29 January 2023 – Mukesh Kapila First released 26 January in The Daily Maverick Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Pexels.com The Ethiopian Federal Government and Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) confounded the sceptics by signing the 3 November 2022 Pretoria “agreement for lasting peace through a permanent cessation of hostilities”, followed by agreeing to implementation modalities in Nairobi on 12 November 2022. Why did that happen, how is the agreement progressing, and will there be sustainable peace? Pushed to make peace All wars end at some time, but the shorter a confli ..read more

29 October 2022  – Mukesh Kapila Expanded version of the introductory witness statement  by Professor Mukesh Kapila to the Subcommittee on international Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development of the House of Commons, Parliament of Canada.  By video link on 28 October 2022. The full proceedings can be watched by navigating from HERE. Mr Chairman, Thank you for inviting me to speak to your Committee. The last time I had the honour to address the honourable parliamentarians of Canada was in relation to the Darfur genocide some twent ..read more

28 January 2022 – Mukesh Kapila Image from commons.wikimedia.org . In 2017, the World Health Organisation (WHO) appointed Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as its director general. He’s the first African and the first person from the global south to occupy this high office. His election process was equally historic: a secret ballot that gave equal voting opportunity to all member states for the first time in WHO’s 70-year history. The post had been filled previously by a vote of the executive board. Tedros – as he is popularly known – got an overwhelming two-thirds ..read more

16 November 2021 – Mukesh Kapila Photo by Fuad Tesfaye on Pexels.com This argument started via private messaging from “Nardy” on Twitter when she sent me some questions to answer. Here they are…. NARDY: Your compassionate tweets for Tigray are absolutely commendable.  Do you also feel empathy for Amhara suffering due to this war or, like the rest of the Western world, you celebrate their demise? You never mention the suffering of Amhara or Afar people; do you see them as less human? Personally, I tweet more around the genocide angle because of my personal  experiences with genocides ..read more

12 November 2021 –  Elizabeth Dalgarno,  Natalie Page,  Mukesh Kapila Image by David Brown From womb to tomb, girls and women are exposed to male violence in every neighbourhood, everywhere. It is a global ‘pandemic’ as male physical aggression is the largest category of societal violence. A rogue British policeman was recently sentenced to life imprisonment for the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.  When a specialist commented on how society justified and excused violence against women, her interviewer likened it to “swimming in a soup of male violence”. It is m ..read more

4 November 2021 – Scholars  and Researchers More than 110 scholars and researchers from 21 countries ask you to join us in calling for an end to the blockade of food and medicine in Ethiopia. After a year of war, Tigray has been devastated and cut off for months, and humanitarian deliveries to neighbouring regions are also threatened. Our fears of a catastrophic famine have not only been realised: they have been exceeded. Ethiopia has the highest numbers of starving people on the planet, and the largest active ongoing war. We continue to call on all parties to pursue a political settleme ..read more

20 October 2021 – Mukesh Kapila  &  Diana Arachi Still from the film ‘Schindler’s List’ (1993) Some twenty countries are currently under genocide watch but few receive consistent attention. In a world where views replace news, most of us are too impatient to bother with the context and complexity of a divisive situation. We scroll away to a simpler story that we can get our head around. For important but complicated stories, powerful images  are essential to bring insight. Who does not remember the girl in the red coat  in Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece, Schindler’s Lis ..read more

Mukesh Kapila – 3 September 2021 Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com All wars end. So will the Tigray conflict. But when and how will peace come, and will it be sustained? What can we learn from other experiences of war and peace? History suggests that while there are many routes to war, the path back to peace is the same: through negotiation. But this is effective only when one side has more-or-less won or when both are stalemated.  Then the conflict becomes ‘ripe’ for solving. Until then,  external diplomacy has little leverage. Other foreign interventions – military, or emb ..read more

27 May 2021 – Mukesh Kapila Author presenting his credentials as Head of United Nations in Sudan to President Omar Al Bashir, subsequently indicted for genocide A complicated squabble was underway, ignored by the household. Suddenly, the youngest screamed, “Save me. Genocide!” Rushing to the scene, I could see my older daughter sitting on the younger one, contesting possession of a toy.  It was 1994 and I was home from one of my frequent trips to Rwanda. There was much talk of genocide with gruesome images on TV. The youngest, inevitably losing an unequal struggle, had figured out the mag ..read more

28 April 2021 – Mukesh Kapila Image by David Brown The Twittersphere is full of commentary on the Tigray region in Ethiopia as war crimes and crimes against humanity continue to mount.  Independent validated reports of mass rapes, starvation, destruction of homes and livelihoods, and displacement of communities, provide agonising detail.  Some international bodies express concern. Others appoint special envoys to conduct intense diplomacy and make slightly stronger statements demanding that perpetrators cease-and-desist. In contrast, other institutions and people are noticeably retic ..read more