ACCRA, Ghana — When London-based Tullow Oil announced last month that it had discovered oil off the country’s west coast, a few Ghanaians thanked God for the blessing. Others, including President John Kufuor, reveled in the prospect that Ghana’s precious new resource would fuel faster growth and create more jobs. Kufuor suggested that oil would transform his country, which experiences 12-hour power cuts every two of three days, into an African tiger. Even government critics considered the find of up to 600 million barrels of reserves at the West Cape Three Points block, operated by Kosmos Energy of Texas, to [...]
LONDON — After months of fruitless shuttle diplomacy, threats of sanctions, broken promises and politicking, Sudan’s government has agreed to accept a coalition of United Nations peacekeepers to back up the beleaguered African Union mission in its western Darfur region. The deal, announced June 12 from the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, would bring an additional 17,000 to 19,000 troops and 3,700 police officers into Darfur, a region the size of France where fighting between troops, government-backed militias and rebels has raged since 2003. An estimated 2.5 million people have been made homeless and some 200,000 have lost their lives [...]
Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a new weekly column on the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. HUMAN TRAFFICKING A MAJOR GLOBAL PROBLEM: The U.S. State Department released its annual victims of human trafficking report on Tuesday, looking at the situation in 164 countries and ranking countries on their individual efforts to combat the trade. The annual report ranks countries on a three-tier system: Tier 1 includes countries that are extremely active in protecting trafficking victims; Tier 2 countries are those that may be falling short but are making significant efforts; [...]
