George Clooney Speaks Out on Famine in South Sudan
(PRWEB) March 16, 2017 -- George Clooney is speaking out about the famine in South Sudan, calling it a “government-made” crisis.
Clooney, writing in a Washington Post op-ed with John Prendergast, his co-founder of the investigative initiative The Sentry, urges leaders to address the famine, target the root causes of the crisis in South Sudan, and make those responsible and profiting from human suffering in that country pay for their crimes.
Key excerpts:
- “Official, U.N.-declared famines are a rare phenomenon. The last one worldwide was six years ago, in Somalia. Famines are declared officially when people have already begun to starve to death. It is the diplomatic equivalent of a seven-alarm fire. That is where the youngest country in the world, South Sudan, finds itself today, as 100,000 face immediate starvation and another 1 million are on its brink.”
- “The most immediate cause lies in the tactics used by the South Sudan government and its principal rebel opponent in fighting the current civil war. Government and rebel forces attack civilian targets much more frequently than they attack each other. They target the means of survival of civilian populations deemed to be unsupportive.”
- “In South Sudan today, war crimes pay. There is no accountability for the atrocities and looting of state resources, or for the famine that results…There has been no effort to counter the networks that benefit financially and politically from the crisis. The international community needs to help make war costlier than peace for government and rebel leaders and their international facilitators.”
In September 2016, The Sentry released a ground-breaking investigative report “War Crimes Shouldn’t Pay: Stopping the looting and destruction in South Sudan.” The report exposed massive wealth accumulated by South Sudan’s President and other officials who oversaw a military offensive that contributed to the current famine. The report found that immediate family members of these officials enjoy luxurious lifestyles abroad, living in lavish estates while South Sudanese suffer.
Read the full op-ed by Clooney and Prendergast in the Washington Post: http://eno.ug/2nargN3
For media inquiries or interview requests, please contact: Greg Hittelman, +1 310-717-0606, gh(at)enoughproject.org.
About THE SENTRY
The Sentry is a team of analysts, regional experts, and financial forensic investigators which follows the money to disrupt the corrupt networks who fund and profit from genocide or other mass atrocities in Africa. Co-founded by George Clooney and John Prendergast, The Sentry is an initiative of the Enough Project and Not On Our Watch (NOOW), with its implementing partner C4ADS. Current countries of focus are South Sudan, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and the Central African Republic. Learn more at TheSentry.org
About THE ENOUGH PROJECT
The Enough Project, an atrocity prevention policy group, seeks to build leverage for peace and justice in Africa by helping to create real consequences for the perpetrators and facilitators of genocide and other mass atrocities. Enough aims to counter rights-abusing armed groups and violent kleptocratic regimes that are fueled by grand corruption, transnational crime and terror, and the pillaging and trafficking of minerals, ivory, diamonds, and other natural resources. Enough conducts field research in conflict zones, develops and advocates for policy recommendations, supports social movements in affected countries, and mobilizes public campaigns. Learn more – and join us – at EnoughProject.org.
Greg Hittelman, The Sentry, http://www.thesentry.org, +1 310-717-0606, [email protected]
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