Our weekly round-up of must-read stories you might have missed. In focus this week: Denis Mukwege, renown gynaecologist in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Enough Project selected as a winner of the 2013 Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention competition, and Eric Reeves on bombings in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan.
Denis Mukwege: The rape surgeon of DR Congo – February 19, 2013
Denis Mukwege is a gynaecologist working in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He and his colleagues have treated about 30,000 rape victims, developing great expertise in the treatment of serious sexual injuries. His story includes disturbing accounts of rape as a weapon of war. When war broke out, 35 patients in my hospital in Lemera in eastern DR Congo were killed in their beds. I fled to Bukavu, 100km (60 miles) to the north, and started a hospital made from tents. I built a maternity ward with an operating theatre. In 1998, everything was destroyed again. So, I started all over again in 1999. It was that year that our first rape victim was brought into the hospital. After being raped, bullets had been fired into her genitals and thighs. I thought that was a barbaric act of war, but the real shock came three months later. Forty-five women came to us with the same story, they were all saying: “People came into my village and raped me, tortured me.”…
Stopping Enablers of Mass Atrocities: Enough’s Winning Proposal for the Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention – February 19, 2013
Humanity United and USAID announced last week that the Enough Project has been selected as a winner of the 2013 Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention competition. Our submission, Combining Front-line Research with Cutting-Edge Technology to Identify and Stop Enablers of Mass Atrocities, won in the “Enablers” category. The challenge for individuals and organizations in this category was to develop technologies that better identify, spotlight, and deter intentional or unintentional third-party enablers of atrocities. The idea for the Tech Challenge evolved from President Obama’s pledge to support innovative solutions to prevent mass atrocities in his 2012 Genocide Prevention Initiative. The competition was hosted by InnoCentive, a leading global open innovation company seeking to provide solutions to pressing business, social, policy, scientific, and technical problems by framing them as “challenge problems” for the world’s smartest people to solve…
Eric Reeves: “Stop the Planes”—Now! – February 23, 2013
The plea could hardly be simpler, or more urgent: “Just stop the planes.” This cry for help came from “Khadija,” a woman interviewed by Amnesty International (see below) while standing in front of the bombed remains of her home in a small village in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan. “Just stop the planes.” And yet more than twenty months after Khartoum launched its military assault on the Nuba people of South Kordofan, the bombing continues relentlessly. The same is true in neighboring Blue Nile State. And yet neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch nor the International Crisis Group nor any other major organization analyzing and reporting on the situation in South Kordofan has proposed actions or policies that will oblige the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime in Khartoum to “stop the planes.” In its latest analysis (February 14, 2013), besides offering the obvious urgings, ICG pleads for a comprehensive response to greater Sudan’s interlocking crises. But its specific recommendation to non-Sudanese parties amounts to a referral to incompetence and ensures inaction…
