George Clooney says corrupt African leaders are stealing billions of dollars earmarked for humanitarian aid and peacekeeping.
"Every year, billions of aid dollars pour into Africa: taxpayers and donors around the world fund peacekeeping forces, state-building programs, humanitarian assistance, elections, and peace processes," the Hollywood star writes with human rights activist John Prendergast in Foreign Affairs magazine.
"But none of this support has been able to keep corrupt leaders and their network of beneficiaries from stealing billions of dollars."
Clooney and Prendergast are the co-founders of The Sentry, a team of policy analysts, regional experts, and financial forensic experts whose goal is to "create consequences for those funding and profiting from genocide or other mass atrocities in Africa, and to build leverage for peace."
It's not an easy task, they say.
"This is the fatal flaw of peacemaking in Africa: those supporting mediation lack the leverage necessary to stop corrupt figures from using their forces to bomb, burn, imprison, silence, torture, starve, impoverish, kill, and rape to maintain or gain power," Clooney and Prendergast write.
"South Sudanese peace talks, for example, are currently stuck because [President Salva] Kiir and his allies have rejected any notion of sharing power with the rebels, since such an arrangement would require giving up their exclusive grip on the crudely-constructed looting machine masquerading as a government."
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