Social Science Research Council

The Government of South Sudan (GOSS) has announced that it intends to establish a news agency that will cover areas of the south starved of mainstream media coverage [1]. The idea for establishing the News Agency of South Sudan (NASS) was endorsed at a cabinet meeting chaired by President Salva Kiir at the end of [...]

It is frequently heard that Arabs/Muslims and their media were silent, unmoved or without opinion over Darfur. These suppositions tend to contain a measure of moral equivalence and finger-pointing, suggesting that responding as a Westerner — regardless of the quality, timing or efficacy of response — is the most correct option. In most conceptions, there [...]

I have the feeling this Abu Sharati business is a storm in a teacup. I have no idea for certain whether he was a plant or not, and I suspect few of us who have been following the story do. A quick bit of research reveals he has made around 3 statements in the mainstream [...]

I was truly fascinated by Izzadine Abdul Rasoul’s article “Janjaweeds in US State Department” published in the Sudan Tribune on October 25, 2009.
Mr. Abdul Rasoul is said to be a stringer for the [New York] Times but seems to have a less than convincing command of the English language.
Intrigued by this situation I began [...]

Is the devil making work for idle hands now that the two key publicity drivers for the ‘Darfur cause’ – food in the internally displaced camps and fighting between government and rebel forces – have both passed the worse for quite a while now?
It sure looks that way.
Following hot on the heels of its [...]

The name Hussein Abu Sharati figures frequently in media coverage of the Darfur IDPs, usually as “IDP spokesman.” His name means “chief of chiefs” with reference to the Fur administrative chiefly rank, shartai. But who is Abu Sharati? Amanda Taub of Wronging Rights has done some investigations. Her three-part posting makes salutary reading.

In various conflicts and disputes around the world the U.S. has all ways been careful to distinguish between the people and their government, the people all ways been shown as innocent by standers. For example a recent example would be Iran, where the US right wing media has taken on simplistic slogans such as “you [...]

Sudan needs its version of the anti-Apartheid movement, one that can combine both the anguished moral outcry against mass atrocities, and also a practical political programme to end them once and for all. Like many Sudanese sympathizers of the Save Darfur Campaign I am worried that the campaign will end up making things worse instead [...]

The Save Darfur campaign has been compared in size and impact to the Anti-Apartheid movement. Certainly there are comparisons. But South Africa was fortunate that the Anti-Apartheid movement displayed a level of political maturity that is absent from the leaders of the broader Darfur campaign. The end of Apartheid demanded a grand political compromise by [...]

Just before the summer break, I attended a gathering in a Dutch pub in the Hague, the so-called Café Humanitaire organized by the Dutch NGO Platform PSO and the Disaster Studies Department of Wageningen University. The Café provides a pleasant mix of drinks, familiar faces and a half hour discussion on one of the common [...]