Day: November 24, 2022

Amnesty International on Wednesday urged the African Union to take “long-awaited” steps toward creating a promised war crimes tribunal to try atrocities committed during South Sudan’s bloody five-year conflict.

The establishment of an AU-led ‘hybrid court’ to prosecute those responsible for war-time atrocities was first agreed on in a 2015 peace deal, and again in 2018, but never implemented.

Government and opposition forces have been accused of heinous crimes, including gang rape, ethnic massacres and enlisting child soldiers during the civil war that left nearly 400,000 people dead in the world’s youngest nation.

Amnesty and the South Sudanese Transitional Justice Working Group, a coalition of civil society and faith-based groups, says the AU must empower a court to investigate “the most serious crimes on the continent”.

“The formation of this court should not have been delayed for so long. The AU must take [this] long-awaited and bold action,” Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty’s director for East and Southern Africa, says in a statement.

“The failure to establish the hybrid court reflects a lack of political will in South Sudan’s government to hold those most responsible for serious crimes, which are likely to include senior political and military officials, to account.”

James Ninrew, the chair of the Transitional Justice Working Group, says that given the government’s unwillingness to pursue perpetrators, the AU should not place the court in South Sudan, but elsewhere in Africa, and must ensure its judicial independence.

Amnesty International and the TJWG recommend that the African Union Commission identify and recruit key staff who can start working remotely before the Court is fully established.

Source: Radio Tamazuj

ACCRA— West African nations met with European leaders on Tuesday for talks on “homegrown” ways to prevent jihadist conflict in the Sahel from threatening countries on the Gulf of Guinea, but the get-together ended with no major announcement.

Coastal states Ghana, Benin, Togo and Ivory Coast face increasing threats and attacks from militants across their northern borders with Burkina Faso and Niger.

The summit in Ghana’s capital Accra also comes as more Western nations have withdrawn peacekeepers from Mali after its military junta strengthened cooperation with Russia.

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo said worsening Sahel security was “threatening to engulf the entire West African region”.

“Terrorist groups, emboldened by their apparent success in the region, are looking (for) new operational grounds, a development that has triggered a southward drift of the menace,” he said.

Under the so-called Accra Initiative, heads of state from the Gulf of Guinea and leaders from Niger and Burkina Faso met in Ghana with representatives from the West African bloc ECOWAS, the EU, Britain and France.

Akufo-Addo called for a “home-grown initiative” to answer the threat as well as a comprehensive approach involving economic and social development to tackle the roots of militancy.

“We remain firm in our commitment to shoulder a greater part of the responsibility.”

However, they noted “the partners’ commitments” to support the initiative, and “recommended that concrete actions, particularly in terms of funding, be taken to support countries severely affected by terrorism”.

The Sahel conflict began in northern Mali in 2012, spread to Burkina Faso and Niger in 2015 and now Gulf of Guinea states are suffering sporadic attacks.

Ghana has beefed up security along its northern frontier and has so far escaped any cross-border attacks.

But Benin and Togo in particular have faced threats from across their northern borders with Burkina Faso.

Benin has recorded 20 incursions since 2021 while Togo has suffered at least five attacks, including two deadly assaults, since November 2021.

“For years we have been talking about the risk of contagion of the terrorist threat from the Sahel to the coastal states. Today this is not a risk any more, it is a reality,” European Council President Charles Michel told the summit.

French and other peacekeeping missions had been operating in Mali for almost a decade as a bulwark against the spread of violence.

But after two coups in Mali, the military junta increased cooperation with Moscow and allowed what Western nations call Russian mercenaries into the country.

That prompted France to pull out troops deployed under its Barkhane mission. Britain and Germany last week said they would also end peacekeeping missions.

Berlin confirmed on Tuesday it would seek to withdraw its troops from the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Mali by May 2024.

British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey last week said the UK would be “rebalancing” its deployment, though he did not give details about what form that would take.

He said Accra Initiative countries would likely need different capabilities than the British long-range reconnaissance forces currently in Mali.

“The United Kingdom’s armed forces already enjoy great relationships with many of the countries within the Accra Initiative and we stand ready to build on that,” he said in Accra.

“But this is a regional problem that you have here in West Africa and it’s right that you seek to provide the solution.”

Across the three Sahel nations, thousands of people have been killed, more than two million displaced and devastating damage has been inflicted on three of the poorest economies in the world.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Citizens in the Abyei Administrative Area are complaining about the surge in food prices in the market, saying they struggle to feed their families.

Speaking to Radio Tamazuj on Wednesday, several residents said the prices of food commodities have gone up to a level that people are no longer able to afford them.

Nyandeng Wek, a resident of Abyei, said: “The prices of commodities in Abyei are very expensive, and people have no alternatives. We only buy 3 cups of rice; each is sold at 500 SSP, so 3 cups cost 1,500 SSP, which is not even enough for a family meal.”

She added, ” the 5 kg sack of sugar is sold at 6,000 SSP. Life is terrible, prices have shot up, and when we ask a question as to why prices have gone up, the authorities say floodwaters have closed the roads.”

Osman Chol, a resident of Aneet, said citizens are hopeless due to the harsh living conditions in the area. He appealed to the authorities to assist poor families.

“Everything is hard in terms of living conditions. The price of a small tin of sorghum ranges from 300-3500 SSP, and it varies from one place to another,” he said.

In his part, Deng Juach, Director of Abyei’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, confirmed that the prices of essential commodities have shot up dramatically.

“The fluctuation of rainfall and floods, which intensified in October, destroyed farmlands in Abyei, and indeed, people are suffering from hunger even the intervention of humanitarian organizations is affected by flooded roads,” he said.

Last month, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said over 900,000 people were impacted by floods in 29 counties across South Sudan and in the southern part of the Abyei Administrative Area.

It further said people in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Warrap, Unity and Western Equatoria states, are the worst affected.

Source: Radio Tamazuj