Our weekly round-up of must-read stories you might have missed: Activists want Sudan leader arrested; Is the Season for Climate Change Denial Finally Over?; South Sudan: Army Making Ethnic Conflict Worse.
Activists want Sudan leader arrested – July 15, 2013
Civil rights activists and human rights lawyers on Monday demanded that Nigeria arrest Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir and deliver him to the International Criminal Court to stand trial for crimes in Darfur. President Goodluck Jonathan was urged “to support the demand by the international community for justice for the victims of genocide and war crimes,” by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project. Human rights lawyers are going to court to argue for an order to force the arrest, said Chino Obiagwu of Nigeria’s Legal Defence and Assistance Project. Human Rights Watch was contacting diplomats to add to the pressure. They are urging Nigeria’s international partners “to signal that Nigeria should show leadership and not host ICC fugitive Bashir,” said Elise Keppler of the New York-based organisation’s International Justice Program…
Is the Season for Climate Change Denial Finally Over? – July 18, 2013
Three years after the National Academy of Sciences, a grouping of our country’s top scientists, declared “Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks,” it’s hard to believe that there are still Senators who call climate change a “hoax.” One year after a prominent climate skeptic, Berkeley Professor Richard Muller, took an independent look at all the data and wrote an op-ed in the New York Times declaring that global warming is real, and that “Humans are almost entirely the cause,” it is surprising to see editorial boards that still deny there is anything to worry about. Six months after the United States experienced the hottest year in our history and the arctic ice pack shrunk to the smallest extent ever recorded, it confounds logic that some captains of the fossil fuel industry still insist that there is no evidence that climatic changes are occurring due to the use of their products…
South Sudan: Army Making Ethnic Conflict Worse – July 19, 2013
South Sudan has committed serious abuses against civilians in its anti-insurgency campaign in Jonglei state, Human Rights Watch said today. Soldiers’ abuses and conflict with rebels have caused thousands of civilians to flee, making them especially vulnerable to recent large-scale attacks in an ethnic conflict in the same region. At the same time, the army, massed in largely empty towns, has failed to protect civilians from these attacks. President Salva Kiir should publicly condemn the attacks and ensure that authorities immediately investigate and identify all those responsible, including government officials. He should also publicly order the military to investigate and hold to account any abusive soldiers. “Yet again the government of South Sudan has utterly failed to stop armed Lou Nuer youth from moving into ethnic Murle areas, despite advance warnings that they were mobilizing,”…
