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John Prendergast (activist)

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John Prendergast
Prendergast in DR Congo in 2010
Prendergast in DR Congo in 2010
BornIndianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
OccupationAuthor, human rights activist
Alma materTemple University, American University
Notable awardsHuffington Post 2011 Game Changer Award[1]

United Nations Correspondents Association Citizen of the World Award[2] Lyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage Award[3] Princeton University Crystal Tiger Award[4] U.S. State Department Distinguished Service Award

The Center for African Peace and Conflict Resolution Peace Award[5]

John Prendergast is an American human rights and anti-corruption activist as well as an author. He is the co-founder of The Sentry,[6] an investigative and policy organization that seeks to disable multinational predatory networks that benefit from violent conflict, repression, and kleptocracy. Prendergast was the founding director of the Enough Project and was formerly director for African affairs at the National Security Council.

Career

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Prendergast worked for a variety of organizations in the U.S. and Africa in the latter half of the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, focusing primarily on peace and human rights. At the end of 1996, he joined the National Security Council as Director for African Affairs[7] and thereafter served as a special adviser to Susan Rice at the United States Department of State.[8] As a special adviser, Prendergast was a member of the team behind the two-and-a-half-year U.S. effort to broker an end to the Eritrean–Ethiopian War.[9] He was also part of the peace processes for Burundi, Sudan and DR Congo. Prendergast worked for the Clinton White House and two members of Congress, and left government in 2001 to become Special Adviser to the President of the International Crisis Group on Africa issues.[10] Outside of government, he has worked for organizations such as the United States Institute of Peace, UNICEF, and Human Rights Watch.

Alongside Gayle Smith, Prendergast co-founded the Enough Project in 2007. The policy organization aims at countering genocide and crimes against humanity. He is also a co-founder along with George Clooney of The Sentry, an investigative initiative created to uncover the financial networks behind conflicts in Africa. Together, Clooney and Prendergast had also previously co-founded the Satellite Sentinel Project,[11] which aimed to prevent conflict and human rights abuses through satellite imagery.[12] In 2020, Prendergast was named the Strategic Director of the Clooney Foundation for Justice.[13] Other initiatives of Prendergast include founding the Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools Program with Tracy McGrady and other NBA players, which funded schools in Darfurian refugee camps and created partnerships with schools in the U.S., as well as the Raise Hope for Congo campaign, highlighting the issue of conflict minerals fueling war in Congo and supporting a more comprehensive peace process.

Prendergast has been a visiting professor at universities and colleges, including Yale Law School, Stanford University, and Columbia University. He has been awarded seven honorary doctorates,[14] and serves as the Anne Evans Estabrook Human Rights Senior Fellow at Kean University.[15]

Media

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Prendergast has written extensively on Africa and is the author or co-author of eleven books. His 2018 book Congo Stories: Battling Five Centuries of Exploitation and Greed was co-authored with Congolese activist Fidel Bafilemba and featured photographs by Ryan Gosling. His two books prior to that were co-authored with actor and activist Don Cheadle. Those are Not On Our Watch, a New York Times bestseller and NAACP non-fiction book of the year, and The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa's Worst Humanitarian Crimes. He is currently working on a project concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo with Gosling and New Yorker writer Kelefa Sanneh.[16]

Prendergast has appeared in five episodes of 60 Minutes[17][18][19][20][21] and traveled to Africa with Dateline NBC,[22] ABC's Nightline,[23] the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer[24] and CNN’s Inside Africa, Newsweek/The Daily Beast, and The New York Times Magazine.[25] He has also appeared in several documentaries, including: Merci Congo, Sand and Sorrow, Darfur Now, 3 Points,[26] and War Child.[27] He co-produced Journey Into Sunset, and is Executive Producer of Staging Hope: Acts of Peace in Northern Uganda,[28] both about Northern Uganda. He also appeared in 2014 film The Good Lie.

Comedian Jane Bussmann was inspired by his work and meetings with him to write her 2012 book The Worst Date Ever: or How it Took a Comedy Writer to Expose Joseph Kony and Africa's Secret War,[29] a comic/tragic story of her attempt as a novice foreign correspondent to expose the truth about the war in Uganda. He is also the primary subject in another book by Bussmann, A Journey to the Dark Heart of Nameless Unspeakable Evil.[30]

Criticism

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Prendergast's activism has been criticized by Mahmood Mamdani as simplistic, counter-productive, and detrimental to the reality on the ground, especially regarding Darfur and Northern Uganda.[31]

Publications

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Prendergast in South Sudan during the Southern Sudanese independence referendum, 2011, with Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, and George Clooney

Articles

Books

  • Peace, Development, and People of the Horn of Africa. Co-authored with Bread for the World (Organization). Washington D.C.: Institute on Hunger & Development, Center of Concern, 1992. ISBN 978-0-9628058-2-0
  • Civilian Devastation: Abuses by All Parties in the War in Southern Sudan. Co-authored with Jemera Rone and Karen Sorensen. Human Rights Watch, 1994. ISBN 978-1-56432-129-9
  • Without Troops & Tanks: The Emergency Relief Desk and the Cross Border Operation into Eritrea and Tigray. Co-authored by Mark R. Duffield. The Red Sea Press, 1994. ISBN 978-1-56902-003-6

References

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  1. ^ Hoffer, Steven (October 19, 2011). "Huffington Post 2011 Game Changers".
  2. ^ "United Nations Correspondents Association Citizen of the World Award".
  3. ^ "Lyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage Award".
  4. ^ "Princeton University Crystal Tiger Award".
  5. ^ "The Center for African Peace and Conflict Resolution Peace Award".
  6. ^ https://thesentry.org/ [bare URL]
  7. ^ "Official Delegation Accompanying the President to Africa" (Press release). March 20, 1998.
  8. ^ "Crisis in Darfur". Mother Jones. December 20, 2000.
  9. ^ "U.S. Leadership in Resolving African Conflict: The Case of Ethiopia-Eritrea". Not On Our Watch. September 2001.
  10. ^ "Sudan: Now or Never in Darfur". International Crisis Group. May 23, 2004.
  11. ^ "Satellite Sentinel Project".
  12. ^ "George Clooney, MTV team up on Sudan Satellite Sentinel Project". Film Industry Network. January 8, 2011.
  13. ^ "The Sentry - Clooney Foundation for Justice" (PDF).
  14. ^ Enough Project biography
  15. ^ "Kean". Kean University. March 2014.
  16. ^ "John Prendergast". November 2013.
  17. ^ "Witnessing Genocide in Sudan". CBS News. August 28, 2005.
  18. ^ "Searching for Jacob". CBS News. October 22, 2006.
  19. ^ "Searching for Jacob". CBS News. July 16, 2008.
  20. ^ "Congo's Gold". CBS News. November 29, 2009.
  21. ^ "Fighting Famine in War-Torn South Sudan" March 19, 2017
  22. ^ "Dateline, Winds of War". NBC News. December 3, 2010. Archived from the original on January 29, 2013.
  23. ^ "A View from the Ground on the Killing in Northeast Africa". ABC News. February 9, 2005.
  24. ^ "Crisis in Sudan". The PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. October 20, 2004.
  25. ^ "An American Puts Sudan's Cause in the Spotlight". New York Times Magazine. December 2, 2010.
  26. ^ "3 Points".
  27. ^ "War Child". Archived from the original on April 20, 2013. Retrieved July 21, 2010.
  28. ^ "Staging Hope: Acts of Peace in Northern Uganda".
  29. ^ Bussmann, Jane (2009). The Worst Date Ever. London: Panmacmillan. ISBN 978-0-330-45765-1.
  30. ^ Bussmann, Jane (2014). A Journey to the Dark Heart of Nameless Unspeakable Evil: Charities, Hollywood, Kony and Other Abominations. Nortia Press. ISBN 9780988879881.
  31. ^ "Prof. Mahmood Mamdani and John Prendergast, "The Darfur Debate"". YouTube. April 14, 2009.[dead YouTube link]
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