Rebecca Tinsley

President Obama has just created something called the Atrocities Prevention Board. Its aim is ambitious to say the least, but it matters because it recognizes that crimes against humanity rarely come out of the blue. The warning signs were there in the case of Armenia, the Holocaust, Bosnia, Rwanda, and...

In bars around the globe, in war zones, in refugee camps, after natural disasters, over drinks at conferences, people are comparing hair-raising travel stories. The scariest flight, the most disgusting hotel, the most horrific meal they were obliged to eat in order to avoid an international incident.

The challenges...

Despite what the UN says, the terror continues in Darfur

The UN Security Council is reconsidering the deployment of its joint African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, known as UNAMID. UN officials say there is now "much less organised violence" in the remote western province of Sudan. Hence they want...

The African warlord Joseph Kony is finally getting the attention he deserves, following the popularity of the viral video "Kony 2012." This is long overdue for the brave Ugandans, the human rights groups and charities who have tried for years to bring Kony's atrocities to the world's attention.

Kony's victims,...

So far the biggest loser in the Republican primary campaign has been the English language. One example is the hyperbolic use of the term 'class war.' When someone dares to question the distribution of power, opportunity and wealth in the United States, they are labelled a dangerous class warrior, beneath...

Last week presidential hopeful Rick Santorum warned that President Obama and "other liberals" are leading people of faith down a path that ends at the guillotine. Santorum is right that Christians are facing imminent death. Right now, millions of Christians in Nigeria and Sudan are being bombed, starved,...

Casablanca, a film regularly cited as one of the greatest movies of all time, was released 70 years ago. It gave us phrases that have passed into the English language, ("Here's looking at you, kid," "Round up the usual suspects", "We'll always have Paris," and "I think this is the...

The Arab League is whitewashing mass murder in Syria. But for the man leading its team of observers, what is happening on the streets of Syria is merely business as usual.

Mohammed Ahmed Dabi, a Sudanese general, has declared that the Syrian government is making significant progress toward the Arab...

When Allied troops liberated the Nazi death camps General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander in Europe, insisted that everything they found was recorded on film. He predicted that unless the heaps of wasted bodies and the gas ovens were documented, "some bastard" would deny it happened.

The...

I've been sent a photo of a man missing two-thirds of his head. He lies on rocky ground in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. The picture was taken by a fellow Nuban on his cell phone, moments after a Sudanese armed forces bombing raid killed his friend.

Although the...

With the liberation of Libya come less happy reports from Amnesty and Physicians for Human Rights of rebels slaughtering scores of black Africans, believing they were all pro-Gaddafi mercenaries. While the dictator did hire some fighters from sub-Saharan Africa, the vast majority of black Africans...

It is a cliché that people in positions of power lie. And powerful people believe the lies others tell them because it serves their own agenda, or it is less effort in the short-term to accept falsehood.

But when our politicians believe powerful foreign liars with a track record of...

Recently a friend who runs an animal shelter was venting about the people she encounters who refuse to listen when she talks about man's inhumanity to our four-legged friends.

"They say it upsets them too much to hear about cruelty to animals," she fumed, "as if they're so much...

On Saturday the international community celebrates the birth of a nation, South Sudan. Credit goes to the UK government for its role as conscientious midwife in the long gestation of the world's newest nation. It has been a remarkable journey: from decades of wholesale ethnic cleansing of the non-Arab South...

This week marks a milestone of misery for millions of Sudanese citizens. It is the anniversary of the military coup that brought Field Marshall Omar Bashir to power in Sudan in 1989. Since then Bashir has earned international notoriety for his sustained campaign to cleanse his nation of people who...

As another wave of ethnic cleansing, rape and killing sweeps Darfur, those following the dramatic events in the Middle East and North Africa should reflect on the fate of six million civilians trapped in Sudan's bloody sideshow.

This might sound familiar: eight years ago, on April 25th 2003, a group...

It's that time of year again in Rwanda. April 6th marks the anniversary of the plane crash that triggered one hundred days of genocide in 1994. But in the words of William Faulkner, "The past is not dead. It isn't even past."

I am traveling across Rwanda...

The swiftness of the international community's response to Colonel Gaddafi's bloody repression of the Libyan uprising has surprised no one more than the diplomats involved. At the same time it has left survivors of state-sponsored massacres in Darfur, Rwanda and Bosnia bewildered by our double standards.

Yet it is...