Some places almost never get the attention they deserve. One of these is the Democratic Republic of Congo. A vast country of some 80 million people, at the heart of Africa. It has struggled since independence in 1960 with a poor colonial legacy, cold war manipulations, venal and incompetent governments, and a succession of wars.

While many of the world's governments want to prevent genocide, they almost never act to achieve this aim. This despite most being signatories to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide which is explicitly designed to compel them to do just that.

As the 19th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide approaches in April, this report by the Task Force on the EU Prevention of Mass Atrocities has been issued at a critical time. Survivors of the Rwandan genocide who were failed enormously by the EU are demanding and deserve redress as an urgent matter of justice which has gone unaddressed for far too long.

Earlier this year David Cameron held a high-level meeting in Downing Street with world leaders from Brazil and Liberia amongst others to begin the tas...

Britain will take into account Rwanda's backing for rebels accused of killing and raping in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo in futur...

The Rwandan authorities must take these allegations seriously. They have an obligation under Rwandan and international law to investigate and prosecute those thought to be responsible. Doing so will be an important step towards justice for victims and reduce the risk of such abuses happening again. It will also help to restore the confidence of donor countries that are increasingly concerned by human rights abuses committed by the Rwandan military in DRC and now in Rwanda itself.

The repression of genuine accounting with an individual or a nation's failures and violations of democratic values and human rights leads not only to a failure to acknowledge and wrestle with historical truth.

Colonisation and its impact on the colonised is rarely a topic of sustained public conversation in Britain. It is not even a tangential topic. It is simply ignored, elided with very infrequent and brief exceptions such as the one prompted now by the case of Kenyan survivors of torture and other human rights abuses of British rule in Kenya.

Today marks World Refugee Day. Today is a reminder for us to think about the 15 millions of people who aren't as lucky as we are, those mothers, fathers and children who can't go back to the homes they were forced to flee and loved ones they had to leave behind.

When we think of armed conflicts, we think of battlefields, of soldiers in arms, of trenches and tanks. But wars tragically are also about civilians, particularly women and children, caught on the margins of the battlefield yet at the centre of warfare.

The 18th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide was commemorated in April in Rwanda and around the world. Many proclamations were issued, expressions of sympathy made, and hopes for the future expressed.