In this week’s issue: Sudan and Chad agreed to end their proxy wars against each other; 2,000 Karen civilians fled after a government attack; Congolese army forces are suspected of attacking Kakenge village in South Kivu
Weekly News Brief, February 5 to 12, 2010, compiled by Joshua Kennedy at GI-Net and the STAND E-team. To subscribe to our education newsletters, email education@standnow.org.
A weekly update of the most important updates on the ground in our conflicts of concern. This week: potential peace talks for Darfur in Uganda, child labor in Burma, "catastrophic" interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and more….
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.
The violence committed against Congolese and Southern Sudanese civilians by the Lord’s Resistance Army is worse than previously thought. Last Friday, GI-NET cited conservative reports of at least 620 people killed by the LRA since September. Reports issued this week indicate that over 1120 civilians have been killed, nearly doubling our original estimate.
In this week’s issue: Sudanese government bombs reported over north Darfur, Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement celebrates its fourth birthday, the Burmese junta continues "scorched earth" tactics in the east, and a third round of peace talks are off to a shaky start in DR Congo.
Questions? Contact STAND’s Education Team at education@standnow.org or leave a comment!
One of Africa’s longest running conflicts took a turn for the worse this week. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that has been fighting the Ugandan government in an attempt to establish a theocratic state based on the 10 commandments, abducted 50 school children and killed 3 people along the Congo-Sudan border this week. South Sudan’s military also said that LRA rebels attacked one of its units, killing one soldier and setting a child on fire along the remote Sudanese border with the DR Congo.
This week, all eyes were focused on the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, as Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, in an historic move, requested an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
However, the ICC has seen other dramatic developments in recent weeks that, while slightly below the media’s radar right now, could have serious implications for the Court’s future and for civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
