In April 2019, IS declared its so-called Central African Province, known as ISCAP. Attacks attributed to its Central African Province affiliate have been limited to Mozambique and the South Africa is reportedly preparing to deploy troops to Mozambique to help combat the insurgency in South African and Mozambican officials, however, have not made official comments on the matter.

Ceneta) By Ignatius Ssunna and Gerald Imray KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) — Rwanda on Tuesday became the third African Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo told The Associated Press in a statement that the East African and Eswatini in Africa last month and has said it is seeking more agreements with African nations. It sent eight men from South Sudan, Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in early July Eswatini is Africa’s last absolute monarchy, and the king rules over government and political parties

What is the background in the Central African Republic to these cases? How did the ICC become involved in the Central African Republic? What does recent unrest in the Central African Republic mean for the trial? The Central African Republic held presidential elections on December 27, 2020. High-level officials from the African Union, Economic Community of Central African States, European Union

REUTERS By: Paul Carsten, Reade Levinson, David Lewis, and Libby George REUTERS/Paul Carsten & Christopher Van Der Perre Since at least 2013, the Nigerian Army has run a secret, systematic and illegal abortion program in the country’s northeast, terminating at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls, many of whom had been kidnapped and raped by Islamist militants, according to dozens of witness accounts and documentation reviewed by Reuters . The abortions mostly were carried out without the person’s consent – and often without their prior knowledge, according to the witness accounts. The women and girls ranged from a few weeks to eight months pregnant, and some were as young as 12 years old, interviews and records showed. This investigation is based on interviews with 33 women and girls who say they underwent abortions while in the custody of the Nigerian Army. Just one said she freely gave consent. Reporters also interviewed five civilian healthcare workers and nine security personnel involved in the program, including soldiers and other government employees such as armed guards engaged in escorting pregnant women to abortion sites. In addition, Reuters reviewed copies of military documents and civilian hospital records describing or tallying thousands of abortion procedures. The existence of the army-run abortion program hasn’t been previously reported. The campaign relied on deception and physical force against women who were kept in military custody for days or weeks. Three soldiers and a guard said they commonly assured women, who often were debilitated from captivity in the bush, that the pills and injections given to them were to restore their health and fight diseases such as malaria. In some instances, women who resisted were beaten, caned, held at gunpoint or drugged into compliance. Others were tied or pinned down, as abortion drugs were inserted inside them, said a guard and a health worker. Women and girls are trapped in a titanic struggle in northeast Nigeria between the federal government and Islamist extremists – a war that has raged for 13 years. At least 300,000 people have died since the conflict began, some due to violence, many more from starvation and disease, according to the United Nations and human rights groups. The northeast, a region of semi-arid savannahs, thick forest and floodplains, once was known as the breadbasket of the nation. But in the course of the war it has collapsed into economic devastation and widespread hunger, creating massive displacement and what the U.N. has called one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Central to the abortion program is a notion widely held within the military and among some civilians in the northeast: that the children of insurgents are predestined, by the blood in their veins, to one day take up arms against the Nigerian government and society. Four soldiers and one guard said they were told by superiors that the program was needed to destroy insurgent fighters before they could be born. “It’s just like sanitizing the society,” said a civilian health worker, one of seven people who acknowledged performing abortions under army orders. Soldiers said orders came from direct superiors on how to run and tally abortion transports, how to keep the program under wraps and where to bury any casualties. Health workers at civilian hospitals said their orders to perform abortions came from army officers. Forced abortions may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to four legal experts briefed by Reuters on its findings. Although forced abortions are not specifically criminalized under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the experts said, they could be construed as torture or other inhumane treatment and be prosecuted as such. [Genocide Watch comment: In fact, forced abortions are criminalized under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which incorporates the Genocide Convention. When intended to destroy an ethnic or religious group in whole or in part, forced abortions are acts of genocide under Article 2 (d) of the Genocide Convention: "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group."] Most of the women Reuters interviewed said they were given no explanation for the injections and pills they received. Others, like Fati, said medics and soldiers passed off injections and pills as cures for weakness or disease. In reality, the medications were intended to terminate their pregnancies, according to documentation from hospitals and military facilities. Nigerian facilities often used misoprostol, which helps induce labor or contractions, according to the documentation reviewed by Reuters. The drug is also used to treat ulcers and post-partum hemorrhaging, and is widely available in Nigerian cities, including through unofficial abortion-drug distribution networks. Women sometimes were also given the progesterone-blocker called mifepristone, which in many countries is used in conjunction with misoprostol in medication abortions. Also given was the drug oxytocin, which is widely used during labor to stimulate contractions and safe to use when under medical supervision. Though experts say it is not recommended for abortions, it was sometimes given at military bases to trigger terminations, said two soldiers who performed the procedures. Using oxytocin to induce abortion is dangerous, several international medical experts told Reuters, particularly if it is injected intramuscularly, as soldiers involved in the Nigerian program said it was. If the drug is administered too quickly, the results can be fatal, the experts said. The medications misoprostol and mifepristone are considered safe for abortions when the standard medical protocol is used, according to the World Health Organization and other authorities. Copyright 2022 Reuters

Exclusions in the Modern World", based on #LGBTQ #Rohingya #BosnianGenocide #Africa #Islamophobia

Tensions are rising in the southern African country as the economy implodes.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s efforts to strengthen his country’s strategic presence in the Horn of Africa In recent years, the Shabab, which controls large swaths of south and central Somalia, has continued Despite a flurry of American drone strikes and a 20,000-strong African Union peacekeeping mission fighting

Mpiranya is top of a list of remaining fugitives indicted by an international tribunal Jason Burke Africa still quite active, still doing business and until recently has been moving around in east and central Africa , possibly between Zimbabwe, the DRC and South Africa .” The report concluded that France had been blinded by its colonial attitude towards Africa in the runup fugitives, the lack of cooperation from governments remained a challenge, particularly in east and southern Africa

, Israeli Defense Forces called for over a million Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate to the south Anyone who chooses not to evacuate from the North of the Gaza Strip to the South of the Gaza Strip may classification and discrimination to create a hierarchical system of oppression like the apartheid system in South Africa or the old segregation system in the southern United States.

Father Isaac Achi, a Nigerian Catholic priest, was murdered in Niger State on Jan. 15, 2023. | Diocese of Minna A U.S. State Department official sent EWTN a statement noting that “after careful review” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has decided not to put Nigeria back on a list of offenders of religious liberty. The statement comes as human rights advocates and members of Congress are pressing the Biden administration to place Nigeria on the watch list in an effort to stop the violence and persecution of Christians in the country. More than 5,000 Christians were killed in 2022 in Nigeria, according to religious freedom watchdog Open Doors International. The widespread violence and persecution of Christians in Nigeria have continued this year with the January murder of Father Isaac Achi, who was burned to death Jan. 17. This led many religious rights advocates to call for the U.S. to take a strong stance in defense of Nigerian Christians by adding Nigeria to its annual list of countries that violate religious freedom, known as the Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) list. The unnamed U.S. Department of State official Feb. 7 sent a statement in response to an inquiry from EWTN correspondent Owen Jensen regarding Nigeria’s omission from the CPC list. “After careful review, the Secretary [of State] has assessed that Nigeria does not meet the legal threshold for designation under the International Religious Freedom Act,” the statement read. The State Department official said that “the United States takes all incidents of violence seriously and raises them regularly in our conversations with Nigerian officials.” As regards the murder of Father Achi, the statement said: “We are saddened and appalled.” “We do not know the motives of those responsible, but we condemn their heedless violence. We urge the Nigerian authorities to quickly bring them to justice,” read the statement from the State Department official. “We continue to have concerns about the religious freedom situation in Nigeria, which is well documented in the annual IRF (International Religious Freedom) Report,” the official said. “We will continue to press the government to address these.” The statement noted that the State Department has redesignated two terrorist organizations within Nigeria, Boko Haram and ISIS-WA, as “Entities of Particular Concern for religious freedom.” Human rights observers in Nigeria and members of the Catholic Church have argued, however, that the Nigerian government itself should be on the CPC list, in part, because it has allowed these groups to continue to persecute Christians and religious minorities. Bishop Jude Arogundade of the Diocese of Ondo, Nigeria, told a group gathered in Washington earlier this month that members of the ruling party have ties to terrorists. Arogundade’s diocese suffered a terrorist attack on Pentecost Sunday 2022 in which 50 Catholics attending Mass were killed at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Nigeria’s Owo state. Those who “are supposed to make things better, they are the ones involved in attacks here,” he told the group. Nina Shea, an international human rights lawyer and fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the group that terrorists in Nigeria continue to act with “impunity” and are rarely held accountable for their crimes. Rampant Christian persecution, including massacres, murders, and kidnappings, has been increasing in Nigeria in recent years, according to Aid to the Church in Need. Yet, 2022 was the second year in a row that the nation was left off the CPC list. Nigeria’s continued exclusion from the CPC list prompted Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey; Rep. French Hill, R-Arkansas; and Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, to introduce a resolution last week to push back on the nation’s abuses. The bipartisan resolution urges the State Department to redesignate Nigeria a CPC and to appoint a special envoy to monitor and combat human rights violations in the region. “I look forward to asking the State Department directly about this issue when they come to testify in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” Hill told CNA in response to this week’s State Department email. “The Biden administration continues to leave Nigeria off the CPC list for political gain. This resolution sends an important message to the Biden administration and the government of Nigeria that the U.S. Congress sees what is happening there and will continue to speak out against the ongoing violence and the government’s inadequate response,” Hill told CNA last week. Copyright 2023 EWTN

China now has more embassies in Africa than the United States, 52 to 49. Violence is escalating over a growing swath of West Africa. The threat is pushing south from the Sahel into areas previously untouched by extremist violence, including The American military has a relatively light footprint across Africa, relying on European and African The administration’s Africa policy is complicated, at best. Mr.

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan has condemned a series of brutal sexual attacks on women and girls travelling from their villages to the town of Bentiu in the Unity region of South Sudan.