Uganda is currently holding a Solidarity Summit on Refugees. The summit is taking place as Uganda hosts over a million refugees, the majority of whom have fled the upsurge in fighting in South Sudan. Despite the extraordinary speed and scale of displacement (between July 2016 and January 2017, over half a million refugees arrived in…
Is UNAMID next on the UN peacekeeping chopping block? It seems likely, as years of advocacy by the Government of Sudan and the current US administration’s eagerness to cut UN peacekeeping costs seem to come together. But many civilians continue to rely on the peacekeeping mission’s relative protection, as attacks on civilians continue. Today,…
When Cameroon’s President Paul Biya decided to switch the internet in Cameroon’s anglophone provinces back on in April after three months, it might have looked like the crisis that had paralysed those parts of the country since the end of last year was over. But faced with continuous internal and external problems, including anglophone discontent,…
In October 2009, the African Union adopted The Kampala Convention, (the Convention) which was designed for the protection and assistance of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Africa. It came into force in 2012, 30 days after its ratification by the 15th member state. According to paragraph k of the 1st article of the Kampala Convention,…
President Trump’s recent Executive Order is, without a doubt, extreme. The four-month hold on allowing refugees into the US, and the temporary ban on travellers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen, is both ridiculous and cruel. It is also wrong at multiple levels. It is flawed in its methodology, mistakenly based…
A week after accepting defeat in the Gambia’s 1 December polls, President Yahya Jammeh, in an extraordinary volte-face, rejected the results of the presidential election and ordered soldiers to take control of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), throwing the country into uncertainty. Today anxiety and disarray prevails in the minds of many Gambians as they…
In Burundi, people know only too well the consequences of war. And one of the most tangible consequences of war is displacement. But not only does war lead to displacement, failures to create a viable end to displacement can create the conditions for further unrest. This is precisely what has happened in Burundi, where a…
On 1 December 2016, Gambians will go to the polls to elect a president with the likely scenario being the incumbent, President Yahya Jammeh will be re-elected for a fifth time. Twenty-two years ago, Jammeh was a young army officer when he took power in a military coup. He was then elected in 1996, and…
In May 2016, the government of Kenya announced its plans to close Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, by the end of this month, November. The government asserted that one of their primary reasons was security. The camp is home to almost 300,000 refugees from neighbouring countries with the vast majority – over 260,000…
This has been a rough month for the International Criminal Court (ICC). After years of threats of withdrawal from the Rome Statute which created the ICC by African states, South Africa, Gambia and Burundi have made moves to do so this month (South Africa and Burundi have formally notified the UN of their withdrawals while…
On September 19, the UN Secretary-General will convene a summit meeting at the UN General Assembly in New York to address current “large movements of refugees and migrants.” Its goal is to ensure a re-commitment to the core principles of refugee protection and discuss new frameworks to respond to the increasing number of people on the move….
International Justice Day is celebrated on 17 July, the anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC). The day is meant to serve as a reminder of the importance of bringing perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide to justice. Back in 2012, a UN Human Rights…
On 2 June 2016, the Congolese organisation Filimbi asked Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), to investigate the ongoing situation near Beni, in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In the words of a representative of the organisation, “A case like that of the massacres of…
After thirteen years in the country the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), deployed at the end of the country’s civil war in 2003, is preparing to leave the country and hand over full responsibility for security back to Liberia’s government by the end of next month. What is remarkable about this is not that…
It may not be easy to determine the social cost of the recent presidential elections and ensuing violence in the Republic of Congo (Congo Brazzaville) but it is evident that it was quite high. On 16 April, following his victory in controversial presidential elections held in March, Mr. Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who has held power for…
The government of Kenya says it plans to close Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, which hosts approximately 330,000 people, as well as shutting the Department of Refugee Affairs (DRA). The announcement, on Friday 6 May, was no doubt a pre-election stunt of Trump-like proportions that plays to an electorate’s fear of generating instability and…
At his inauguration ceremony yesterday, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, whilst sharing the stage with Sudan’s President Omar-al Bashir, against whom there is an outstanding International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant, stated the ICC was “a bunch of useless people.” “When they started, we used to take the ICC serious but not anymore. They are a…
On 15 April 2016, a cross-border raid from South Sudan into Ethiopia’s Gambella region left more than 200 dead. According to the Ethiopian government, more than 108 women and children were abducted and some 2,000 head of cattle stolen during the attack that targeted Nuer villages in the districts of Jikawo and Lare. Following the…
On 23 April, it was announced that almost 98% of voters in Darfur’s referendum voted for maintaining the region as five states. The referendum – organised over three days in mid-April by the Sudanese authorities – allowed the people of Darfur to decide whether to keep the current arrangement of five states or to reunify…
Imagine being denied citizenship and treated like a foreigner in the only country you have ever known, the country where you were born and spent your whole life, the place where everyone you know (friends, family, even perhaps your grandparents) live. Citizenship provides both practical rights and protections (such as the right to vote) and…
