Sudan Course 2005
The second Rift Valley Institute Sudan Course was held in July 2005 in Rumbek (then the administrative centre of the new government of South Sudan). The course took place at Rumbek Senior Secondary School, the first international event to be held there since before the civil war. The teaching staff on the 2005 course consisted […]
South Sudan’s Experience at Peace Making
I was in Juba two weeks ago participating in the Rift Valley Institute’s annual series of lectures at Juba University, whose theme this year was historic peace negotiations. Three sets of negotiations were examined: the 1972 negotiations thatled to the Addis Ababa Agreement, the 1999 Wunlit people-to-people peaceconference, and the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The […]
Sudan Course 2004
The first RVI Sudan Course was held in April 2004 in Kenya at a game ranch on the Athi Plains, outside Nairobi. Participants were housed in a field centre on the ranch and a tented safari camp nearby. Twenty-five students from sixteen organizations and a dozen nationalities attended. There were ten academic staff and half-a-dozen […]
Letter from Isoke No 10: Pregnant students and guava thieves
Liz Hodgkin, RVI Fellow and former Amnesty International Sudan researcher, is teaching at St Augustine’s School in Isoke village, Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan. This is her tenth letter from Isoke. Other letters: No 1 July 2012, No 2 October 2012, No 3 November 2012, No 4 December 2012, No 5 March 2013, No 6 April 2013, No 7 May 2013, No 8 June […]
Sudan and South Sudan Course 2012
The ninth course covering Sudan—and the first to cover the new nation of South Sudan—was held in Athi River, Kenya from 26 May to 1 June. The course was under the direction of two of the co-editors of recently-published The Sudan Handbook (2012): Justin Willis, of the University of Durham, and Jok Madut Jok, of Loyola Marymount College, […]
Letter from Isoke No 11: Ghost teachers, scorpions, broken chairs
Liz Hodgkin, RVI Fellow and former Amnesty International Sudan researcher, is teaching at St Augustine’s School in Isoke village, Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan. This is her eleventh letter from Isoke. Other letters: No 1 July 2012, No 2 October 2012, No 3 November 2012, No 4 December 2012, No 5 March 2013, No 6 April 2013, No 7 May 2013, No 8 June […]
Letter from Kapoeta: Fewer guns, more waterpoints
Philip Winter is an RVI Fellow and Central and Eastern Africa specialist. His account of the Congolese peace process A Sacred Cause was published in English in 2012 and in French in 2015 (Une Cause Sacrée, available from L’Harmattan in Paris). Last month I drove some 1,200km around the country of the Toposa and the Nyangatom, […]
As gold fuels Darfur conflict, activists push for more Sudan sanctions
… One new group of people has flocked to Darfur in recent years: gold miners. From all over Africa, they have left their families, homes and countries, heading to a largely forgotten war zone to dig for gold. Activists with interest in Sudan are now suggesting the U.N. and the U.S. level new, acutely targeted […]
Bashir, the ICC and jirtig
RVI Fellow Magdi el-Gizouli on the return of President Omer el-Bashir from South Africa President Bashir’s return to Khartoum after the drama of his ‘missed’ arrest in Johannesburg was to say the least anticlimactic. The microphone set up for him to address the ‘spontaneous’ crowd which gathered at the airport to greet him home did […]
Letter from Isoke No 12: Church, government, school fees, rebels, full moon and stars
Liz Hodgkin, RVI Fellow and former Amnesty International Sudan researcher, taught from 2012 to 2014 at St Augustine’s School in Isoke village, Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan. For her earlier letters from Isoke see the following: No 1 July 2012, No 2 October 2012, No 3 November 2012, No 4 December 2012, No 5 March 2013, No 6 April 2013, No 7 May […]