Sudan conflict surveillance

A group founded by American actor George Clooney said yesterday that it has teamed up with Google, a United Nations agency and anti-genocide organisations to launch satellite surveillance of the border between north and south Sudan to try to prevent a new civil war after the south votes in a secession referendum on January 9.

Clooney's Not On Our Watch is funding the start-up phase of Satellite Sentinel Project to collect real-time satellite imagery and combine it with field analysis from the Enough Project and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, organisers said.

The data will point out movements of troops, civilians and other signs of impending conflict. The UN Operational Satellite Applications Programme and Google will then publish the findings online.

"We want to let potential perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes know that we're watching, the world is watching," Clooney said in a statement.