The opposition party in exile has condemned the decision by President Kagame to seek a third term in office. The party warns that pressure is building in Rwanda under the weight of Kagame’s autocracy and that the country could explode in a catastrophe worse than the 1994 genocide.

The regime has killed over 140 students, teachers and farmers since last November. This is part of a crackdown on anti-government protests by farmers who are demanding to stop the implementation of the Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan, which will displace people from their ancestral land.

Join the Call for a Feminist UN Secretary-General in 2016! The is launching the call below and would like to invite widespread participation. Please share widely with your networks.

Sudan should stop the brutal suppression of protest and hold to account the security forces responsible for killing, injuring, and torturing protesters throughout the country.

The war for Haiti is on. After six years of failed reconstruction following the earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of people and laid to waste much of the country, the powerful local and international forces that have frustrated national rebuilding now also want to sabotage Haiti’s politics. The people say they will not accept and are appealing for international solidarity.

Fatal Extraction is an international collaboration combining corporate data and extensive field reporting to reveal deaths, injuries and community conflicts linked to Australian mining companies across Africa. Australia has more mining companies in Africa than other mining giants such as Canada and China.

Panel discussion: National Mechanisms for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention
Coordinated National Strategies for Confronting Contemporary Genocide

DETAILS

New York City Bar Association
42 West 44th Street New York, NY, 10036
Wednesday, February 3, 2016 6:00pm-8:00pm

SYNOPSIS

On Wednesday, February 3, 2016, the New York City Bar Association (NYCBA), in partnership with the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR), will host a panel discussion entitled, “National Mechanisms for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention: Coordinated National Strategies for Confronting Contemporary Genocide”.

The event will take place at the NYC Bar and will focus on the composition, mandate, and activities of National Mechanisms, with a particular focus on the challenges and opportunities that accompany their work. This discussion will explore the tools and apparatuses available to these National Mechanisms and how they are employed in developing and implementing a unified national policy for genocide and mass atrocity prevention.

PANEL

• Ambassador Tuvako N. Manongi, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Mission of the United Republic of Tanzania to the United Nations
• Ambassador Jorge Montaño, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Mission of the United Republic of México to the United Nations
• Ambassador Federico Gonzalez, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Mission of the United Republic of Paraguay to the United Nations
• Moderator Owen Pell, Partner at White and Case LLP and Member of the Auschwitz Institute’s Board of Directors

SPONSORS

African Affairs Committee - Elizabeth Barad and Jason Spears, Co-chairs

CO-SPONSORS

International Human Rights Committee - Anil Kalhan, Chair UN Committee - Michael D. Cooper, Chair
Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice - Alexander Papachristou, Executive Director

RSVP

AIPR’s New York Programs Officer Rob Scharf at [email][email protected] or
Elizabeth Barad at [email][email protected]

OTHER NYC EVENTS

1. MEETING OF NYC BAR’S COMMITTEE ON AFRICAN AFFAIRS

To be held at the headquarters of the Bar at 42 West 44th Street.

Monday, February 1 at 6:30 P.M.

PROFESSOR JENNIFER TRAHAN will give a presentation on her recent trip to Rwanda.

Jennifer, an Associate Clinical Professor of Global Affairs at N.Y.U., recently took her students to Rwanda where she met with, among others, the Minister of Justice, President of the Supreme Court and the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide where she received a PowerPoint presentation of their list of génocidaires.

Jennifer has served as counsel and of counsel to the International Justice Program of Human Rights Watch; served as Iraq Prosecutions Consultant to the International Center of Transitional Justice; and worked on cases before the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. She is the author of “Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: A Digest of the Case Law of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda”, and “Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: A Topical Digest of the Case Law of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.” She is also the author of scores of law review articles, including about the Iraqi High Tribunal, the crimes in Darfur, and the International Criminal Court’s Crime of Aggression.

2. MEETING OF NYC BAR’S COMMITTEE ON AFRICAN AFFAIRS

To be held at the headquarters of the Bar at 42 West 44th Street.

Monday, March 7 at 6:30 P.M.

PROFESSOR MIKE POSNER will give a presentation on the confluence of business and human rights. He launched the first-ever center on business and human rights at a business school. He is a professor of Business and Society at NYU Stern. Prior to joining NYU Stern, Posner served from 2009 to 2013 in the Obama Administration as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the State Department. From 1978 to 2009, he led Human Rights First, a New York-based human rights advocacy organization.

Posner played a major role in shaping U.S. policy from inside and outside of government on issues ranging from refugee and asylum law and policy, national security and human rights, Internet freedom, and business and human rights. Throughout his career, he has been active in several leading organizations in the field of business and human rights, including the Fair Labor Association, the Global Network Initiative, and the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.

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I knew Sam before Independence. I worked with him on land, energy and forestry issues. My abiding memory of him is his open, radical, good natured approach to life. He was a true geographer, driven by the empirical evidence that landscape meant lifescape and that lifescape was built by bias in race, class and gender.

Not my judgement, but one of his doctoral examiners left the room after questioning Sam about his doctoral thesis, obviously on land in Zimbabwe. “It was like asking Bismark about his foreign policy” was the judgement. What a loss felt around the world!

Phil O’Keefe. Newcastle, UK.

The Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) announces the second round of its small research grants competition in memory of Lionel Cliffe, the founder member who died in 2013. It is intended to promote research in the spirit of his work, and is restricted to African scholars and/or activists based in Africa.

Dear Reader,

In the light of the UN climate conference (COP21) taking place in Paris, France, this week we bring you a special issue of Pambazuka News dedicated to the urgent climate crisis.

The collection of articles in this edition is the work of Carbon Trade Watch, working with several specialist individuals and organisations over the course of several months. The articles have recently been published as a booklet that is available at the website.

Pambazuka News Editors are grateful to the individual contributors to the booklet and to CTW for allowing us to reproduce this stimulating and timely collection.

The central line of the articles is an urgent call to all humanity to do everything they can to end the climate crisis gripping the world at this moment. The authors unanimously reject the false neo-liberal, financialized solutions as being of little use for meaningfully addressing the crisis. They propose alternatives that are based on the simple fact that the Earth is finite; human beings must live responsibly or we will destroy ourselves and the rest of life.

What are you prepared to do personally to avoid this catastrophic eventuality?

PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORS

The December 2015 issue of the International Refugee Rights Initiative’s Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter (formerly the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter) is out. Find the full newsletter .

The government-appointed Commission was wound up last month and directed to compile its report by 30 November. The report is expected to be published on 15 December. The Commission faced a lot of huddles deliberately thrown on its way including a campaign mounted by government figures to discredit it.