It is rare to witness a paradigm shift in refugee protection. But such a shift has just happened with the release of the new policy from the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) on alternatives to refugee camps. For refugees and their advocates, who have been shouting for years about the perils associated with camps,…
(This blog first appeared on the International Justice Monitor, a project of the Open Society Justice Initiative.) On June 27, a Dutch court refused the appeal of three former the International Criminal Court (ICC) witnesses, Floribert Ndjabu Ngabu, Sharif Manda Ndadza Dz’Na, and Pierre-Célestin Mbodina Iribi, for asylum in the Netherlands. The witnesses, who were previously in…
IRRI Submits Evidence on UK and International Engagement with South Sudan On 3 July 2014 IRRI submitted a statement to the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Sudan and South Sudan in response to a call for written evidence into “UK and International Engagement with South Sudan 2011-2014”. While mindful of the humanitarian crisis in…
(20 June 2014) On the occasion of World Refugee Day, the International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) is launching a paper aimed at policy makers dealing with refugees. Based on nine case studies across the region carried out by IRRI over six years, it contends that the framework of citizenship can contribute positively to a better…
This blog first appeared on the International Justice Monitor, a project of the Open Society Justice Initiative. On May 23, the International Criminal Court (ICC) handed down a 12-year prison sentence to the convicted Congolese militia leader Germain Katanga. Despite what was seen as a light sentence to some, it was not greeted with surprise…
“We could not wait for our dead bodies to be found first” Nearly a quarter of a million South Sudanese have fled to neighbouring countries, with Uganda taking the largest number – around 87,000. The International Refugee Rights Initiative’s report, Conflict in South Sudan: Refugees seek protection in Uganda and a way home explores the…
On Friday, March 7, 2014, Trial Chamber II at the International Criminal Court (ICC) convicted, by a majority, Germain Katanga as an accessory to four war crimes (murder, attacking a civilian population, destruction of property, and pillaging) and one crime against humanity (murder). While some welcomed the verdict, reactions to the decision focused as much…
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…
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)…
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…
(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…
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…
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…
