Sept. 30 for our early bird rate. See you there!
Last Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released the framework for the US government’s new policy towards the Burmese regime. The policies of past US governments have centered on the imposition of a strict sanctions regime and diplomatic isolation of the Burmese military junta.
