Clair MacDougall

ckmacdougall.com

Clair MacDougall is an independent journalist who reports throughout Africa and is now based in the Sahel region, reporting on the security and humanitarian crisis there. She holds an honor's degree in political theory and a master's degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. In February 2021, she won an award from the International Center for Journalists for her article on the first official death of a UN peacekeeper from Covid-19, published in PassBlue and The Daily Beast.

As French Troops Leave Mali, Will the UN Mission Face Deadlier Risks?

Clair MacDougall

• March 23, 2022

As the world’s deadliest United Nations mission, in Mali, registered its first two peacekeeper deaths for 2022 from improvised explosive devices, uncertainty looms over the role that the French military operation Barkhane will play in helping protect UN bases from fatal attacks. Mali’s military junta ordered the French troops out of the country in …

Africa, Security Council, UN Peacekeeping

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Ukrainian Peacekeepers’ Departure From the UN Could Be ‘Severely Detrimental’ to the Congo Mission

Clair MacDougall and Hugh Kinsella Cunningham

• March 16, 2022

GOMA, Democratic Republic of the Congo — Next to a white, scratched United Nations hangar, soldiers in green-and-gray fatigues straddled parts of a Mi-8 Soviet-style helicopter, adjusting motors and rotors in the morning light of March 7. One member of the Ukrainian Aviation Unit of peacekeepers deployed here watched footage on his mobile phone …

Africa, Security Council, UN Peacekeeping

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In War-Torn Burkina Faso, a Pharmacist Looks for a Cure

Clair MacDougall

• March 10, 2022

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — Two-thousand civilian deaths. Countless “forced disappearances.” More than 1.7 million people displaced. The citizens of Burkina Faso have paid a price for the violent jihadist campaign leading up to Jan. 23, when the military seized power, suspended the Constitution and ousted the democratically elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. During …

Africa, Human Rights

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Terrorists’ IED Attacks Make the UN Mission in Mali Even Deadlier in 2021

Clair MacDougall

• December 23, 2021

The world’s deadliest peacekeeping mission has recorded a twofold increase in fatalities among its troops from improvised explosive devices this year over last year, reinforcing what analysts say: more sophisticated attacks are being carried out by jihadists in Mali and elsewhere in the Sahel region of West Africa. Half of the 28 uniformed peacekeepers …

Africa, UN Peacekeeping

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TOPIC: WOMEN

Representing an African Revolutionary: French Lawyer Defends Thomas Sankara in Assassination Trial

Clair MacDougall

• October 25, 2021

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — Anta Guissé has spent a large part of her 20-year career defending people accused of war crimes in countries like Rwanda, Cambodia and the Central African Republic before United Nations-backed international tribunals and the International Criminal Court. Now Guissé, a lawyer based in Paris, has switched to the prosecution in …

Africa, Human Rights, Women

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A US Lawyer Who Has Worked With Gitmo Detainees Details Her Journey Into a ‘Kafkaesque’ World

Clair MacDougall

• October 11, 2021

As a lawyer, Beth Jacob has represented both victims of the 9/11 attacks and the men imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay suspected of committing terrorism against the United States. A New Yorker now living in Washington, D.C., her Guantánamo clients have ranged from artists who make delicately crafted model ships, like Moath al-Alwi, and writers …

International Justice, Terrorism, US Foreign Relations

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UN Human-Rights Experts Raise Alarm Over the Fate of a Russian Ex-Guantánamo Detainee

Clair MacDougall

• July 20, 2021

Yusuf Mingazov met his father, Ravil, for the first time through a videocall between a Red Cross office in Nottingham, Britain, and the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, where he had been imprisoned for more than 14 years. “It was kind of difficult to explain the emotions and everything, but it was nice …

Human Rights, Terrorism, US-UN Relations

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WOMEN AS CHANGEMAKERS

‘Peace Inc.’ Has Failed. This Expert Proposes a New Way to Peacemaking

Clair MacDougall

• May 24, 2021

Séverine Autesserre, a former humanitarian-aid worker, award-winning researcher and professor of political science at Columbia University, has become one of the foremost thinkers on international peace-building in the last decade. Following “Peaceland,” a book critically exploring the parallel worlds of United Nations peacekeeping missions, and “The Trouble With the Congo,” which examines the failed peace efforts …

Peace and Security, Security Council, Women as Changemakers

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COVID-19

Ebola Fighters in Africa Call for Covid Vaccine Equity, but It May Be Too Late

Clair MacDougall

• May 10, 2021

Liberian Dr. James Soka Moses remembers the West African region’s devastating Ebola outbreak as if it were yesterday: the roaring ambulances, the patients lying on the floor and spilling outside of treatment facilities, the smell of vomit and the sight of death and suffering that still comes to him in flashbacks seven years later. …

Africa, Covid-19, Health and Population

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A Wedding Party Hit By French Forces in Mali Killed Mostly Civilians, UN Report Says

Clair MacDougall

• March 31, 2021

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — From above, the photographs show a stretch of charred land in the middle of the desert and a mass grave covered in dried tree branches, where people living around Bounti, a village in central Mali, said those who had been killed by French airstrikes were buried. On the ground were …

Africa, Human Rights, Peace and Security, Secretary-General, Security Council

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UN Probe Details Atrocities in Mali and Civilian Deaths From French Airstrikes

Clair MacDougall

• February 8, 2021

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — A recent United Nations investigation has documented years of grave human-rights violations, including war crimes and other atrocities, in Mali that have gone unpunished as the UN peacekeeping mission there struggles to stabilize the troubled West African nation. A highly detailed, 336-page report on the abuses, obtained in full by …

Africa, Gender Violence, Secretary-General, Security Council, UN Peacekeeping, US Foreign Relations

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TOPIC: WOMEN

The Sole Woman Running for President of Burkina Faso Says: ‘I Will Win’

Clair MacDougall

• November 19, 2020

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — Monique Yéli Kam’s war room is not a typical campaign headquarters for a national presidential candidate. A dusty white marquis stands next to stacked blue chairs fanning out to a balcony that leads to a room where teenage boys jostle to play a soccer video game. Upstairs in her apartment, …

Africa, Governance, Women

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As the Nobel Peace Prize Is Awarded to the World Food Program, Famines Loom

Clair MacDougall

• October 10, 2020

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — David Beasley, the head of the World Food Program, this year’s just-announced Nobel Peace Prize winner, has warned that the number of people facing starvation could double next year, to 270 million, if the agency is unable to raise enough money to cope with the crisis. “2021 is going to be …

Humanitarian Aid, UN Agencies, US-UN Relations

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After Resisting, the UN Redeploys Peacekeepers to Protect Dr. Mukwege, Amid Death Threats

Clair MacDougall

• September 9, 2020

Dr. Denis Mukwege sat behind a desk in a sharp suit with a red tie and his eyes framed by thick black glasses, as his image was live-streamed from eastern Congo during a human-rights meeting of the European Parliament in Brussels on Aug. 31. Dr. Mukwege spoke matter-of-factly about women who had been buried …

Africa, Gender Violence, Secretary-General

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Clair MacDougall

As French Troops Leave Mali, Will the UN Mission Face Deadlier Risks?

Ukrainian Peacekeepers’ Departure From the UN Could Be ‘Severely Detrimental’ to the Congo Mission

In War-Torn Burkina Faso, a Pharmacist Looks for a Cure

Terrorists’ IED Attacks Make the UN Mission in Mali Even Deadlier in 2021

Representing an African Revolutionary: French Lawyer Defends Thomas Sankara in Assassination Trial

A US Lawyer Who Has Worked With Gitmo Detainees Details Her Journey Into a ‘Kafkaesque’ World

UN Human-Rights Experts Raise Alarm Over the Fate of a Russian Ex-Guantánamo Detainee

‘Peace Inc.’ Has Failed. This Expert Proposes a New Way to Peacemaking

Ebola Fighters in Africa Call for Covid Vaccine Equity, but It May Be Too Late

A Wedding Party Hit By French Forces in Mali Killed Mostly Civilians, UN Report Says

UN Probe Details Atrocities in Mali and Civilian Deaths From French Airstrikes

The Sole Woman Running for President of Burkina Faso Says: ‘I Will Win’

As the Nobel Peace Prize Is Awarded to the World Food Program, Famines Loom

After Resisting, the UN Redeploys Peacekeepers to Protect Dr. Mukwege, Amid Death Threats

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