In February 2019, Ethiopia issued a National Refugee Proclamation, joining several of its neighbours in the Greater Horn of Africa region[1] in expanding the rights granted to refugees living in the country. Amongst other provisions, the new law allows refugees access to national health services on the same basis as Ethiopian nationals and contains…
En décembre 2018, deux semaines seulement avant les élections nationales, des centaines de personnes ont été tuées lors d’un massacre en République démocratique du Congo (RDC). Les scènes sinistres ne se sont pas déroulées à l’Est, où la violence armée a causé la mort de nombreuses victimes depuis des décennies. Cette fois-ci, l’horreur s’est perpétrée…
In December 2018, only two weeks before national elections, hundreds of people were killed in a massacre in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This time, the grim scenes did not play out in the east, where armed violence has marked people’s lives for decades, but in western Congo, 300 km northeast of the capital…
Statelessness affects ten thousands of people in East Africa. Being stateless has significant negative impact on the lives of affected persons – who are unable to access fundamental rights to which they are entitled under human rights law, but which require state mediation to access in practice. Without identification documents they are not able to…
Parliamentary elections held in Togo on 20 December 2018 appear to have been relatively calm, despite serious tensions in the run-up to the polls. A major coalition of opposition parties, the C14, boycotted the polls, citing the need for more systemic political reform, includingof the electoral commission, but the ruling party, the Union for…
Finally, they are taking place. On 23 December, citizens in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are going to the polls. After more than two years of postponements, it now looks like in January a new president will be sworn in. This might look like the first peaceful transition of power since the country’s…
For many years, Rwandan refugees in Uganda have faced abuses, including arbitrary detention, forced return to Rwanda and attacks on their physical security, without any form of accountability. However, last Friday, 24 August, former Inspector-General of the Ugandan police, General Kale Kayihura, has been charged with aiding and abetting the kidnapping and repatriation of…
On 7 August, South Sudan’s president and main opposition leaders signed a new deal, which allows for the inclusion of the latter in the country’s government and is supposed to end the conflict that has ravaged the country since it started in late 2013. Despite hopeful statements by the signatories and its guarantors, this…
“They killed my brothers of 16 and 18 years old. They killed them in my presence, I saw it happening,” Sylvia,* a young Congolese mother, told IRRI in Angola. “Even when the military killed my brothers, I wasn’t allowed to cry. They burned the corpses.” A team of experts, mandated by the UN Human Rights…
The Anglophone crisis has plagued the north western and south western regions of Cameroon for more than a year and seems no closer to resolution. It has reportedly caused the deaths of at least 120 civilians and 43 members of the security forces. Since the end of 2016, and exacerbated since October 2017, the…
On March 30, the UN Security Council renewed the mandate of the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), known under its acronym MONUSCO. In contrast to last year, it was renewed without the threat of budget cuts or any major changes to its complex mandate. The mission maintains its two priorities: addressing the tense…
As the world witnesses a drastic increase in the numbers of refugees and forced migrants, governments, humanitarian actors and development partners alike continue to debate the humanitarian, social, economic and security implications of this growth in international displacement. The global response to forced migration remains centred around three durable solutions: repatriation to country of…
Refugees and migrants who are trying to escape from Libya by boat are often intercepted at sea by the EU-funded Libyan coastguard and disembarked on land, where they are provided with immediate assistance by humanitarian agencies. Little is known about the interception process or what happens to refugees and migrants who have been returned…
They may have fled abuses in their country, but Burundian refugees in Nakivale refugee settlement in Uganda still live in fear for their safety and do not feel beyond the reach of the Burundian government and its militia, the Imbonerakure. During a visit to Nakivale refugee settlement in South-Western Uganda in December 2017, IRRI…
Over sixty people killed, thousands of houses burned down and more than 100,000 displaced people, including 42,000 refugees in neighbouring Uganda. Those are the consequences so far of the violence in the north-eastern Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since December 2017. The violence marks a counterpoint to the general trend in…
As South Sudanese leaders are set to participate in another series of talks in the coming months, their citizens continue to flee the violence, lawlessness and humanitarian disaster that characterises their country. From refugee settlements in Uganda and elsewhere in the region, they follow these discussions with a mix of scepticism, hope and rejection. Most…
In August 2014, eight months after the war in South Sudan began, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) described it as “a war on the children of South Sudan”. More than three years later, the violence in South Sudan continues, and children continue to be the victims…
“I don’t want to go back [to Burundi],” Marie[i], a 29 year old widow, told International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) in June, when we interviewed her in a refugee settlement in Uganda. “There are too many criminals in Burundi and I know they can’t put them all in prison.” Her husband, an opposition member, had…
On 28 August Israel’s High Court of Justice issued its ruling in an appeal on a district court decision concerning Israel’s “voluntary departures” scheme. Under this scheme, Eritreans and Sudanese irregular migrants are transferred from Israel to unnamed “third countries” in Africa. Israel has never disclosed the names of the countries involved in this…
On 26 January 2017, Gambia’s former Interior Minister, Ousmane Sonko, was arrested near Berne in Switzerland and charged with crimes against humanity. Two alleged victims, supported by the Swiss NGO TRIAL International, recently filed criminal charges against Sonko, claiming that “they were tortured by the Gambian authorities while Sonko was in charge of security services,…
