"George Clooney and John Prendergast: War crimes shouldn’t pay in South Sudan"

South Sudan’s leaders are perfecting the art of the diplomatic bait-and-switch while fighting over the spoils of a resource-rich state, destroying the world’s newest country in the process...Meanwhile, more than 5 million people are suffering from hunger and require food aid...All of this obstruction and obfuscation buys time for the leaders to continue to use extreme violence to loot the state treasury and the country’s natural resources. And we have the evidence. For the past two years, the Sentry, our new investigative initiative focusing on East and Central Africa, has compiled information from thousands of court filings, legal documents and financial records...

After consulting widely with banking, finance and policy experts, we would propose a new approach to creating immediate and unprecedented leverage to counter mass atrocities in South Sudan. This approach would creatively use the precision-guided policy tools of financial pressure normally reserved for countering terrorism, organized crime and nuclear proliferation, this time in the service of peace, human rights and good governance.