Social Science Research Council

Speaking in a focus group discussion reported by the National Democratic Institute’s study of the “three areas” of South Kordofan, Abyei and Blue Nile, a Nuba man complained that “The peace is now three years and there is supposed to be tangible things. The government should have expressed its presence, but for us here there [...]

Alex de Waal, Joachim Savelsberg, Alex Hinton, Tony Oberschall, Dan Chirot, and Scott Straus form a remarkably distinguished group of genocide scholars. We have benefited from all of their comments about our book, Darfur and the Crime of Genocide.
Our title reflects a deliberate choice that may not seem obvious to many readers [...]

On substance, much of what Darfur and the Crime of Genocide contains has been available from Joyce Apsel (ed.) Darfur: Genocide before Our Eyes published by the Institute for the Study of Genocide in New York in 2005. The “collective action theory of genocide”, pp. 162 ff, is familiar from Helen Fein and the more [...]

Much of the contemporary analysis of genocides has taken on a legalistic tone inspired by the revival since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s of interest in the United Nations convention on genocide and the work of Raphael Lemkin. John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond’s book on Darfur is a provocative variation on this in that [...]

Starting today, we open a debate on John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond’s Darfur and the Crime of Genocide. Over the coming days, a number of commentators will post reviews and discussions of the book, and the authors will respond. In this posting I open the debate.
John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond have written a book that [...]

Livelihoods, Power and Choice: the Vulnerability of the Northern Rizaygat, Darfur, Sudan, is the latest report on Darfur from the Feinstein International Famine Center.
Livelihoods in Darfur are intimately linked to the conflict, none more so than the livelihoods of the camel herding nomads known as the Northern Rizaygat. Their notoriety as part of the Janjaweed [...]

The Overseas Development Institute’s Humanitarian Policy Group has produced some of the best evidence-based analysis of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, including studies of how displaced people have sustained their (diminished, vulnerable) livelihoods, the trajectories of the nutritional crises in the region, and the complex ways in which pastoral and agricultural livelihoods have been transformed. [...]

“The case for drought preparedness” examines the vulnerability of Darfur’s towns, IDP camps and cities to years of low rainfall or drought in the context of the conflict and displacement. The rapid growth in Darfur’s towns and cities in the last five years places unprecedented concentrations of demands on Darfur’s low and variable water [...]

Brendan Bromwich & Margie Buchanan-Smith

This report by the UN Environment Programme highlight the impact of displacement and rapid urbanisation on the natural resources of Darfur, specifically on water resources and forestry. The work is driven by the recognition that Darfurians are dependent on natural resources for their basic needs and livelihoods.
“Destitution, distortion [...]

In 2000, an interviewer brought me a data form in the Eastern DR Congo reporting that two children had died of fear during an attack. I was so incapable of imagining this, that I had the interviewer take me back to the household where this had been reported. They had three huts all [...]