The verdict in the case against Germain Katanga, the alleged commander of the Forces de Résistance Patriotique en Ituri (FRPI), for war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to an attack on the village of Bogoro in Ituri, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is being awaited with impatience in Ituri. Having followed trials at the…
Violence in Africa seems particularly prone to the scourge of one-dimensional descriptions. Often described as ethnic or tribal, and sometimes as sectarian, the media prescribes an adjective that quickly becomes accepted as gospel and this explanation is then hard to shift. Thus we are told that the recent outbreak of violence in South Sudan is ethnic(Nuer…
International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) is concerned about the arrest of two journalists by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) on Monday 13 January 2014. The publisher and managing editor of the private newspaper The Voice and Pan African News Agency (PANA) stringer in The Gambia, Musa Sheriff and freelance reporter Sainey Marehna were arrested in…
The Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Africa – the Kampala Convention – was adopted by the African Union (AU) Heads of State Special Summit in Kampala, Uganda, on 23 October 2009. It is the first independent legally binding regional instrument in the world to impose on states the…
South Sudan is currently on the edge. Reports of an alleged attempted coup in South Sudan on Sunday 15 December were followed by days of reports of firefights all over the capital Juba. On December 19, these were followed by the news that the town of Bor in Jonglei state has fallen to rebel forces…
This blog was first posted by the Open Society Justice Initiative. In the early morning hours of November 24, police in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) arrested Fidèle Babala Wandu, a member of the DRC Parliament and Deputy Secretary General of the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) (the party of Jean-Pierre Bemba)…
Dear Commissioners, Urgent Fact-Finding Mission needed to investigate killings and detention by security forces in Sudan The undersigned organisations are writing to you to express our deep concern at the lack of action or public comments made by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and the African Union (AU) concerning recent events…
Based on interviews conducted in Nakivale settlement in Uganda and discussions of the findings with the government of Uganda and UNHCR, the briefing tells the story of a small number of Burundian refugees and asylum seekers who have fled into a second phase of exile. As former refugees living in Tanzania’s Mtabila refugee camp, they…
African Commission: Investigate Sudan Killings Fact-finding Mission Needed Into Deaths, Detention of Protesters (Kampala, November 1, 2013) — The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) should order a fact-finding mission to investigate the deaths and detention of hundreds of demonstrators, a group of 11 international and African organizations said in a letter made…
A report launched today in Addis Ababa urges Sudan and the African Union (AU) to take a new approach to resolving Sudan’s multiple conflicts and ending the ongoing suffering of its people. The report by the Kampala-based International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI), Thedisappearance of Sudan? Life in Khartoum for citizens without rights, examines the experiences…
(This blog first appeared in Politico.It has been republished with permission from the author.) The debate around the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Africa is one that has polarised the continent, with equal-opportunity-mud being slung at African countries and the African Union (AU), as well as the ICC and the international community. Among the myriad…
Ali Agab is a Sudanese human rights activist As I decided to put these thoughts on paper, I remembered Dr John Garang’s aphorism, “there is no smoke without fire, except in Sudan.” Despite the enormous efforts of Sudanese pro-democracy and justice activists, the Inghaz regime (under which Bashir has ruled Sudan since 1989, first as…
(The writer is the Director of the Strategic Initiative for women in the Horn of Africa. The article first appeared in the Sudan Tribune on 23 September 2013 and has been reproduced with permission from the author.) Anger is growing in Sudan as peaceful demonstrators are being injured and killed by the Sudanese regime forces. This…
Kenya has paid an excruciatingly heavy price for its regional position in the struggle against Islamic militants. The horror of what has just taken place in Nairobi’s exclusive Westgate shopping mall is both hard to comprehend and dreadfully predictable. It is hard to comprehend for lots of reasons, not least the cruelty of what has…
Just when we thought that our neighbour, Tanzania, was about to rethink its current policy of expelling other nationals from its soil, another problem came up. The latest news coming out of Tanzania is that some 25,000 Burundians were summarily rounded up and told to go back to Burundi. In addition, apparently 10,000 teachers from…
As the General Assembly came together last week to engage in an informal dialogue on the latest report of the UN Secretary-General on the Responsibility to Protect: State Responsibility and Prevention, the ongoing commission of genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes (known collectively as “atrocity crimes”) in Syria, Sudan and the Democratic…
Today, the UN General Assembly is having a dialogue to discuss the Secretary-General’s latest report on the implementation of the responsibility to protect – otherwise known as R2P. The idea behind the responsibility to protect – which effectively affirms the responsibility of states to protect populations within their borders from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes…
It is with sadness and anger that I report the death of a young Oromo in Kaliti prison, Ethiopia, on 24 August, yesterday. Tesfahun Chemeda was a student activist in Ethiopia and a political activist among refugees in Kenya, where he was granted refugee status by UNHCR. He was arrested with a colleague, Mesfin Abebe,…
On 30th June this year, the day of the cessation of their refugee status, one and a half thousand Rwandan refugees crowded into the Lusaka Anglican Cathedral in a church service organised by Zambian church leaders to hear the Minister of Home Affairs reaffirm that they could continue to make their home in Zambia. The…
Kenya’s High Court has just delivered a ground breaking judgement on the rights of refugees with implications for hundreds of thousands in Kenya. Affirming the right to freedom of movement and the prima facie right of refugees to live in urban areas, the Court put the right to dignity for refugees back at the heart…
