Exactly one year ago, hundreds of people were slaughtered in Yumbi, in western Democratic Republic of Congo. On 15 and 16 December 2018, assailants targeted members of the Nunu ethnic group in a deliberate and organised manner. The attack lasted less than 48 hours but left the area in total disarray. As attention is…
Il y a exactement un an, des centaines de personnes étaient massacrées à Yumbi, dans la partie occidentale de la République démocratique du Congo. Les 16 et 17 décembre 2018, des assaillants ont ciblé des membres de l’ethnie Nunu de façon délibérée et organisée. L’attaque a duré moins que 48 heures mais a laissé…
Forcing Burundian refugees in Tanzania to leave the country is not only problematic legally, it could also sow the seeds for renewed conflict and displacement in Burundi. At the end of August, the Burundian and Tanzanian governments jointly announced that the 183,000 Burundian refugees would be repatriated. While such a large-scale operation has yet…
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…
One of the slums in Kibuye, Kampala where urban refugees live. Picture extracted from video by scidevnet Contrary to public perception, the majority of refugees live in cities and towns rather than camps. In these urban spaces, some send their children to school, generate livelihoods and successfully negotiate their own way through exile. Others barely…
En RDC, l’Église catholique affirme “que les données en sa possession […] consacrent le choix d’un candidat comme président de la République”. Quand les voix du seigneur soufflent le nom du futur président. C’est une véritable bombe qu’ont larguée les dignitaires de l’Église catholique du Congo ce jeudi. Fort de ses 40 000 observateurs envoyés…
Photo by Stefanie Glinski/IRIN More than four million South Sudanese, a third of the country’s population, have been forced to flee their homes during the last five years. Without an effort to include their views – not just those of the country’s political elite – lasting peace will be difficult to achieve. The signing in…
With words and actions, the Tanzanian is pressuring Burundian refugees to go home, putting them at greater risk of abuses.
In July 2016, serious fighting erupted in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, when a peace agreement signed less than a year before broke down. Many citizens were killed, often in deliberate, ethnically motivated attacks, while others sought safety in the vicinity of the premises of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). Many more…
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…
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…
Over the last couple of years, scores of activists have died protesting against President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down. In the latest bout of nationwide demonstrations on 31 December 2017, at least seven more were killed as they took the streets. Many more were arrested. However, it is not just the Democratic Republic…
Their priority is not the people of Somalia,” a Somali woman who had recently fled to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya said about peacekeepers in her home country. “It is the government and themselves.” Unfortunately, this view is not unique. Civilians in countries with peace operations often experience a wide gap between them…
Read the press coverage of the report: Lucy Hovil, “Israel: Refugees not Welcome,” 21 September 2015 The Guardian article Al Jazeera, “Rejected by Israel, Eritreans find shelter in Germany,” 3 March 2017 Rebélion article Radio France International Interview Al Jazeera, “A refugee’s gruelling odyssey – from Eritrea to Germany,” 5 October 2015 Al Jazeera, “Do…
The idea of the deterrence project originated in one of the Academy’s Advisory Council meetings. Justice SONG Sang-Hyun, former President of the International Criminal Court (‘ICC’), proposed that the Academy could conduct a study into whether the ICC has had a deterrent effect. A preliminary literature survey disclosed that no major study had been conducted…
State repression and violent conflict lead to gross human rights violations on a daily basis worldwide. Many of these conflicts and violations barely see the light of day as they often happen in areas less of a priority to international key players. Courageous local human rights monitors struggle to collect evidence and put pressure…
The deportation under a voluntary scheme of Eritreans and Sudanese from Israel to “third countries” in Africa is exposing them to danger, with some being left without proper documentation and at risk of discrimination in unfamiliar environments, a report released this week says.
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,…
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…