CIVILIANS UNDER ATTACK IN SUDAN: A ROBUST AU RESPONSE REQUIRED

19 April 2023 “I believe the drafters of the Constitutive Act anticipated scenarios similar to the one obtaining in Sudan, when they coined article 4(h). Africans can not stand by and continue to watch atrocities being committed in Sudan without taking all necessary...

RISK OF INCREASED VIOLENCE IN NIGERIA’S 2023 ELECTIONS

Nigerians were promised free, fair and transparent general elections in 2023, but what seems clear now is that the electoral process will be flawed and violent. However, action can still be taken to avoid the worst outcomes. Atrocities Watch Africa (AWA) and Global...

Discussion on the Ethiopian Peace Process: filling in the gaps

After two years of fighting the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) signed a Cessation of Hostilities Agreement,[1] on 2 November 2022 in Pretoria South Africa. This was followed by the signing of an Executive Declaration on...

Africans Caught Up in the Ukraine War

From Atrocities Watch Monitor No. 3 April 2022. Read full newsletter here Six weeks on from the start of Russian military advances in Ukraine, the crisis has sparked Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. More than 4 million Ukrainians had fled the...

Open Letter to the United Nations Security Council

Your Excellencies, As concerned citizens from Africa standing in solidarity with the people of South Sudan, we write to you as you approach a critical decision that could have lasting implications for the fragile peace and the future stability of Africa’s youngest...

Sudan – Political Agreement

On November 21st, 2021, a political agreement was signed between military coup leader, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. The agreement reinstates Hamdok as Sudan’s Prime Minister, calls for the release of all political prisoners as well...

Letter to the AU and IGAD on the Sudanese Military Coup

We stand in solidarity with the people of Sudan and we demand more resolute action from the African Union (AU), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the United Nations (UN) We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, are deeply concerned...

Road to the Burundi Referendum 2018

On May 17 2018, Burundians will go to the polls for a referendum in which the people will decide whether or not the president’s term of office should be extended from five to seven years. The opposition in Burundi has seen this as a violation to the constitution and...

DAY 5 OF AGE LIMIT PROCEEDINGS

After its adjournment on Thursday 12 April, the court hearing on the age limit petition resumed on 17 April for the cross examinations of the witnesses that had been summoned by the court. The list of witnesses to be cross examined included Betty Nambooze, the Mukono...

Age Limit Petition day 4: Defense presents their case

The fourth day of the age limit petition carried both a serious and hilarious tone, being the first day the defense was to present its case to the court. The deputy attorney general Mwesigwa Rukutana with his team of lawyers including Christine Kawa, the solicitor...

Day two of the Age Limit Petition

The second day of the constitutional amendment petition hearing started off with the court house being made available to the public to follow the proceedings. The petitioners continued to present their case they pointed out that the clause to extend the MPs term of...

Mutilation and brutality

One of the enduring images of the Free State was the severed hands which became "the most potent symbol of colonial brutality". The practice was comparatively common in colonial Africa (by the Portuguese in Cabinda, for example)[28] and originated in connection with...

The Rwandan Genocide (1994)

On April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying Juvénal Habyarimana, the President of Rwanda, and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu President of Burundi, was shot down as it prepared to land at Kigali. Both presidents were killed when the plane crashed. Military and militia groups...

20th century’s first genocide

Namibia, then known as South-West Africa, became a German colony in 1884 under the rule of Otto von Bismarck and was lost to the British during the First World War. In 1904 the Herero and Nama people launched a rebellion against German colonial rule, over the specific...

Red Rubber system and forced labour

With the majority of the Free State's revenues derived from the export of rubber, a labour policy (known by critics as the "Red Rubber system") was created to maximise its extraction. Labour was demanded by the administration as taxation. This created a "slave...

The 1972 and 1993 Burundi genocides

In April of 1972, a rebellion broke out in Burundi led by Hutu army officers against the purge by the mainly Tutsi government of President Michombero. In response to the rebellion, the government using youth militias went on a killing spree that led to the death of...

The 1959 Genocide in Rwanda

One of the most contested version of a genocide was the event of 1959 in Rwanda. Was it genocide against Tutsi or was it a genuine national peasant revolution? When the Hutu rebelled against the Belgians and Tutsi elites that resulted in the death of about 20,000...

The Herero People in Namibia

It took 100 years after genocide for the German perpetrators to say « sorry » to the Herero and Namaqua tribes of Namibia. While the United Nations classified the atrocities to the two tribes as genocide in 1985, it was not until 2015 that the Germans said: “We...

King Leopold of Belgium in Congo

According to American writer, Adam Hochschold, King Leopold II of Belgium, like any other European power seeking new territory in Africa, carved for himself and took control of the vast un-exploited land on the banks of the River Congo in the present day...

Mau Mau

The Mau Mau movement of Kenya was a nationalist armed peasant revolt against the British colonial state, its policies, and its local supporters. The overwhelming majority of the Mau Mau fighters and of their supporters, who formed the “passive wing,” came from the...

Intervening Years

In the intervening years the most dramatic upheaval occurs in British Somaliland, where the uprising led by Mohammed ibn Abdullah Hassan (known to the British at the time as the Mad Mullah) takes two decades to suppress. Member of Interim south west administration...

Colonial competitors: 1839-1897

European interest in Somalia develops after 1839, when the British begin to use Aden, on the south coast of Arabia, as a coaling station for ships on the route to India. The British garrison requires meat. The easiest local source is the Somali coast. France and...

Violations by pro-Gbagbo Forces

Attacks Against West African Immigrants Residents from other West African countries, notably Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Niger, and Nigeria, are being subjected to a steady and increasingly violent stream of abuses by militiamen and members of the security...

Atrocities in Ivory Coast

(Abidjan) - The three-month campaign of organized violence by security forces under the control of Laurent Gbagbo and militias that support him gives every indication of amounting to crimes against humanity. A new Human Rights Watch investigation in Abidjan indicates...

Inside Story: Why is Boko Haram teaming up with ISIL?

"The victims were well targeted because they were all residents of Gwargware village... who fled to Miringa some months ago to escape forced conscription by Boko Haram." Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege, reporting from Abuja, said Boko Haram had embarked on a "really bloody...

‘Escaped conscription’

Witnesses described how the fighters entered the homes and executed the men in Miringa. Resident Baballe Mohammed, said the gunmen came to the village around 1.30am on Friday morning. They "picked 13 men from selected homes and took them to the Eid prayer ground...

Week 17 Report on Burundi

Burundi’s political situation remains tense, with continued reports of enforced disappearances, abductions, extra judicial killings, and incommunicado detention of political activists amongst other grave violations. All these incidents are directly linked to...

Week 16 Report on Burundi

Burundi’s political situation remains tense, with continued reports of enforced disappearances, abductions, extra judicial killings, and incommunicado detention of political activists amongst other grave violations. All these incidents are directly linked to...

Week 15 Report on Burundi

Burundi’s political situation remains tense, with continued reports of enforced disappearances, abductions, extra judicial killings, and incommunicado detention of political activists amongst other grave violations. All these incidents are directly linked to...

Week 14 Report on Burundi

As the violence from the contested 2015 elections continue to be recorded, efforts by regional actors through the East African Community, and the African Union to resolve the political, human rights and humanitarian crisis continues to suffer sets. During the...