More than 70 Heads of State will gather this week to attend the 21st Africa Union summit which coincides with a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the continental institution. The summit's theme "Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance" will unfold with a call for Africans to "realize the dream of the founding fathers for a peaceful, prosperous, and united Africa". Despite the backdrop of this celebratory atmosphere, discussions of the many challenges and conflicts taking place in several regions throughout the continent will also be on the agenda.

A coalition of over 120 civil society organizations from African and the Middle East issued a joint statement calling on the A.U. to "use this anniversary not just to mark but to make history by supporting a new, bolder and comprehensive ...

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Editor's Note: This op-ed, written by Retired Army Col. Rick Orth originally appeared on Stars and Stripes. Col. Rick Orth is a senior fellow with the Enough Project. He served as the U.S. defense attache to Rwanda (1996-1998), Uganda (2001-2005), and Ethiopia and Djibouti (2005-2006), as well as the military adviser to the assistant secretary of state for African affairs (2006-2008).

The Congolese military has again been accused of significant human-rights abuses, including mass rape. Recently, the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office released a report concerning abuses by the Congolese Army (FARDC) as it retreated from advancing M23 rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo between Nov. 15 and Dec. 2.

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Editor's Note: Madison Brenchak is a student at Seymour Middle School in Seymour, CT. She is a member of Seymour's Small Steps club, a participant and supporter of the Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools Program. Learn more about the Darfur Dream Team and the Pazocalo social network that connects students at Seymour and 25 other U.S. schools with their Darfuri peers.

Right now, in 2013, it has been ten years since the tragedy occurring in Darfur started. In 2003, the Sudanese government began supporting militia groups called the Janjaweed ("Devil on Horseback" in Arabic) to terrorize villages in Darfur because of their ethnicity and with goals of acquiring land and resources. These actions have been widely recognized as genocide.

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On Monday morning, the M23 rebel group and the Congolese army, or FARDC, clashed in the village of Mutaho, approximately six miles northwest of the provincial capital of Goma. The fighting comes after six months of relative calm between the warring parties following the 12-day occupation of Goma by M23 in November 2012.

The fighting lasted about two hours with small skirmishes continuing thereafter. The United Nations peacekeeping mission MONUSCO said "initial skirmishes escalated to the use of heavy caliber automatic weapons, mortars and rocket launchers. It is reported that FARDC used attack helicopters, in one of their operations," MONUSCO said. FARDC Colonel Hamuli proclaimed that "[w]e're sending reinforcements. We must protect the town of Goma at all costs". FARDC commander Lt. Col. ...

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Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.

Enough Project Fellow Hawa Salih is featured in this story "Escape to Obscurity," about life as a Darfuri refugee who has fled to America.

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Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.

This map from Foreign Policy illustrates the U.S. military's presence in Africa. Clicking on each point on the map yields information on what U.S. troops, equipment, or personnel are at each location and what they're doing in that country.

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Darfur is suffering its worst humanitarian crisis in years. Since the beginning of 2013, over 200,000 people have been displaced by what the government of Sudan dismisses as "inter-communal" violence. Ten years after the first reports of genocide trickled out of Darfur, an eerie echo of the past is sweeping across the region. The government of Sudan would like the world to believe that Darfur is plagued by intractable inter-tribal hatreds that inevitably lead to violent destabilizing conflict.

But in a new report, "Darfur's Gold Rush: State-Sponsored Atrocities 10 Years After the Genocide," Enough Project Senior Advisor Omer Ismail and I challenge that descriptive framework. Our research shows that government-armed Abbala militias' recent power play to displace the Beni Hussein people and ...

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A new report from the Satellite Sentinel Project, or SSP, confirms that Sudan and South Sudan have violated recent peace agreements by positioning troops in what is supposed to be a 12-mile (20-kilometer) demilitarized buffer zone along their contested border. Neither the joint border-verification mechanism established by both countries, nor the United Nations peacekeeping mission tasked with monitoring the demilitarized buffer zone has detected these violations.

In the report, "Broken Agreement: Violations in the Demilitarized Border Zone by Sudan and South Sudan," DigitalGlobe satellite imagery from Heglig and Kiir Adem proves that both governments violated their obligations under the March 2013 treaty in which they agreed to implement September 2012 peace agreements.

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Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.

In "The Child Soldier Who traded His Machete For a Pair of Scissors," Claude Mugisha, a former child soldier, explains how he exchanged his AK-47 to become a barber. Mugisha fought in a local Congolese militia and lived in the bush for 10 years until he attended a U.N.-run rehabilitation and repatriation program. Claude reflects on his experience and says, "People think former child soldiers are somehow damaged and deranged and often avoid us. It's ...

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The conflict-free movement is gaining momentum worldwide, with the newest development happening in Canada. In March 2013, New Democrat Foreign Affairs Critic Paul Dewar introduced a comprehensive conflict-free mineral bill to the Canadian Parliament. Bill C-486 requires companies to regularly report how they obtain their supply of minerals such as gold, tin, tungsten, and tantalum from Central Africa, particularly Congo.

"The conflict minerals that end up in many products like cell phones and game consoles are responsible for funding and fuelling a war that has killed more than 5 million people in the Congo," Dewar stated after introducing the bill. "I was in the Congo four years ago at Easter. I know that the Congo seems as far away from Canada as you can be, but we have the power here ...

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