What peace?

War is very much on in Eastern Congo. Here’s the latest from the BBC.

Aid and advocacy groups had been warning that things were getting out of hand. Refugees International says the U.N. Security Council should give the U.N. peacekeeping force there more support. MONUC is apparently under strain; according to Reuters its new commander has resigned after only seven weeks on the job.

Election A to Z

For a fresh and irreverent take on the presidential election check out this week’s edition of  Patrick Cox’s language podcast The World in Words.

Intended Consequences

That’s the title of photographer Jonathan Torgovnik’s new audio slideshow over at MediaStorm.  It’s about the women who were raped during the Rwandan genocide and the children who resulted from those rapes.  I interviewed Torgovnik earlier this year for my own story about this issue.  He’s passionate and committed and has started an organization called Foundation Rwanda to help fund the educations of these kids.  I keep getting the “buffering video” message so will have to watch later but if it’s up to the usual MediaStorm standards it will be masterful, powerful work.

No Peace in Eastern Congo

Good followup piece by Jeffrey Gettleman in the NYT today on sexual violence in eastern Congo. He reports on some hopeful developments but the overall picture still very bleak.

And Marco Werman interviewed Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch from Goma on Thursday about the return to war in North Kivu. 

And HRW,  MSF, and Enough! have all weighed in on the situation in the last few weeks.

Done

All 5 parts of How Wars End are now online. I’ll try to blog some reflections and extras (ie good stuff that didn’t make it into the radio stories) when I get a chance. Let me know what you think.

Appomattox and After

Part 2 of How Wars End is up:

http://www.theworld.org/?q=how_wars_end

WWII, Iraq, and how we think about endings

Here’s the link to the audio for Part 1 of How Wars End.