Rwanda Dissertation
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
I was listed as an 'expert' witness on the trial of Beatrice Munyenyezi, a Rwandan woman living in New Hampshire. Her trial, like that of Lazar Kabagoya in Kansas, resulted in a hung jury. Jason McLure wrote the following article, and it's an excellent read for anyone keen to understand genocide trials in American courts. During her rape by a militiaman, the nun screamed and spit at the face of the woman they called "Commander Beatrice," the witness recounted from the stand. "If you don't want to be like other women, let me take you somewhere else," the militiawoman responded.
Democracy Watch - Rwanda
Lawrence Semel summarizes in a nutshell the eschatology of the New Testament that Geerhardus Vos wants to help us understand in the first sentence of his excellent article "Geerhardus Vos and Eschatology": "Ephesians 1:3: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." Geerhardus' exotic background as the son of a German (Bentheim ostfriesland) pastor who had studied in Kampen (descendent of French Huguenote family that immigrated/fled to the Netherlands after the revocation of the Edit de Nantes in 1685 ) in the north of the Netherlands. He immigrated to Grand Rapids in 1881 when he was 19.
::Colored Opinions::
Congo Siasa
The Lord Resistance Army (LRA) and its leader Joseph Kony became this month a symbol of mass mobilisation and good will. The campaign Kony2012 has raised awareness on the issue in an unprecedented way. Behind its creative but superficial tone, the video offered a platform of expression for civil society activists and scholars, from the region and elsewhere to react to the video and give a more accurate account of a situation that has been largely ignored for the past 25 years. The advocacy campaign and more importantly the African Union and the United Nations recent joint declaration to launch a regional (military) strategy poses some challenges to peace prospects and to the protection of civilians in the region. In this article we argue that any strategy to address the LRA conflict should focus on civilian protection , build on the work done by civil society actors in the region and learn from the past , particularly successful DDR programmes.
Texas in Africa
In post-conflict Ituri, land disputes over boundaries or rights of occupation and use are pervasive. Since May 2009, UN Habitat (which has an office in Bunia) has identified more than 1,000 land disputes in Ituri’s Djugu and Mahagi territories alone. Some conflicts began decades ago during the colonial era, while others are rooted in annexations, displacements and occupations during the late Mobutu-era and the wars in Ituri (1996-2007). While local efforts and the work of UN Habitat have succeeded in resolving some disputes, hundreds of conflicts remain unresolved, in large part due to the negligence of the State apparatus at the district, provincial, and national levels.