Today, Julie Flint and I had an op-ed piece in the Washington Post. Though it was headlined “In Darfur, From Genocide to Anarchy,” we would have preferred “Darfur: Simple, It Isn’t.” I’ve included the full text here and invite your comments. Continue reading →

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The exchanges on this blog on the issue of mortality in Darfur have been refreshingly sober. Let me add some further observations, on culpability for famine deaths, what constitutes a “normal” death rate, and on staying objective amidst powerful moral

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Posted on behalf of Timur Goksel. Timur Goksel served first as the official spokesman and then as the senior advisor of UNIFIL between 1979-2003. He now consults on conflict and peacekeeping and teaches the same at American University of Beirut.

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For my fuller analysis of the challenges to the Darfur peace process after the Arusha meeting, see my analysis posted in the CSIS online Africa policy forum. Continue reading →

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How many people have died in Darfur and what is the value of this information? The recent ruling by the British Advertising Standards Authority that Save Darfur was guilty of misrepresenting the figure of 400,000 deaths as "fact" rather than,

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*Posted on behalf of an anonymous contributor.

How one chooses which "mistakes" or precursors to learn from reveals what one believes is necessary to know in order to change the current crisis. Searching for catharsis, too many analysts have chased the most dramatic examples available. The tragedy then becomes truly Hegelian, when the desire to ring the alarm bells and stem violence comes into conflict with a willingness to pay attention to what is actually happening. Continue reading →

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(The following essay is posted on behalf of Selma Scheewe. The author based this essay on her Thesis titled “Sexual Violence and HIV/AIDS in Conflict-ridden Darfur”, at the University of Groningen.) Introduction Sexual violence is a prominent aspect of many

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Last weekend’s meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, of leaders of Darfur’s armed movements marked the re-launch of a serious peace process for Darfur. It’s Darfur’s first AU-UN hybrid operation, this time in the diplomatic sphere, and — given the constraints and

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(Posted on behalf of Paul Kirby) First, how sensible is sending 26,000 troops to ‘peacekeep’ when there is no peace agreement? Is there a serious chance of this inflaming the situation and sucking in UN/AU troops? Or should we suspect

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(posted on behalf of Thomas Homer-Dixon )

What does it mean when we say that one factor is more or less important than another in identifying the causes of social conflict? Thomas Homer-Dixon writes here on causality in complex systems, in response to Alex de Waal’s earlier post Is Climate Change the Culprit for Darfur? and to Declan Butler’s June 28th Nature article Darfur’s climate roots challenged. Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at University College, University of Toronto. [...] Continue reading →

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