Category Archives: Africa

Rape is being used as weapon of war in Ethiopia, say witnesses

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Ethiopian nun speaks of widespread horror she and colleagues are seeing on a daily basis inside the heavily isolated region of Tigray

Thousands of women and girls are being targeted by the deliberate tactic of using rape as a weapon in the civil war that has erupted in Ethiopia, according to eyewitnesses.

In a rare account from inside the heavily isolated region of Tigray, where communications with the outside world are being deliberately cut off, an Ethiopian nun has spoken of the widespread horror she and her colleagues are seeing on a daily basis since a savage war erupted six months ago.

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Contractors accused of rescuing white workers first after Mozambique attack

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Amnesty International says private military firm in Cabo Delgado abandoned others to their fate

Survivors of a recent attack by Islamist insurgents in Mozambique have told Amnesty International that private military contractors prioritised white workers for evacuation as the extremists closed in during days of confused fighting.

An estimated 220 civilians sought refuge in the Amarula hotel in Palma, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, during the attack in late March.

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Campaigners lose court case to stop Ugandan forest clearance

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Court ruling gives go-ahead for sugar plantation in Bugoma forest, home to endangered chimpanzees

Conservationists in Uganda have condemned as “shallow and absurd” a court ruling that authorised the government to allow swathes of a tropical forest to be cleared for a sugar-cane plantation.

Three environmental groups had taken the government to court over a decision to allow Hoima Sugar Ltd to build on 5,500 hectares (13,500 acres) in the Bugoma Forest Reserve.

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Violence against women ‘a pandemic’, warns UN envoy

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A decade after Istanbul convention was drawn up to end gender-based violence, activists report decline in women’s rights and safety

A decade after the launch of the Istanbul convention, the landmark human rights treaty to stop gender-based violence, women are facing a global assault on their rights and safety, according to campaigners.

This week marked 10 years since the first 13 countries signed up to the convention, seen as a turning point in efforts to address violence against women.

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Two transgender women jailed in Cameroon over homosexuality law

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Social media celebrity Shakiro and friend given five-year sentences as rights groups fear crackdown on LGBT+ community

Two transgender women in Cameroon have been convicted of “attempting homosexuality” and sentenced to five years in prison, in a case feared to be part of a growing campaign against sexual minorities, according to rights groups.

Shakiro, a popular social media figure, and Patricia were convicted on Tuesday. The charges included public indecency and non-possession of a national ID card, an offence rarely prosecuted in Cameroon.

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Price of gold: DRC’s rich soil bears few riches for its miners – photo essay

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As the value of gold reached new heights last year, those mining it continued to face crippling deprivation and dangerous conditions

  • Produced as part of Congo In Conversation, with the support of the Carmignac photojournalism award. Text and photographs by Moses Sawasawa, a photographer based in Goma and co-founder of Collectif Goma Oeil

The muddy slopes surrounding the eastern Congolese gold-mining town of Kamituga hold vast wealth and crippling deprivation.

In South Kivu province near the borders of Rwanda and Burundi, Kamituga has mineral resources estimated to be worth $24tn (£17tn) in untapped deposits. Yet the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has one of the lowest levels of GDP per capita in the world and people work in dangerous conditions with little hope of scratching out anything more than a meagre existence from tough and dangerous work.

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Welcome to Semuliki: on the trail of the ADF’s Islamist militants | photo essay

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Photojournalist Hugh Kinsella Cunningham has been embedded with Congolese soldiers in the DRC’s ‘triangle of death’. The elusive insurgents they are hunting have pledged allegiance to Islamic State

At the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, in a vast territory that ranges from the lofty Rwenzori mountains to the lush rainforest of the Semliki valley, one of the world’s most active militant groups is responsible for the massacre of hundreds of civilians.

The ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) was originally an opposition rebel group from Uganda rooted in a radical agenda of religious militancy. Taking advantage of the regional power vacuum, the group fled to Beni territory in neighbouring DRC to find shelter from the Ugandan army.

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At least 1m people facing starvation as Madagascar’s drought worsens

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People eating termites and clay as UN says acute malnutrition has almost doubled this year in south

Madagascar’s worst drought in 40 years has left more than a million people facing a year of desperate food shortages.

The south of the island will produce less than half its usual harvest in the coming months because of low rains, prolonging a hunger crisis already affecting half the Grand Sud area’s population, the UN estimates.

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Libya’s first female foreign minister pressed to quit

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Najla El-Mangoush subjected to personal abuse after demanding withdrawal of Turkish troops and mercenaries

Libya’s first female foreign minister has come under pressure to resign and been subjected to personal abuse seven weeks into the job, after she called for Turkish troops and mercenaries to leave her country.

Najla El-Mangoush, a lawyer and human rights activist, was appointed foreign minister by the country’s interim prime minister, Abdelhamid Dbeibah, after he faced a backlash for backtracking on promises that 30% of ministerial posts would go to women.

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Ethiopian patriarch pleads for international help to stop rape and genocide by government troops

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Orthodox priest releases video statement on suppression of Tigray district

Ethiopian government forces and their allies are committing genocide in the country’s war-torn northern province of Tigray, the head of Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church has claimed in a videoed statement demanding urgent international intervention.

The appeal by Abuna [Patriarch] Mathias follows fresh allegations of ethnic cleansing, gang rapes, extrajudicial killings and other atrocities by soldiers loyal to Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who ordered an invasion of Tigray last November.

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Refugees and the Armenian genocide: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

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UK aid cuts will put tens of thousands of children at risk of famine, says charity

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Save the Children’s analysis finds Britain will spend 80% less on nutrition abroad this year, as hunger levels rise around the world

Britain is set to spend 80% less on helping feed children in poorer nations than before the pandemic, according to a charity’s analysis.

Save the Children said the British government will spend less than £26m this year on vital nutrition services in developing countries, a drop of more than three-quarters from 2019. The estimate of aid cuts to nutrition comes after UN agencies called for urgent action to avert famine in 20 countries including Yemen, South Sudan and northern Nigeria.

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Libyan coastguard boat that shot Italian fisher was provided by Rome

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Italian government supplied vessel to help Tripoli control flow of migrants in Mediterranean

An Italian fisher wounded when his trawler was machined-gunned by the Libyan coastguard was fired on from a boat supplied by Italy’s government to help Tripoli control the flow of migrants.

Libyan authorities, who say the coastguard vessel fired warning shots into the air, said three Italian fishing vessels had entered Libyan territorial waters without authorisation before the incident on Thursday, the latest episode in a territorial dispute involving crews from the Sicilian port of Mazara del Vallo who fish for red prawns off the Libyan coast.

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Mozambique insurgency: 20,000 still trapped near gas plant six weeks after attack

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People fleeing militant violence near Total’s Afungi project in Cabo Delgado have been blocked by government forces

More than 20,000 Mozambicans have been trapped near a huge natural gas project in the country’s Cabo Delgado province, more than a month since it was abandoned after a militant attack.

People camped at the gates of French energy company Total’s Afungi site have had been unable to escape, despite fears of imminent violence, and have limited food because the Mozambican government has blocked humanitarian access.

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Italian fisher wounded after Libyan coastguard reportedly shot at boat

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Navy rescues man, who was injured in one arm, after coastguard fired on his boat off the coast of Misrata in Sicily

Italy’s navy has rescued an Italian fisher who was wounded after the Libyan coastguard reportedly fired on his boat.

Salvatore Quinci, mayor of the fishing port of Mazaro del Vallo in south-western Sicily, said members of the coastguard shot at the fisherman’s boat off the coast of Misrata, the Italian news agency Agi reported.

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Global shortfall of nearly 1m midwives due to failure to value role, study finds

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Investing in midwifery could prevent two-thirds of maternal and newborn deaths, but investment and training are urgently needed

The world is facing a shortage of 900,000 midwives, with more than half the shortfall in Africa, where nearly two-thirds of maternal deaths occur, according to a new survey.

Insufficient resources and a failure to recognise the importance of the role mean there has been little progress since the last study in 2014, according to the State of the World’s Midwifery report, which looked at 194 countries.

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Uganda passes bill criminalising same-sex relationships and sex work

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The conservative African country insists it is ‘not yet ready’ for gay rights as campaigners say the flawed legislation sanctions rape

The Ugandan parliament has passed a controversial sexual offences bill which further criminalises same-sex relationships and sex work.

The laws were passed by MPs this week, reiterating sections of legislation first enforced in the country by British colonial rule. They condemn same-sex couples who perform acts deemed against the “order of nature” to 10 years’ imprisonment.

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Revealed: 2,000 refugee deaths linked to illegal EU pushbacks

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A Guardian analysis finds EU countries used brutal tactics to stop nearly 40,000 asylum seekers crossing borders

EU member states have used illegal operations to push back at least 40,000 asylum seekers from Europe’s borders during the pandemic, methods being linked to the death of more than 2,000 people, the Guardian can reveal.

In one of the biggest mass expulsions in decades, European countries, supported by EU’s border agency Frontex, has systematically pushed back refugees, including children fleeing from wars, in their thousands, using illegal tactics ranging from assault to brutality during detention or transportation.

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Rwanda: blood on their hands – archive, 3 December 1994

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3 December 1994: When will those responsible for the massacre in Rwanda be brought to justice? As investigators close in, the ex-ministers who ordered the slaughter are living in a hotel across the border in Zaire, desperately trying to rewrite the history of genocide

Rwanda’s former Minister of Information, Eliezer Niyitegeka, looks more comic than intimidating. He wears a dazzling white suit, afro-hairstyle and has an AK-47 slung across his shoulder. He last set foot in Rwanda in mid-July. He and the other ministers of the ousted Rwanda government have taken refuge over the border in Bukava, Zaire. Not for them the miseries of Goma’s refugee camps. Many have settled into the Hotel Riviera, where comforts include pornographic movies after midnight. The exiled regime’s offices are furnished with computers and a satellite phone. Here they are attempting to rewrite the history of the Rwandan genocide.

Related: Thousands massacred in Rwanda

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‘Gamechanger’: Uganda launches drone delivering HIV drugs to remote islands

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Technology could ensure critical medicines reach Lake Victoria communities with country’s highest prevalence of HIV/Aids

As the bottles of medication are carefully loaded into the body of the drone, a small crowd gathers to watch on the other side of the yellow tape marking out the grassy landing strip.

With a gentle buzz the drone rises, a little uncertainly, into the sky, on its 1.5-metre wings. The precious cargo leaving Bufumira health centre III, in Uganda’s Kalangala district, is critical drugs for people living in some of the most far-flung communities in the region. Kalangala is made up of 84 islands in Lake Victoria, the world’s largest tropical lake, which Uganda shares with Tanzania and Kenya.

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