John Prendergast is Co-founder of the Enough Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity. During the Clinton administration, John was involved in a number of peace processes in Africa while he was director of African Affairs at the National Security Council and special advisor at the Department of State. John has also worked for members of Congress, the United Nations, humanitarian aid agencies, human rights organizations, and think tanks, as well as having been a youth counselor and basketball coach.

He has authored eight books on Africa, including Not on Our Watch, a New York Times bestseller and NAACP non-fiction book of the year that he co-authored with actor Don Cheadle. John is currently working on two new books for publication by Random House, one that focuses on his 25 years in the Big Brother program, and the other on human rights and peace activism.

John has helped produce a number of documentaries and he consults on scripts for movies and for television shows, including an episode of NBC's "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit," which focused on child soldiers. He also has taken a number of television news programs to Africa, including "Nightline" and "The Lehrer Newshour," and has been part of a series of episodes of CBS' "60 Minutes" which earned an Emmy Award for Best Continuing News Coverage. John is currently working on an upcoming episode of "60 Minutes" on Congo.

His op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the International Herald Tribune, and he has been profiled in Vanity Fair, Men's Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, GQ Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Capitol File, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

John travels regularly to Africa's war zones on fact-finding missions, peace-making initiatives, and awareness-raising trips. He is a visiting professor at the University of San Diego, Eckerd College, St. Mary's College of Maryland, and the American University in Cairo.

Blog Entries by John Prendergast

Will Obama Finally Pay Attention to Sudan?

Posted October 22, 2009 | 09:13 AM (EST)


For the past seven months, U.S. diplomacy toward Sudan has veered dangerously in the direction of appeasing Sudan's ruling National Congress Party (NCP). Since taking power in a 1989 coup, the NCP has engaged in a systematic assault on the Sudanese people. The use of starvation as a weapon in...

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The Fierce Urgency of Implementation: Obama's New Sudan Policy

1 Comments | Posted October 19, 2009 | 02:13 PM (EST)


The ideals spelled out in the Obama administration's new paper on U.S. policy to Sudan are worthy of considerable support. The policy review represents a great deal of work inside the administration to learn lessons from past policy, to correct missteps of the administration over the past seven months,...

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Sudan's State-Sponsored Pyromania

1 Comments | Posted October 19, 2009 | 02:07 PM (EST)



This op-ed appears today in the Los Angeles Times.

The Khmer Rouge's Pol Pot had hundreds of thousands of people dig their own mass graves before they were beaten to death in Cambodia's killing fields. Rwanda's Interahamwe militias used machetes to kill 800,000 people in 100...

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Nobel Hope and Reality in Africa

4 Comments | Posted October 9, 2009 | 12:41 PM (EST)


It is enormously encouraging that the Nobel Committee chose its Peace Prize winner on the basis of the hope he instills and inspires around the world. With the added luster of such an award, peace activists hope that President Obama will wade more deeply into resolving the deadliest conflicts in...

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The War in Darfur Is Not Over

1 Comments | Posted October 7, 2009 | 01:06 PM (EST)


The latest news out of Darfur of a government offensive launched against civilians in North Darfur demonstrates how shamefully self-serving the recent comments are from top U.N., A.U., and U.S. diplomats. They've claimed: "no war as of now," "it is over," and that Darfur is plagued by...

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Rachel Maddow Spotlights T-Mac's Darfur Dream Team

1 Comments | Posted September 29, 2009 | 11:00 AM (EST)


Last week on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, NBA star Tracy "T-Mac" McGrady and I had the chance to discuss the ongoing crisis in Darfur.

Along with Derek Fisher of the Lakers and Baron Davis of the Clippers, Tracy is one of the three co-captains of the Darfur...

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U.S. Diplomacy in Sudan: What's at Stake

3 Comments | Posted September 9, 2009 | 01:07 PM (EST)


Maggie Fick and Laura Heaton from the Enough Project policy team contributed to this post.

The Obama administration will complete its Sudan policy review very soon and go public with its approach for addressing the multiple crises in Sudan, namely the rapidly deteriorating state of the North-South Comprehensive Peace...

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Secretary Clinton's Opportunity: Ending the World's Two Deadliest Wars

6 Comments | Posted August 13, 2009 | 05:49 PM (EST)


In the aftermath of Secretary of State Clinton's trip to Africa, the U.S. has a chance to help bring an end to two of the great unfolding tragedies of the 21st century. Together, Sudan and Congo represent two of Africa's largest countries, two of Africa's richest natural resource bases, two...

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The New Blood Diamonds

4 Comments | Posted August 4, 2009 | 08:40 AM (EST)


Being held at gunpoint by 30 drunk and angry militia in the middle of the night on a deserted road in one of the most dangerous war zones in the world was not our plan when we started out the day. But my traveling companions and I were digging into...

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A Sudan Policy Review with Life or Death Implications

Posted July 30, 2009 | 03:10 PM (EST)


By John Prendergast

The Obama administration is in the midst of a contentious review of its Sudan policy, which was the subject of three hearings on July 29 and 30 on Capitol Hill. The outcome of the debate will help determine the future of millions of people from Sudan and...

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Electronics Companies and Consumers Can Help Stop Congolese Bloodshed

Posted July 29, 2009 | 05:08 PM (EST)


Co-authored by Sasha Lezhnev

Have a cell phone or laptop computer? Then the conflict in eastern Congo, which has killed five times as many people as the war in Iraq, affects you. Fresh attacks last month caused 100,000 people to lose their homes, the latest in a war in which...

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Stopping One Man to Save Thousands

11 Comments | Posted June 22, 2009 | 10:20 AM (EST)


Co-authored with Maggie Fick, a policy assistant with the Enough Project.

If there was a serial mass murderer on the loose who had killed seven people in the United States, there would be a media firestorm, a panicked public, and subsequently, a galvanized response at the highest levels of government....

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Going to Jail to Fight Genocide

8 Comments | Posted May 1, 2009 | 01:05 PM (EST)


Despite what some UN diplomats and squeamish academics might be saying, the genocide by attrition continues in Darfur, through the use of rape and denial of humanitarian assistance as weapons of war. There are no gas chambers; there are not even the dramatic village burnings of 2003-5 Darfur. But the...

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Terrorists, Pirates and Anarchy, Somalia Style

Posted April 22, 2009 | 04:01 PM (EST)


Somalia has become the poster child for transnational threats emanating from Africa. By sea, pirates much more dangerous than their predecessors from centuries past prowl the Indian Ocean and Red Sea waterways and extort tens of millions of dollars in ransom. By land, extremist militias connected to al-Qaeda units ensure...

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Obama Can Make a Difference in Darfur

Posted April 20, 2009 | 07:56 PM (EST)


In an op-ed appearing this month in The Wall Street Journal, Sojourners President Jim Wallis and I argue that President Barack Obama should now move to finally end the crisis in Sudan, rather than to respond to the immediate symptoms. His administration and its new special envoy to Sudan, Gen....

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China's Deadly Investments

Posted September 30, 2008 | 09:59 AM (EST)


co-authored by David Sullivan

Tomorrow, China assumes the Presidency of the U.N. Security Council, a position that it last held in July 2007 when it led the authorization of a U.N. peacekeeping force for Darfur. At that time, Beijing appeared to be responding to a global campaign by activists, in...

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UN Needs to Lead New Uganda Peace Strategy

Posted June 20, 2008 | 05:25 PM (EST)



Julia Spiegel co-authored this posting.

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is now creating havoc and abducting children in four countries in central Africa. Today, United Nations Special Envoy for LRA-affected areas Joaquim Chissano is briefing the U.N. Security Council on the need to continue a...

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Sudan and the Security Council: Accountability or Appeasement?

Posted June 17, 2008 | 04:03 PM (EST)


With its latest invasion-by-proxy in Chad, the Sudanese government is taking its defiance of the United Nations Security Council to a new level. Khartoum has sponsored and supported an open and transparent effort to overthrow a neighboring government. A month ago, the regime burned the strategic town of...

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