Ethnicity

Pulitzer Center Staff

Pulitzer Center Executive Director Jon Sawyer spoke to the World Affairs Council of Houston Tuesday night (8/26), addressing the Caucasus conflict -- its roots, the media coverage of the Georgia/Russia war, and likely repercussions. He drew on his own reporting from Georgia and South Ossetia two years ago and on the current Pulitzer-funded reporting by Jason Maloney, Kira Kay and Zygmunt Dziesciolowski.

They've dreamed about it for years. In 1999, in a national referendum, Abkhazia's citizens voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence. When I met top Abkhaz politicians only few weeks ago, "independence" and "sovereign state" were terms they used frequently and longingly. For them, return to Georgia was simply unacceptable. They called Russia their "window to the world". However, they also remembered periods during the Yeltsin years when their neighbor to the North did not always seem to be a reliable ally.

For the first time in more than a decade, Sri Lankan government forces are deep inside the Tamil Tigers' northern stronghold and within striking distance of the Tamil capital, according to military officials who insist an end to one of Asia's deadliest civil wars nears by the day.

Some observers say it's still too soon to talk of the end of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's 25-year armed struggle for a Tamil state. ...

Zygmunt Dzieciolowski has been contributing to Russian radio stations on the Georgian conflict and its consequences. Videographer Jason Maloney, who is on the ground with Dzieciolowski, says that “this is extremely important from the perspective that he's really filling a void here, where there is really no other independent reporting available in the Russian language." Dzieciolowski spoke to the following stations:
 

Yemen's civil society is still in an early growth phase but non-profits and pressure groups will play an important role in strengthening democratic institutions for the future.

I wrote last Friday about the need for a new trust to support girls who escape from early, unwanted marriages.

But I recently spent the morning at an incubator organization, the Youth Leadership Development Foundation, which is training the next generation of managers and administrators who will help the civil society sector to grow.

Pulitzer Center Staff

Russian troops and tanks may have at least partially completed their pull-out from territory seized during its August 8 blitz of this tiny post-Soviet country, but that should be little reason to celebrate, as the real (if creeping) catastrophe has just begun.

Fierce fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people in northern Sri Lanka, as government troops advance deeper into the Tamil rebels' last stronghold in an aggressive bid to crush them by the end of the year.

More than 112,000 ethnic Tamils have fled from their homes over the past two months amid daily gunbattles, shelling and air attacks, aid agencies say.

The United Nations estimates the total number of displaced in rebel-held areas is now around 145,000, an unprecedented level in the island nation's long-running conflict.

Reproduced with permission from The Christian Science Monitor.

Twelve-year-old Reem has done so many interviews with journalists, she's lost count. "She's like Nancy Ajram now," her mother joked - referring to a famous Lebanese singer.

I visited Reem in her mum's Sana'a appartment for my Christian Science Monitor story on child brides. Reem's parents are separated. Since the start of her summer vacation in June, Reem has been kidnapped by her father, married, repeatedly raped by a man twice her age, rescued by police and reunited with her mother - but she is still waiting for a judge to annul her wedding contract.

Ask Abbas Adam Ibrahim whether he is Arab or African, and he does not quite know how to respond. "Both," the Sudanese man says, after slight hesitation.

Special correspondent Kira Kay reports on the political tensions within Georgia's breakaway province Abkhazia. This report was produced in partnership with The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and The Bureau for International Reporting, and is a co-production with HDNet.