Georgianne Nienaber

Anti-aircraft guns pound a hillside on the edge of Virunga Park in eastern Congo. The blood-red tunic of the woman who is shouting into her cell phone is a stunning contrast to the drab fatigues of the Congolese (FARDC) soldiers and the dusty vegetation at her feet. The woman is...

Intense fighting between rebel factions and the Congolese army spread to Virunga Park this week, threatening a critical UNESCO world heritage site and the endangered mountain gorillas. In an email conversation, Emmanuel de Merode confirmed that there was heavy shelling near Bikenga and Jomba and that park ranger Paris Paluku...

Diplomacy is one thing; enabling is another. It seems Rwanda and the United States have been caught with their diplomatic pants down.

Congolese and international human rights organizations are calling on the United States to pressure the government of Rwanda to support the arrest of Bosco "The Terminator" Ntaganda and...

The infusion of $97,000 into the 2012 Obama re-election campaign by a Texas oil executive should not raise any eyebrows in an election cycle where the president has publicly embraced the super PAC concept. US media organizations might not flinch when the same executive happens to...

The opening scene of the documentary Arise is stark. Jane Goodall's call to arms in declaring that "it's time for women to rise up, own their power, and heal the planet" floats in an obsidian sky as a yellow-orange full moon casts her glow, recalling the great Roman goddess Diana,...

While winter has spared remote areas of Minnesota this year, proposed budget cuts will slam the North Country if the U.S. Post Office abandons its location in Ponsford. Ponsford, also known as the Pine...

The road to the truth about what is happening in the remote region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) known as Walikale depends now upon a Mwami, a motorbike, and a very determined man named Paluku Mbusa Omer. For the past two months we have been telling...

"Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft."
~~Winston Churchill

Goma, January 3, 2009

The television in the squalid hotel dining room was tuned to an early morning French newscast. The male commentator was quoting a BBC report that General Laurent Nkunda,...

The fact-finding report from the United Nations documents the atrocities. Rapes and brutilizations designed to terrify the civilian populations in the remote region of Walikale have succeeded brilliantly. In villages connected with dirt roads that are impassable in the rainy season, village leaders walk into the forests...

Depending upon your theology, thank God or Mark Zuckerberg for the Facebook community.

Due to an increase of fighting and assassination threats in the Walikale area of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), there is an epidemic of diarrheal disease in children who are fleeing the fighting, killing, looting,...

Note: This blog may be too late. Radio Okapi reported 7 people were slaughtered by the FDLR in the Groupement of Ikobo, Banyanga Sector, Walikale Territory.

The five-page document with 93 signatures and the official stamps of Du Nord Province and Walikale arrived in...

Cholera in St. Marc, Haiti October 2010 (G. Nienaber)

The United Nations is faced with two substantial legal petitions on behalf of cholera victims in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The actions could not be more different in their demands, tone, jurisdictions and venues....

Global reinsurer Swiss Re announced a cholera insurance offering for Haitian women entrepreneurs at a September meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in New York. Swiss Re is partnering with the non -government charities (NGOs) Fonkoze USA and Mercy Corps to develop a benefit plan that ensures...

The President's Plan For AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, constituted the largest international health initiative to combat a specific disease. I hoped it would serve as a medical version of the Marshall Plan. This is my country's pledge to the people of Africa and the people of Uganda...you are not alone in...

Yesterday I accidentally deleted over 13,000 messages from my email account and didn't flinch. Well, almost. There was a momentary feeling of complete panic at the loss of an epistolary record of my existence dating back to 2008, but it was followed by a sense of Zen-like calm. Had I...

There is mixed news from Haiti in the last few weeks, but all of it reflects a government paralyzed by a combination of foreign meddling, an administration hamstrung by a balky Parliament, and the refusal of foreign donors to make good on pledges made in March 2010. So far

It's been over 16 months since the BP oil disaster, now rebranded the Macondo oil "spill," or the Deepwater Horizon "spill."

The Financial Times reports that the Obama administration has approved the sale of new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Media has not scrutinized the safety...

On Thursday, U.S. Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) co-chaired a joint hearing of the Western Hemisphere and International Development Subcommittees of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The topic of the hearing was "Rebuilding Haiti in the Martelly Era." Panelists included Major Joseph Bernadel, Permanent Representative...

The OCHA Haiti Flooding Situation Report covering the period from June 6-7 does not paint a pretty picture. This grim report was to be anticipated given the lack of sanitation infrastructure and substantial reconstruction efforts in Haiti during the seventeen months since the January 2010 earthquake that...

In its first tenet, the ethics code for journalists states journalists should not only be fair and honest in reporting and interpreting information, they must also "seek the truth and report it." In this age of public relations ploys masquerading as news, and personal and political agendas disguised...