War on the Women in the Congo

Here is Anderson Cooper's piece from 60 Minutes on the raping of women in the Congo and the spillover from violence in Rwanda.

Small step forward in Kenya

Having several friends from Kenya I have found the entire situation there extremely depressing. It seems to bring back a lot of parallels to Rwanda. Anyways the NY Times reports that there may be some progress in that Kofi Annan has been named as a mediator.

The African Union announced on Thursday that Mr. Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, is taking over the role played by John Kufuor, the chairman of the African Union and president of Ghana. Mr. Kufuor spent the past two days in Kenya trying to broker a truce between the government and opposition leaders to end the crisis here, which erupted after flawed elections last month and went on to claim hundreds of lives.

Mr. Kufuor failed to get the two sides to even meet, but he insisted all was not lost.

“Both sides agreed there should be an end to the violence and they also agreed there should be dialogue,” Mr. Kufuor said.

Mr. Annan will lead a panel of African dignitaries who will arrive in the coming days to try to bring the two sides together, Mr. Kufuor said.

There was no immediate comment from Mr. Annan about the new role.

Many diplomats here are pessimistic that a solution will be found anytime soon because neither Mwai Kibaki, Kenya’s president, nor Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, is budging. Both claim to have won the presidential election on Dec. 27. Western observers have said that there was widespread evidence that the president’s party interfered with the vote tallying process and rigged the results to stay in power.