The former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladić, nicknamed the ‘butcher of Bosnia’, has been sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. More than 20 years after the Srebrenica massacre, Mladic was found guilty at the United Nations-backed international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague of 10 offences involving extermination, murder and persecution of civilian populations. As he entered the courtroom, Mladić gave a broad smile and thumbs up to the cameras – a gesture that infuriated relatives of the victims. His defiance shifted into detachment as the judgment began: Mladić played with his fingers and nodded occasionally, looking initially relaxed. The verdict was disrupted for more than half an hour when he asked the judges for a bathroom break. After he returned, defence lawyers requested that proceedings be halted or shortened because of his high blood pressure. The judges denied the request. Mladić then stood up shouting “this is all lies” and “I’ll fuck your mother”. He was forcibly removed from the courtroom. The verdicts were read in his absence. Mladić removed from court after angry outburst – video Mladić, 74, was chief of staff of Bosnian Serb forces from 1992 until 1996, during the ferocious civil wars and ethnic cleansing that followed the break-up of the Yugoslav state. The one-time fugitive from international justice faced 11 charges, two of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and four of violations of the laws or customs of war. He was cleared of one count of genocide, but found guilty of all other charges. The separate counts related to “ethnic cleansing” operations in Bosnia, sniping and shelling attacks on besieged civilians in Sarajevo, the massacre of Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica and taking UN personnel hostage in an attempt to deter Nato airstrikes. The trial in The Hague, which took 530 days across more than four years, is arguably the most significant war crimes case in Europe since the Nuremberg trials, in part because of the scale of the atrocities involved. Almost 600 people gave evidence for the prosecution and defence, including survivors of the conflict. Delivering the verdicts, judge Alphons Orie said Mladić’s crimes “rank among the most heinous known to humankind and include genocide and extermination”. Orie dismissed mitigation pleas by the defence that Mladić was of “good character”, had diminished mental capacity and was in poor physical health. Relatives of victims flew into the Netherlands to attend the hearing, determined to see Mladić receive justice decades after the end of the war in which more than 100,000 people were killed. Among those present was Fikret Alić, the Bosnian who was photographed as an emaciated prisoner behind the wire of a prison camp in 1992. “Justice has won and the war criminal has been convicted,” he said after the verdict. Others were reduced to tears by the judge’s description of past atrocities. Fikret Alić holds a copy of Time magazine that featured his emaciated image on its cover in 1992. Photograph: Phil Nijhuis/AP Mladić was one of the world’s most wanted fugitives before his arrest in 2011 in northern Serbia. He was transferred to the ICTY in the Netherlands, where he refused to enter a plea. A not guilty plea was eventually entered on his behalf. Through much of the trial in The Hague, he was a disruptive presence in court, heckling judges and on one occasion making a cut-throat gesture towards the mother of one of the 8,000 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Mladić was acquitted of only one charge, that of genocide in Bosnian municipalities outside Srebrenica. The chamber ruled that although he was part of a joint criminal enterprise to carry out mass killings there, which represented crimes against humanity, they did not rise to the level of genocide because the victims did not represent a substantial proportion of the Bosnian Muslim population of those municipalities. The Bosnian Serb political leader, Radovan Karadžić, was also found not guilty of genocide in the municipalities. That tribunal verdict in 2016 triggered protests from Bosniaks, who wanted the court to acknowledge that genocide was committed across Bosnia, not just in Srebrenica. In evaluating Mladić’s culpability for genocide, the court pointed to his command and control of the Bosnian Serb army and interior ministry forces, which carried out almost all of the killings, his presence in the area, and his frequent remarks about how the country’s Muslims could “disappear”. Orie said: “The chamber found that the only reasonable inference was that the accused intended to destroy the Bosnian Muslim of Srebrenica as a substantial part of the protected group of Muslims in Bosnia Herzegovina. “Accordingly, the chamber found the accused intended to carry out the Srebrenica joint criminal enterprises through the commission of the crime of genocide and was a member of the Srebrenica joint criminal enterprise.” Ratko Mladić, the 'butcher of Bosnia' – video profile Once Mladic has exhausted any appeals, he could, theoretically, be sent to the UK to serve out the rest of his life behind bars. Britain is one of the countries that has signed up to the tribunal’s agreement on the enforcement of sentences. The UK has hosted other Serbian convicts sent on from the ICTY. In 2010, Radislav Krstić who was convicted at the Hague in 2001 for his part in the Srebrenica massacre, had his throat slashed in his cell at Wakefield prison by three Muslim inmates intent on revenge. The former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor is also serving out his 50 year prison term in a UK jail. Mladic will remain in the UN detention centre at Scheveningen, near the Hague, in the meantime. Any appeal will be dealt with by the successor court, the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals. The hearing, broadcast live, was followed closely in Bosnia. The Bosnian prime minister, Denis Zvizdić, said the verdict “confirmed that war criminals cannot escape justice regardless of how long they hide”. In Lazarevo, the Serbian village where Mladić was arrested in 2011, residents dismissed the guilty verdicts as biased. One, Igor Topolic, said: “All this is a farce for me. He [Mladić] is a Serbian national hero.” Mladić’s home village of Bozinovici retains a street named after the former general, where he is praised as a symbol of defiance and national pride. The trial is one of the last to be heard by the ICTY, which is to be dissolved at the end of the year. People, including victims, protest in front of the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prior to the verdict Photograph: John Thys/AFP/Getty Images After the ruling, Serge Brammertz, the ICTY’s chief prosecutor, said it was not a verdict against all Serb people. “Mladić’s guilt is his and his alone,” he said. Mladić’s defence lawyer, Dragan Ivetic, announced that he would appeal against the convictions. In Geneva, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, described Mladić as the “epitome of evil” and said his conviction was a “momentous victory for justice”. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Guardian

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomes a new UN General Assembly resolution on the safety of journalists and the issue of impunity for crimes of violence against them. RSF submitted recommendations for the resolution and urged states to approve it. The resolution on the safety of journalists and the issue of impunitywas adopted on 20 November by the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which is responsible for social, cultural, and humanitarian issues. The resolution’s central focus is on the “specific risks faced by womenjournalists in the exercise of their work,” including in the online sphere, and on the need to “effectively tackle gender-based discrimination, including violence, inequality and gender-based stereotypes.” The arbitrary detention and mistreatment of journalists, and the challenges they face in the “digital age,” are also mentioned in the resolution, in accordance with RSF’s requests. It urges member states “to do their utmost to prevent violence, threats and attacks against journalists and media” and “to bringperpetrators, including those who command, conspire to commit, aidand abet or cover up such crimes, to justice.”The resolution also calls on states to assume their responsibilities and to develop concrete mechanisms for protecting journalists. “We hail this new UN General Assembly resolution, the fourth on thesafety of journalists since 2012,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “It reflects a growing recognition of the need for action toreduce abuses against journalists and to combat impunity, begun inthe UN Plan of Action in 2012, and it consolidates international law. We now hope for swift and concrete implementation of theseprinciples.” The resolution is due to be definitively adopted in mid-December and many states have already expressed their support. International awareness The resolution also welcomes the recent decision to “mobilize anetwork of focal points throughout the United Nations system topropose specific steps to intensify efforts to enhance the safety ofjournalists and media workers” and urges the UN’s various branches to actively cooperate in this initiative. The mobilization of this network of focal points was announced by UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres on 2 November. RSF had called for the creation of such focal points within the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), within UN agencies such as UNDP and UN Women, and within peacekeeping operations in the field, so that the response to violence against journalists could be quicker and more systematic. In August, Guterres put Ana-Maria Menéndez, his senior adviser on policy, in charge of following cases involving the safety of journalists. The creation of this direct and permanent communication channel makes it possible to refer urgent cases to the secretary-general’s office and seek his intervention. It already facilitated promotion of the decision to appoint focal points within UN agencies and departments. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Reporters without Borders

Five years since British journalist John Cantlie was kidnapped in Syria, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the international community - in particular, the British government - to renew efforts to secure his immediate release. On 22 November 2012, the former Sunday Times reporter was kidnapped near the Turkish border in northern Syria, along with US journalist James Foley, who was later beheaded by the Islamic State (IS) in 2014. Cantlie has been used by the IS in 12 propaganda videos since being taken into captivity. “Today marks five long years that John Cantlie has been held in captivity by the Islamic State - five years deprived of his liberty, exploited, and used for propaganda purposes. We urge all relevant authorities to do their utmost to ensure that John and his family do not have to endure another day of this hell, and that he is immediately brought home safely”, said RSF’s UK Bureau Director, Rebecca Vincent. The last video in which Cantlie appeared, in December 2016, showed him looking pale and emaciated, indicating a dramatic physical change since his previous appearance in a video in July 2016. The December video showed him on the streets of Mosul for eight minutes, commenting on the destruction of the city’s bridges and interviewing residents. Previous videos had been filmed in Syrian and Iraqi cities including Aleppo, Kobani, and Raqqa, as well as Mosul. Following the December 2016 video, in July 2017 there were unsubstantiated reports in the Iraqi media that Cantlie had been killed in the Mosul airstrikes. In October, a French IS fighter told French magazine Paris Match that he had seen Cantlie “seven or eight months ago” in a prison in Raqqa, claiming that Cantlie had been speaking to prisoners about jail conditions. Cantlie remains one of around 22 journalists and media contributors currently believed to be held hostage by IS. Despite the fact that IS is losing ground in Iraq and Syria, there has been no information about the fate of these journalists. RSF calls on local and international authorities to redouble their efforts to find them all and bring them home safely. Ranked 158th and 177th respectively in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index, Iraq and Syria are among the world’s deadliest countries for journalists. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Reports without Borders

Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh on makeshift rafts have accused the Burmese military of murder and rape AP Images The UK has received "very troubling" evidence which will be used to assess whether genocide has been committed against Rohingya Muslims in Burma, Boris Johnson has said The Foreign Secretary added that the treatment of the Rohingya risked meeting the definition of ethnic cleansing, and called on Burma’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader Aung San Suu Kyi to condemn what was happening in her country before it was too late. Mr Johnson’s intervention came as human rights group Amnesty International published a report saying the roots of the current crisis lay in long-term “persecution” of Rohingya Muslims that amounted to apartheid and was a crime against humanity. Burma’s military has insisted it is conducting a counter-insurgency clearance operation that was provoked by Rohingya militants' synchronised attacks on 30 security posts in the northern part of Rakhine state on 25 August. But there has been widespread international condemnation of Burma over a crisis that has seen 620,000 refugees fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh since August, many of them alleging murder, rape and arson by Burmese soldiers. Boris Johnson has now suggested that the UK has received evidence that might on further examination point to genocide having been committed in Burma. After being pressed about the situation by Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi on Tuesday, the Foreign Secretary told Parliament: “I agree very much that unless the refugees are allowed to return, then this crisis, this purge will indeed satisfy the definition of ethnic cleansing. "As for genocide, it is I'm afraid it is the case that we have recently received evidence of a very troubling kind, and what we will do is make sure that such testimony as to what has been taking place is collated and used so that the proper judicial authorities can determine whether indeed it answers to the definition of genocide.” Stressing that further analysis would be needed before it could be decided whether or not genocide was happening, Mr Johnson added: “Genocide is a strict legal term and we hesitate to deploy it without proper judicial decision." Accusing Aung San Suu Kyi of so far failing to show proper leadership in the crisis, Mr Johnson said: "It is vital that the Burmese government acknowledge the scale of what is happening and the horror with which events are being greeted around the world. "For many years the world has looked to Aung San Suu Kyi as a great moral leader, and we still salute her for her struggle for democracy in the face of the generals. "It is absolutely vital now, however, that she stands up and condemns what is happening and brings the nation together. "So far, I'm afraid, the Burmese government has failed to do that." His comments came as Amnesty International published a report saying that the current crisis was merely the most extreme manifestation of decades of systematic state-sponsored discrimination by the Burmese authorities that broke international humanitarian law. The human rights group’s Caged Without A Roof report, based on two years of investigation, stated that the authorities of Burma, a predominantly Buddhist country, had imposed a “dehumanising” apartheid system on the Rohingya Muslim minority. The Burmese government, the report said, had: Anna Neistat, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, said the report showed Burma’s Rakhine State region, where the Rohingya usually live, had for years been “a crime scene.” “The authorities are keeping Rohingya women, men and children segregated and cowed in a dehumanising system of apartheid,” she said. “Their rights are violated daily and the repression has only intensified in recent years. “This was the case long before the vicious campaign of military violence of the last three months. “This abhorrent system of discrimination and segregation permeates every aspect of Rohingyas’ lives.” After alleging a series of abuses, the report concluded: “The racial base of the discrimination against and segregation of the Rohingya, the way in which they have been characterized as “outsiders”, and the clear aim of dominating and isolating these communities have led us to conclude they amount to the crime against humanity of apartheid.” This, the report said, puts Burma in breach of both the UN’s International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which defines apartheid as a crime against humanity. Underpinning the discrimination, the report claimed, was Burma’s 1982 Citizenship Law which was said to be “blatantly discriminatory on ethnic grounds”. The law excluded the Rohingya from the “national races” of Burma that were entitled to full citizenship, and, it was claimed, “Its implementation in Rakhine State allowed authorities to deprive Rohingya of citizenship en masse.” Making clear that the discrimination continues to this day, the Amnesty report said successive Burmese governments refused even to use the term Rohingya. Last year, the report said, Aung San Suu Kyi asked diplomats to “refrain” from using the word Rohingya and suggested that they talk instead about “Muslims living in Rakhine State.” In Burma, the report added: “Rohingya are often referred to as ‘Bengalis’, a divisive term used to imply that the Rohingya are migrants from Bangladesh.” The report said that since 2012, the Burmese authorities have imposed such tight restrictions on access to education that in large parts of Rakhine State Rohingya children were no longer allowed into previously mixed government schools at all. The Rohingya people’s freedom of movement, the report said was also severely restricted by what was described as an intricate web of national laws, “local orders” and policies implemented by state officials displaying “openly racist” behaviour. Travel between townships required a “Form 4” permit and in some parts of Rakhine State, the report said, Rohingya people needed a “Village Departure Certificate” before they could spend the night outside their own village without being arrested. The result of such movement restrictions, the report said, was that in an already poor part of Burma, “Rohingya and other Muslim communities are prevented from accessing places they rely on for their livelihoods such as farmlands, fishing areas, and local markets. “The inevitable result is that most Rohingya and other Muslims are poor.” “Their situation and overall food security,” the report added, “Is further threatened by government-imposed restrictions on international aid access. According to UN agencies, northern Rakhine State, where most Rohingya lived until recently, has alarming rates of malnutrition, in particular among children.” The report claimed the situation was summed up by one 25-year-old Rohingya man who told journalists: “We don’t have enough to eat. “We would be better in jail or prison because at least then we would have food regularly. It is like we live in a prison anyway.” Aung San Suu Kyi has previously described the Rohingya issue as a “very complex problem” caused by “long-term socio-economic problems” that cannot be solved overnight. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Independent

An Istanbul court today sentenced Oğuz Güven, the editor of the Cumhuriyet newspaper’s website, to three years and one month in prison on charges of “terrorist propaganda”. As Güven has appealed against his conviction, he remains for the time being on conditional release. “Turkish justice has reached a new height of absurdity and we dare to hope that this conviction will be overturned on appeal,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. Güven was found guilty of terrorist propaganda on behalf of the PKK Kurdish armed rebels and the Gülen Movement, which the government accuses of being behind the July 2016 coup attempt. One of the prosecution’s main evidences against Güven was a tweet about a prosecutor’s death in a car accident that was deleted 55 seconds after being posted. Arrested in May of this year (see below), Güven was held for a month before being freed conditionally pending trial. Four other Cumhuriyet employees are currently detained. 17.05.2017 - Website editor is 12th Cumhuriyet employee to be jailed Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the persecution of Turkey’s few remaining critical media outlets and calls for the immediate release of Oğuz Güven, the editor of the opposition daily Cumhuriyet’s website, who has just been jailed on a terrorism charge. He is the 12th Cumhuriyet employee to be imprisoned. Güven is facing up to seven and half years in prison on a charge of “propaganda for the terrorist organization led by Fethullah [Gülen],” the US-based Turkish cleric accused by the government of masterminding the abortive coup attempt in July 2016. He was placed in pre-trial detention on 15 May, three days after being taken into police custody. The grounds cited for the extremely grave charge against Güven, who has been a journalist for 32 years, is a single tweet that was posted on the Cumhuriyet Twitter account and was deleted after 55 seconds. “The charge brought against Oğuz Güven is the height of absurdity and it is hard not to see it as an attempt to further undermine Cumhuriyet,” said Erol Önderoğlu, RSF’s representative in Turkey. “The survival of the few remaining independent media outlets is at stake. The international leaders who are preparing to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at next week’s NATO summit cannot just look on while media freedom is annihilated in Turkey.” Güven is blamed for a controversial tweet reporting that Mustafa Alper, the state prosecutor in the western province of Denizli, had died in a road accident. Alper was handling the trial of several well-known figures accused of being involved in the abortive coup. When he appeared in court on 15 May, Güven told the judge that the tweet was a “mistake” and was “deleted within 55 seconds.” He added: “We reported the reactions to this tragedy in another article. I completely reject the accusations being made against me.” Güven is currently being held in Metris prison in downtown Istanbul. But if the appeal filed by his lawyers fails to obtain his release, he will be transferred to Silivri prison, 70 km west of Istanbul, where 11 otherCumhuriyet employees have been held for months. “There is not much more that can be done in the face of the current level of decay,” Güven said, referring to the justice system, as he was taken off to prison. No date has so far been set for his trial. Ten detained Cumhuriyet journalists and administrators will complete their 200th day in Silivri prison tomorrow. To mark the event, journalists and civil society representatives will stage a demonstration at 11 a.m. outside the lawcourts in the Istanbul district of Çağlayan. The other detained Cumhuriyet journalists include editor in chief Murat Sabuncu, columnist Kadri Gürsel and cartoonist Musa Kart. The investigative reporter Ahmet Şık has also been held since December 2016, although he was one of the first journalists to write critically about the influence of Gülen’s supporters within the state apparatus. Their trial is due to start on 24 July. The journalists petitioned Turkey’s constitutional court, challenging the legality of their detention, but got no response, and they are now hoping for a quick ruling on their case by the European Court of Human Rights. After the closure of more than 150 media outlets in the wake of the coup attempt, Cumhuriyet is one of the very few outlets that still criticizes the Turkish government. As well as the imprisonment of 12 of its employees, there has been a concerted attempt to stifle it economically and an attempt to take control of its management. Former editor Can Dündar, who is now living in exile in Germany, has been one of President Erdoğan’s bugbears ever since he revealed in 2015 that the Turkish intelligence services had supplied weapons to Islamist groups in Syria. In Germany, Dündar has created a website called Özgürüz (We are free). Turkey is ranked 155th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Reporters Without Borders

Tomorrow, people around the world will “wear red, light red” and post pictures on social media. It is a simple way that individuals, churches, or any faith or community group can raise awareness about global persecution. Awareness is crucial if people who suffer for their beliefs are to be allowed the religious freedom their dignity demands. Here’s why: Recently Vice President Mike Pence announced that the U.S. would change its policy on how U.S. relief is distributed in Iraq. Christians, Yezidis, and other genocide victims will receive aid directly through USAID, faith-based groups and private organizations in an effort to speed up and streamline funding to these groups. This policy change happened because various organizations, both in the non-profit sector and in government, used evidence to advocate for a policy change. New information, alongside coordinated action on the part of many, generated a new understanding of the problem and fueled an urgency to act. This is the definition of awareness and advocacy: many people sharing new information in different ways with people who can make a difference. Awareness led directly to policy change. The process used to promote change in Iraq policy can be duplicated to help where other atrocities are taking place. According to the Pew Research Center, 79% of people around the world live where there are high or very high levels of persecution. Persecution takes many forms. It can mean being attacked because you have the “wrong” beliefs. Your children might be stopped from getting a proper education, or the government could tear down your sacred space. Religious freedom issues require dynamic solutions. In a democracy, policy makers can have an impact, but they have to know that voters and constituents want them to prioritize these issues. As a U.S. citizen, you have a powerful voice. And you should steward it for the sake of persecuted people. Research shows that it takes only 15 people in a district to get a congressperson to pay attention to an issue that is not currently a priority. #RedWednesday is an important way to help your friends, family, and followers know about persecution. Help us build a world where men, women, and children have nothing to fear because of what they believe. The persecuted do not just need your compassion – they need your citizenship. They need you to get other citizens to stand for faith and freedom. #RedWednesday is the first step. Nathan Wineinger Director of Policy Relations Take Action: 1. Download the Plan and Resources packet to see how easy it is for you to join #RedWednesday. We have memes that say “#RedWednesday” for you to share on social media, examples of pictures you can take, and suggested posts as well. http://bit.ly/2yNZThi 2. Go to the Facebook event and share that you are joining #RedWednesday. https://www.facebook.com/events/935469893285518/ 3. Go to the “Take Action” section of the Plan and Resources packet and write a letter to two pastors imprisoned in Myanmar because they stood for religious freedom. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Wilberforce Initiative

Executive Summary Uganda suffers from inefficient patronage politics and a downward spiral of declining governance, poor economic performance and local insecurity. President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, in power since 1986, appears unwilling to step down; supporters and detractors alike expect him to rule until he dies or engineers a handover to a close ally or family member. He will be 77 by the next election in 2021 and is poised to amend the constitution’s 75-year age limit, despite objections from the opposition, civil society and some in his own party. The president undoubtedly retains support, particularly in rural areas, not all of which is patronage-based. He is credited with bringing stability after the 1980s civil wars and eventually defeating the Lord’s Resistance Army rebellion, though his autocratic drift and systemic corruption risks wrecking this legacy. With political and institutional reform, there still is time to avoid such an outcome. The decline in governance has ripple effects across the system. It stymies attempts to improve core services – particularly infrastructure and agriculture – that are strained by the demands of a rapidly growing population. Urgent infrastructure projects and the long-anticipated start of oil production have suffered delays, further depressing international investment. New government initiatives, nominally aimed at stimulating the economy, typically take the form of handouts, particularly to under-employed youth, designed to secure political support. The likewise politically-motivated creation of new administrative districts has not improved local services, but instead increased the size of the public sector, straining an already overwhelmed public purse. New districts also contribute to communal tensions, particularly when delimitation reallocates control over natural resources and land. The security sector, particularly the police, is emblematic of these problems. Police officers carry out functions that are nominally intended to preserve public order yet in reality function as the president’s first line of defence against rivals. They spend much of their time disrupting opposition activities. Allegations of criminal activity within the police undermines its legitimacy; officers are reportedly involved in protection rackets, organised crime and turf wars. Violent crime, including murder, is on the rise as police ability to carry out regular duties declines. The rise of informal security groups, most notably the Crime Preventers (a non-uniformed youth militia that mobilised pro-government votes and intimidated its rivals during the 2016 election), has blurred lines, further eroded accountability, politicised policing and weakened the influence of better trained and disciplined career officers. As crime has risen, particularly in urban areas, local governance has deteriorated. The local council system remains the bedrock of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), but the government has not held village or parish council elections since 2002, due partly to their cost but also reportedly to fears of the outcome. Local administration has withered and become increasingly dysfunctional. Disputes over land, administrative districts and the government’s recognition of “traditional” authorities – another form of patronage – likewise prompt communal and ethnic violence, problems Ugandans doubt the state can resolve. Clashes are on the rise between the authorities and locals forcibly removed from newly demarcated wildlife reserves or who feel that ancestral lands are being grabbed by rapacious businessmen. The forthcoming land reform bill – a constitutional amendment that would ease government purchase of private land for infrastructure projects – provokes fears of more land-grabbing. The lack of opportunities for youth plus tensions surrounding the presidential age-limit amendment and controversial land reform bills are fuelling the rise of new political actors – notably the musician turned-populist MP Bobi Wine – and increasing the risk of popular demonstrations that could provoke a violent crackdown. Uganda is in urgent need of political and administrative reform to prevent a slide toward an increasingly dysfunctional, corrupt and insecure system. In order to mitigate longer-term dangers of civil strife, donors should be more sensitive to the political impact of their assistance by avoiding projects that contribute to ruling party patronage. For its part, President Museveni’s government should: Hold a credible National Dialogue: This should be done by revisiting plans to which the ruling party itself had agreed after the February 2016 election. Such a dialogue should be broad-based and focus on popular consultations with Ugandan citizens to discuss issues associated with the presidential succession and reduce fears that it might end in violence. Take steps to professionalise the police and improve its leadership: To stop the decline in police operational capacity and address criminality within police ranks, the government should re-institute a merit-based system of promotions in the senior command and investigate and prosecute alleged crimes by members of the force. It also should end or reduce use of informal, non-uniformed groups, particularly the Crime Preventers. Improve local governance: Hold local council elections to re-legitimise grass-roots administration while imposing a moratorium on the creation of new administrative districts. Consult widely on land reform: Complete consultations with the population at the local level (in local languages) in association with civil society to understand main concerns before embarking on any land ownership reform. Reforms should give local leaders – including elders and elected council leaders – a say in matters such as land allocation. The government should shelve the upcoming constitutional amendment on government land acquisition and instead prioritise reforms and anti-corruption measures within the lands ministry. These proposed steps will not be easy. But President Museveni should recognise them as necessary to avert dangerous drift and limit the risk of damage to his legacy. I.Museveni for Life? President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has led Uganda since 1986 and seems determined to remain in power. Over time, his rule slowly has shifted from broad-based and constitutional to patronage-based and personal, with his family at the centre. The president controls key institutions, including the army and police, that guarantee his political survival. His ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party dominates all levels of the state. Established opposition forces, whose populist messaging often appears to resonate during election campaigns, lack the organisation, money and political space to win at the ballot box. Despite some dissent around the 2016 election, Museveni also has neutered internal NRM opposition and remains entrenched as party head. The longer-term significance of emerging political leaders and new forms of protest remains uncertain as does the potential mobilisation of discontented youth. However, taken together these factors arguably now pose the biggest current challenge to President Museveni. A.Survival at the Ballot Box Although the president largely has been untroubled by opposition parties – including the main opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) – there are signs he is losing some popularity. In the February 2016 presidential vote, he triumphed comfortably despite two apparently strong challengers: former ruling party heavyweight Amama Mbabazi and perennial opposition leader Kizza Besigye (representing the FDC). Still, Museveni’s official margin of victory over Besigye, while comfortable (60.6 to 35.6 per cent), was roughly 8 per cent lower than in 2011. The presidential bid of Mbabazi – a former prime minister and NRM secretary general who ran as an independent – reflected discord within the ruling party, particularly around the issue of who will succeed Museveni. Without an inspiring message, Museveni relied largely on patronage and alleged vote buying, massively out-spending his opponents. The security services, particularly the police, suppressed opposition activities. The FDC rejected the results, claiming Besigye had won 51 per cent, and launched a “Defiance Campaign” which failed to gain much popular support. Besigye himself was imprisoned – he has already served time in jail several times before – on a treason charge, which served to keep him and his followers off the streets. To ease post-election tensions, the government, in consultation with a coalition of civil society groups, agreed to a National Dialogue that would develop a roadmap for political transition and encourage public debate about the country’s future. A civil society working group proposed a four-track process, including a constitutional review process and direct talks between Museveni and Besigye. But as the defiance campaign floundered and the opposition continued to insist on an audit of election results, the government’s interest in such a dialogue waned. Still, a credible dialogue would be a worthwhile concession ahead of potentially difficult 2021 elections and boost Museveni’s flagging international legitimacy. B.The Age-limit Bill Museveni still enjoys personal goodwill for having led the country out of the civil wars that wracked Uganda during the 1970s and 1980s. He is widely expected to be the NRM’s candidate in 2021 and many believe he intends to rule until he dies. But to do so the president, now 73, must remove or negotiate his way around a constitutional provision barring presidential candidates older than 75. Museveni has remained largely silent on lifting the age restriction, though his supporters have started the amendment process in parliament. Despite opposition protests and donor disapproval, the effort is expected to succeed given the ruling party’s dominance and the legislature’s tendency to rubberstamp presidential priorities. In early October 2017, an NRM parliamentarian introduced a bill to remove the age limit, prompting wide protests, particularly by students, and a police crackdown. Supporters abandoned a motion that would have allowed a parliament member to take a leave of absence to prepare the bill – the first step toward its adoption – after a brawl broke out between opposition and pro-government parliamentarians, aided by members of the Special Forces Command who had entered the parliament building.The bill eventually passed its first reading on 3 October. About two weeks later, police fired live bullets to disperse a crowd in the western town of Rukungiri, reportedly killing two protestors. Prior to the bill’s introduction, the government promised to establish a constitutional review commission to address, among other things, electoral reforms on such issues as district boundaries. Many saw this as an attempt by Museveni to compensate for the controversial age-limit cancellation by instituting more popular reforms, such as restoring presidential term limits, which had been removed in 2005. Thus far, however, the government has neither established the commission nor tabled a comprehensive constitutional reform bill. Instead, separate bills have been advanced on land reform and the age limit that include electoral reform measures falling far short of opposition expectations. C.Managing Interests and Expectations Although lifting the presidential age-limit is unlikely to present a major political challenge, Museveni still will need to manoeuvre skilfully, not only to fend off opposition in the courts or on the streets, but also to keep his own party in line. The NRM is a force bound not by ideology or policy but essentially by ambition and patronage. With five terms in office, the dominance of Bush War veterans in the government, party and army is ending. Instead, more youthful cadres are vying for power; those defending the president and party with greatest zeal have risen furthest. At the same time, these younger politicians – who have yet to consolidate power – seem to recognise the current political order is in its twilight, spurring intense competition among them. Among other swathes of society, expectations regarding a potential succession also run high. Many Ugandans, particularly from marginalised regions, project their hopes to redress historic injustices and overcome underdevelopment onto a post-Museveni era. As yet, however, there has been no broad conversation about what a transition might look like. The combination of marginalised groups’ expectations, potential intra-elite jockeying for spoils and the absence of a clear succession roadmap, means that the incumbent’s unexpected death potentially could prompt violence. Fuelling these concerns is the lack of an obvious successor. The president has not groomed an heir – at least not openly. Nor does his family, which likely will seek to control succession politics, appear to be united.Many see Museveni’s son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, and wife, Janet, as the most likely contenders. Museveni was rumoured to be grooming Muhoozi when, in 2008, he put him in charge of the newly created Special Forces Unit – a powerful subdivision within the army that has now grown into a third service (alongside land and air forces). This did not sit well with many older military officers, whose opposition triggered a reshuffle that moved a number of veterans, including long-time chief of Defence Forces, General Aronda Nyakairima, into civilian positions or administrative posts. In January 2017, Museveni moved his son from head of the special forces to senior presidential advisor, which allows the president to better protect, prepare and control him. Muhoozi has consistently denied eying the presidency. His mother, Janet Museveni – a former parliament member and current cabinet minister – apparently has not ruled the presidency out. She has crafted a powerful network of allies and a reputation as a savvy political operator. Yet neither the first lady nor her son enjoys much popular appeal or establishment support. The public appears to have little confidence that Museveni’s departure will be followed by a constitutional transfer of power. Many expect that groups left out of power will confront the government. In response, the military might step in, most likely in support of the NRM establishment. How the police and army rank-and-file would react to a contested transition is unclear. Although the president and ruling party enjoy a firm grip over the police top command, lower ranks suffer poor pay and living conditions, which has fuelled divisions and encouraged corruption. D.An Opposition in Disarray That few Ugandans believe political change will take place via the ballot box, a popular uprising or a credible National Dialogue is unsurprising, given the state of the political opposition, suffering from funding shortages, infighting and regime co-option. Recent attempts to form an opposition coalition, as occurred prior to the 2016 election, have run aground over disagreements regarding who should lead it. The FDC is the official parliamentary opposition, but it is divided between rival leaders – Besigye, its flag-bearer, who enjoys widespread support among opposition activists, and the party’s president, Mugisha Muntu, whose profile is more technocratic. Their personal competition has a political dimension: while Muntu wants to focus on building grassroots party institutions, Besigye, having lost faith in elections, favours popular resistance. The party has been weakened by a lack of grassroots structures, financial resources, divisions over strategy and regular police repression. Faith in the democratic system remains strong overall. A 2015 survey showed that 50 per cent of Ugandans were “fairly satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the way democracy works in their country. However, citing a widely shared view that constituencies are rewarded or punished according to election returns, Ugandans interviewed by Crisis Group claimed that their fellow citizens often choose “not to waste my vote” on the opposition, hoping to at least reap the benefits of government patronage. Some interpret the rise of independent (but overwhelmingly NRM-aligned) candidates, who won 66 of 375 parliamentary seats in the 2016 election, as a rejection of the politics of both NRM and FDC. E.Youth Frustration Younger voters who tend to be most affected by economic decline are growing more active and gaining political significance. Many express themselves freely on social media, particularly regarding the age-limit bill, despite crackdowns on government critics and shrinking political space. This evolution helped bring about the landslide election of Bobi Wine, a reggae star and vocal Museveni critic who calls for the president’s retirement and ran as an independent in the June 2017 Kyadondo East parliamentary by-election in the Kampala outskirts. His candidacy resonated with young and low-income slum dwellers who voted in large numbers. Ugandans widely read his victory – which he achieved with little infrastructure and no party affiliation – as an expression of voter frustration with party politics amid tensions surrounding passage of the age-limit bill. Wine’s ability to mobilise hitherto neglected social groups should not be underestimated, though whether he can sustain his popularity remains unclear. II.Failures of the Patronage State Ugandans appear more concerned about poverty, unemployment and food shortages than the uncertain political transition. A dysfunctional political system, focused more on keeping the president in office than on fixing the economy or providing public services, has contributed to underdevelopment and mounting insecurity. But the recipe that has worked to date – sporadic reforms while the president concentrates on sustaining patronage networks – might prove insufficient to maintain popular support at a time of growing economic hardship. A.Economy in Decline Annual economic growth, which ranged between 6 and 10 per cent during the boom years of 2000-2011, declined to an estimated 4.6 per cent in 2017. It is likely to remain relatively low (though higher than most Western economies) due to declining global demand for commodities (which make up the bulk of Uganda’s exports), a lack of bureaucratic support and instability in South Sudan, formerly a major Ugandan export market. Economic growth now barely keeps up with population growth, estimated at 3 per cent per year. The financial sector has experienced a particularly severe decline. This was illustrated by the 2016 fall of Crane Bank, owned by Sudhir Ruparelia, an Indian-born tycoon, due to huge non-performing loans granted to Ugandan business elites. The young suffer disproportionately from un- or under-employment. In major towns and cities, many can only find transient work in the informal economy, as boda boda (moped taxi) drivers, guards, hawkers or other forms of casual labour. Likewise, many young people lack access to land or social services. With the rising cost of living, frustrated youth are easy prey for criminal gangs and ripe for political mobilisation. The majority of Ugandans – some 84 per cent live in rural areas and 69 per cent are subsistence farmers – struggle to survive in a stagnating agricultural sector. Unpredictable weather patterns, environmental degradation, farm fragmentation (as land is passed down to multiple heirs) and insufficient government support, exacerbate their plight. After a long dry spell – part of a broader regional drought – more than 1.5 million Ugandans needed food assistance in February 2017. B.Public Sector Crisis The public sector, undermined by decades of nepotism and corruption, is unable to meet rising demand for more and better service delivery. Acknowledging the problem in July 2016, in the wake of his election, the president committed his new term to “Hakuna mchezo!” (“No play”), vowing to stamp out corruption and putting forward a twenty-point plan for national development. The plan, which aims to turn Uganda into a middle-income country by 2020, listed twenty different areas in which progress would be made, including fighting corruption, increasing foreign investment and improving the operations of key productive sectors.But piecemeal anti-corruption reforms largely have scapegoated junior players in a wider system of graft. Although measures such as the digitalisation of revenue and immigration services can help root out petty corruption, they do not address more sophisticated schemes by department and agency-wide networks. Health and education are among the public services that have suffered most, with poor quality and chronic absence of doctors and teachers.Opposition critics have attacked the government on this score, notably during the last election campaign, when Besigye’s visits to dilapidated health facilities and makeshift police posts received extensive media coverage. Many of Museveni’s popular 2016 campaign promises – including the delivery of eighteen million hoes to all households, 2 million Ugandan shillings ($550) for every village’s malwa group (women’s groups brewing local beer) and free sanitary pads for school-aged girls – remain unfulfilled. Agricultural development also has suffered. Budget allocations do not match the rhetorical emphasis on that sector and key programs have failed to deliver results. Operation Wealth Creation, an army-led agricultural development scheme, which aimed to improve farm productivity, has not lived up to expectations. Key infrastructure projects have progressed slowly. This includes the Standard Gauge Railway, part of an ambitious East African train network, as well as construction of a pipeline and refinery to service Uganda’s new oil discoveries. The government still hopes major oil production can begin in 2020, but industry analysts see this as unrealistic.Construction of crucial transport arteries, such as the Kampala-Entebbe and Kampala-Jinja expressways, also lag behind schedule. Some reforms have yielded dividends, particularly those affecting strategic agencies, like the Uganda Revenue Authority and Uganda Roads Authority. Both have undergone changes under professional management that have improved their performance. In Kampala, an opposition stronghold where Besigye captured 65 per cent of the 2016 vote, the government struggles to enact necessary economic reforms and regulations opposed by key constituencies. The Kampala Capital City Authority, controlled by the NRM – which wrested power away from the Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago, who was elected on the ticket of a smaller opposition party, the Democratic Party – has aggressively enforced regulations and reforms to planning and revenue collection. Yet these measures often collide with the interests of influential grassroots constituencies – matatu (mini-bus taxi) operators, boda boda drivers and street vendors – and those of powerful businessmen and property owners. Many who work in the city’s markets and streets resent paying more taxes when they receive few services in return. In August 2017, the president ordered a series of measures to boost the economy and public services. He scrapped taxes and fees levied on informal businesses and promised to abolish dozens of agencies that duplicate the work of ministries. These are steps in the right direction, but it remains to be seen if these initiatives will be sustained and are enough to produce tangible results. C.Securing Political Support Unwilling or unable to reform the public sector or address broad economic needs, the government has sought to co-opt supporters through patronage. This generally has occurred in two ways: first, via creation of new administrative districts and traditional kingdoms, which then receive constitutionally-mandated government resources; second, through politically-motivated handouts from development programs. 1.Creation of new districts and kingdoms A decentralisation process, which is designed to improve service provision, more than doubled the number of districts (an administrative unit comprising several counties) between 2002 and 2017. However, while it boosted both parliament’s size and the public payroll, the government has not fulfilled its commitments by building the required number of schools and hospitals in each district. Establishing new districts is popular: each one should potentially confer public sector jobs and additional public services. Lack of funds to support them forced the government to impose a moratorium on the process in 2013, however. The president lifted it in 2016 ahead of the elections. Decentralisation carries another risk: it can aggravate identity politics when boundaries carved out along ethnic lines impact resource distribution. As a result, struggles over proposed new districts can turn bitter and sometimes violent. In July 2017, the government announced it would review all district boundaries for re-demarcation to resolve disputes. This could be tricky, since any new delineation could trigger novel disputes among communities or between communities and the government. Recognition of historic kingdoms, or other traditional forms of local government, is another tool used to obtain the support of leaders and their communities. The 2011 Institutions of Cultural and Traditional Leaders Act allowed the government to grant legal recognition to a large number of individuals who claimed cultural leader status. This has come at a cost, however. While such posts tend to offer only meagre legal, material and political entitlements, these leaders can exploit identity politics to mobilise communities, thereby posing a potential threat to the central government and the NRM machine. The state may then try to absorb kingdoms into its patronage networks. This can heighten competition for leadership positions, further exacerbating tensions in multi-ethnic communities. A deadly example of how government patronage can fuel tensions occurred in the western Rwenzori region, where Museveni’s recognition of a new king sparked clashes between the two largest ethnic groups, the Bamba and Bakonzo. The new Bamba king rejected the authority of the Rwenzori Omusinga, a traditional Bakonzo king previously recognised by the government. Ethnic clashes in July 2014 killed 89 people. The 2016 elections sparked clashes over disputed local results in Bundibugyo district, which left fifteen dead. The vote also consolidated the FDC’s hold on the region, alarming the government. When armed Bakonzo youth attacked army and police patrols in March 2016, killing a number of soldiers and officers, the government responded by deploying a much larger military contingent. After security forces raided an alleged militia training camp, killing four people, the government accused the king of turning his royal guards, by law unarmed, into a private militia in hopes of establishing an independent Bakonzo kingdom (the Yira Republic). A few days later the army attacked the Omusinga palace in Kasese, leaving 155 dead. The government’s military response in Kasese demonstrates its uneasiness with the expanding political ambitions of traditional kingdoms, fearing they may become a focus for anti-government sentiment. 2.Handouts for votes The NRM also seeks the support of youth and small-scale farmers through hand-outs. Over the past three years, more than 144,000 youths (organised as groups) received soft (low interest without collateral) loans to create small businesses under the Youth Livelihood Programme. The program lacks an adequate skills training component, however. Applicants complain the selection process is opaque and critics allege the program has been tainted by local government nepotism, political favouritism and embezzlement. Local officials and residents also claim that, ahead of the elections, the funds commonly were treated as “money to eat” (voter bribes) and fed into the NRM campaign budget. Many recipients reportedly are linked to pro-government groups, such as the Crime Preventers. A large number of the businesses funded have failed; loan recovery has been slow, despite threats of arrest. The military-led Operation Wealth Creation – intended to boost agricultural production through the free distribution of agricultural products, notably seeds, to smallholder farmers – also serves as a source of patronage. Reports allege that military veterans are rewarded with jobs and that seed suppliers with government links are awarded lucrative contracts. Most farmers gain little, if any, benefit because the inputs are of low quality, provided at the wrong time of year or unsuitable for their location. Some complain the program favours pro-government beneficiaries. More significantly, because the military lacks the expertise of the now withered government agricultural support services, the program is poorly designed, focusing on seed distribution when most farmers struggle with lack of fertilisers or insufficient irrigation. It often distributes the wrong products at the wrong times. After the 2016 elections, both programs saw some changes, but these fell short of what was required. III.Increasing Lawlessness The ruling party’s restoration of security after a series of brutal civil wars remains the historical anchor of its legitimacy. President Museveni often refers to “oturu” (sleeping peacefully) under the NRM and contrasts his rule with the violence and political instability that preceded it. Still, crime and insecurity are on the rise and, in the president’s own words, “a spike of lawlessness” grips the country. This is due in part to politicisation of the police, now more focused on disrupting opposition activity than fighting crime, and in part to the breakdown of local order as traditional institutions cannot cope with complex societal problems. A.The Politicised Police Force With patronage resources stretched thin, the government increasingly relies on coercion. A largely militarised and politicised police force commanded by Inspector General Kale Kayihura, a Museveni loyalist who has held the position since 2005, plays a central role in addressing dissent. Over the past decade, the size, budget and mandate of the police force have all expanded. The 2013 Public Order Management Act (POMA) gives the force broad powers and grants its chief wide discretion to ban public gatherings. In addition to repressing protests and breaking up opposition rallies, the police have arrested, and the government has prosecuted, critics over social media posts, sometimes on national security grounds. Paramilitary units, including the Flying Squad and the recently disbanded Special Investigations Unit, have been accused of abuses by international and domestic human rights organisations. In May 2017, for example, the media published pictures of alleged torture victims held at the Nalufenya police station (described by the government as a “counter-terrorism detention centre”) in Jinja, a town approximately 80km east of Kampala. Opposition and civil society organisations have accused the police of arbitrarily arresting and detaining opposition activists. There are structural problems as well. The police hierarchy increasingly operates through informal networks that bypass the official chain of command. The force also relies on poorly-trained auxiliaries and volunteers: the plain-clothed “Kiboko Squads” (stick wielding men) who reportedly beat citizens at public gatherings; members of the motorbike taxis association, “Boda Boda 2010”, who reportedly spy on behalf of the government; and the Crime Preventers, volunteers supervised by local station chiefs and reportedly re-introduced during the 2016 elections to mobilise support and intimidate the opposition.Police officers and other critics accuse the Crime Preventers of carrying out arbitrary arrests and extortion, saying they are undermining local government forces. Factionalism within the police is another concern. Powerful officers appointed by the inspector general, Crime Preventers and disgruntled career policemen compete for influence and resources. Many career officers criticise the way the system functions, pointing to surging local crime and botched investigations of even high-profile murders. Rival units publicly blame each other. Poor pay and living conditions, corruption and politicisation have allowed criminals to infiltrate the force, a problem President Museveni has acknowledged and which the leadership has taken some steps to address. B.Rising Crime The combination of corrupt, politicised police plus rising unemployment and deteriorating local governance, has contributed to mounting crime. In Kampala, youth gangs at times allegedly connive with police officials. Between May and August 2017 at least twenty women were raped and murdered on the outskirts of Kampala and Entebbe, sparking public panic. In Teso and Kitgum districts, police implicated local officials in a spate of armed robberies and murder in late 2016; within the greater Masaka region, bands of thugs raided villages at night during the first half of 2017. Scores were arrested. In recent years, armed groups have attacked police stations, stealing guns, freeing detainees, and leaving several police officers dead. In Sebei, Kapchorwa district, a purported rebel group attacked a string of police stations during the 2016 electoral campaign until its alleged ring-leader was arrested. Locals generally dismiss the notion that this was a rebellion, pointing instead to land-related conflicts between communities and the Uganda Wildlife Authority rangers in Mount Elgon National Park. There also has been a rise in high-profile assassinations. The best-known victim was the powerful Assistant Inspector General of Police, Felix Kaweesi, killed in March 2017. Two years earlier, Senior State Prosecutor Joan Kagezi, who had been working on the case of the 2010 Kampala terrorist bombing, was murdered in the same professional manner by assailants on motorbikes. A dozen Muslim clerics have also been killed by apparent hitmen over the past three years. Motives remain unclear, although police have levelled unsubstantiated accusations against the Allied Democratic Forces – a nominally Islamist rebel group of Ugandan origin that has operated in eastern Congo since 2007. C.Erosion of Local Order The local council system, comprising village and parish councils set up by the NRM during the Bush War, has withered and lost legitimacy. Set up to allow communities to govern themselves and manage their own security while serving as the national party’s local backbone, the system originally included local courts, defence units overseen by a defence secretary and representatives of special interest groups. In many places today, however, only the chairman and in some instances a defence secretary remain, with the former wielding predominant power. Elections for local councillors have not been held since 2002. Critics blame the postponements on the NRM’s fears that a vote could uproot its entrenched grassroots structure plus the cost of carrying out elections in 58,000 villages and parishes countrywide. Local councillor positions, last elected in 2001, often are transferred to sons or political allies.According to a roadmap for local elections released by the election commission in late August, new council elections were supposed to take place in November 2017, but they were temporarily postponed in early November following a legal challenge. If and when the vote proceeds, voters will not cast secret ballots but line up behind their preferred candidates – a practice officially portrayed as cost-saving measure, but widely interpreted as a way to deter opposition to ruling party favourites. D.Land Disputes Land disputes lie behind much community-level violence. A dysfunctional system of local governance and law, coupled with ambiguities associated with customary ownership, contribute to this. In some regions, the erosion of the local council system coupled with popular mistrust of police and politicians, has contributed to renewed demand for mediation and dispute resolution by elders and other traditional leaders. Elders know the historical boundaries of family and community lands, enjoy authority in their clans and tend to possess a reputation for greater integrity than officials and politicians. But they lack formal support or training and often struggle to meet constituents’ demands. Elders can also themselves be vulnerable to corruption and political influence. While elders can play a useful role in mediation at the village level, they are not a substitute for a properly functioning legal system. But access to Ugandan courts is costly, legal processes are time consuming and there is little confidence in their integrity. Consequently, many land conflicts remain unresolved, giving rise to tension and, in some cases, violence. The pervasive view is that those with money and political influence usually prevail. Government acquisitions of land and interventions in ownership disputes are seen in many communities as cover for elite land-grabs. Proposed legal reforms also provoke suspicion, including a recent constitutional amendment (the Land Reform Bill) to ease the acquisition of private land for development and infrastructure projects, which has been put on hold for now. Examples abound of how locals distrust the government’s intentions. In northern Uganda, communities in the Acholi and West Nile regions are sceptical of the government’s acquisition of communal land to house the huge influx of South Sudanese refugees since 2013, and doubt that it ever will be returned. Although those communities have shown considerable generosity toward refugees, with whom many share ethnic and cultural ties, they blame the government, the UN and NGOs for allegedly failing to deliver promised services to host communities or mitigate against adverse environmental effects. In some instances, protestors have temporarily blocked aid NGOs from accessing refugee camps. A conflict over the boundary between Adjumani and Amuru districts in Apaa, that pits the Acholi against the Madi community, illustrates how tensions over district borders can escalate. It first made headlines in April 2015 when Acholi women stripped naked in front of visiting ministers to protest a planned border demarcation they feared would lead to their eviction. Uganda Wildlife Authority claims on customary land earmarked for development by foreign investors already had stoked tensions, prompting local politicians and others to speak up on the community’s behalf. When the government sought to define the boundary in June 2017, violence flared; sporadic clashes have caused the deaths of at least eight Acholi and Madi and displaced thousands. IV.Halting the Slide Uganda is not at risk of violence on the scale of the civil conflicts in the 1980s or the war with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the 1990s and 2000s. But deterioration in governance and the state’s increasingly corrupt and authoritarian character mean politics likely will become more polarised and repressive, which could create conditions for future civil strife. Political and administrative reforms are necessary to prevent this slide. International partners and donors, many of whom have contributed huge sums to Uganda’s development, rightly are concerned about the country’s direction. That Uganda is an important geopolitical ally, particularly in Somalia where for many years it has contributed troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), should not prevent them from engaging critically with the government. They also should take steps to minimise the regime’s use of foreign-funded development projects for patronage purposes. Donors should urge the government to enact further reform in the following areas: A credible National Dialogue: Attempts to hold a National Dialogue on a political transition and constitutional reform after the 2016 presidential election ground to halt because neither the government nor the opposition was willing to make the necessary concessions. The idea had merit, however. Such a dialogue, if well designed, could improve relations between the opposition and the government and potentially spark a genuine conversation about a post-Museveni future and a peaceful transition. It should not focus on mending relations between Museveni and opposition leaders, but instead aim for a wide-ranging national conversation that reduces the uncertainty and fear associated with the presidential succession. This should include forging clear terms of reference and common positions to which all parties are fully committed, and having opposition parties and civil society develop common positions. Police reform: Reforms are needed to make the police less partisan and more effective. Its current heavy-handed style – particularly with respect to opposition activities – is worsening relations with the public and decreasing trust in the institution. The police also should clarify the role of non-uniformed groups, notably Crime Preventers, who often clash with uniformed colleagues and exacerbate village-level insecurity. Finally, the government should strive to stop the criminalisation and corruption of police by aggressively investigating and prosecuting individuals allegedly involved in such practises and improving standards of leadership by basing promotions on professional achievement, rather than personal appointments. Local Council Elections: The much-postponed local council elections, previously scheduled for late November 2017, should be held at the earliest possible date. Local councillors at the village and parish level need to regain the legitimacy conferred by regular elections. Although plans for voting by lining up (rather than a costlier secret ballot) are far from optimal, the polls should go ahead as a means to rejuvenate the local council system. An end to new districts: The government should refrain from creating further administrative districts, given that the human resources and capacity of existing districts already are overstretched. While new districts often are popular and pay short-term dividends, they can undermine the government itself when over time they prove unable to provide adequate services and sometimes stimulate intercommunal tensions. Consultations on land ownership: The government’s attempts to resolve land disputes through ownership registration often raise local suspicions about potential elite land grabbing, allegedly facilitated by corruption in the land ministry and local government. Anticipated passage of the land amendment bill, although presently on hold and less damaging than widely feared, feeds such concerns. There is good reason to improve the land ownership system but, in light of these suspicions and the associated risk of tension and violence, such reforms should take place only after wide-ranging consultation with the public and after sensitising the citizenry regarding the aims of any new legislation. V.Conclusion Major violence is unlikely for now, but Uganda nonetheless faces the gradual fraying of order, security and governance. Discontent is growing, particularly among youth, against what many Ugandans see as perpetual rule by President Museveni and his NRM government. The president cannot continue to rely on patronage and coercion by loyal security services instead of initiating the reforms necessary to reverse the decline of the economy, public services and security. This deterioration affects the lives of ordinary Ugandans and fuels grievances both among communities and between communities and the state. Thus far, Museveni largely has managed opposition to his rule without significant violence. Yet should opposition grow, both he and the security services, particularly the police, could well resort to more aggressive repression against protestors, their leaders and supporters in civil society and the media. This would make Uganda less governable, driving away donor support and foreign investment. Without reform at the top, the system will become ever more expensive and difficult to manage, increasing the likelihood of a political explosion that would be impossible to contain using current methods. President Museveni holds the keys to potential – and necessary – reform. He oversaw the country’s historic recovery after years of civil war. It is in the president’s own interest to halt Uganda’s slide, work with his opponents and give its decaying institutions a chance to recover. Failure to do these things risks spoiling the president’s legacy and leading his country toward a more dangerous future. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 International Crisis Group

The Rohingya people in Myanmar are trapped in a vicious system of state-sponsored, institutionalised discrimination that amounts to apartheid, said Amnesty International today as it publishes a major new analysis into the root causes of the current crisis in Rakhine State. “Caged without a roof” puts into context the recent wave of violence in Myanmar, when the security forces killed Rohingya people, torched whole villages to the ground, and drove more than 600,000 to flee across the border into Bangladesh. The two-year investigation reveals how authorities severely restrict virtually all aspects of Rohingyas’ lives in Rakhine State and have confined them to what amounts to a ghetto-like existence where they struggle to access healthcare, education or in some areas even to leave their villages. The current situation meets every requirement of the legal definition of the crime against humanity of apartheid. “The Myanmar authorities are keeping Rohingya women, men and children segregated and cowed in a dehumanising system of apartheid. Their rights are violated daily and the repression has only intensified in recent years,” said Anna Neistat, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research. “This system appears designed to make Rohingyas’ lives as hopeless and humiliating as possible. The security forces’ brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in the past three months is just another extreme manifestation of this appalling attitude. “Although these rights violations may not be as visible as those that have hit the headlines in recent months, they are just as horrific. The root causes of the current crisis must be addressed to end the cycle of abuse and make it possible for Rohingya refugees to return to a situation where their rights and dignity are respected.” Rakhine State: An open-air prison While Rohingya have faced systematic, government-sponsored discrimination in Myanmar for decades, Amnesty International’s investigation reveals how such repression has intensified dramatically since 2012, when violence between Buddhist and Muslim communities swept the state. Rohingya in Rakhine State are essentially sealed off from the outside world and face severe restrictions on their freedom of movement that confine them to their villages and townships. These restrictions are put in place through an intricate web of national laws, “local orders” and policies implemented by state officials displaying openly racist behaviour. A regulation in effect across Rakhine State clearly states that “foreigners” and “Bengali races [a pejorative term for the Rohingya]” need special permits to travel between townships. In northern Rakhine State, where the majority of the Rohingya lived until the recent exodus, even travel between villages is heavily restricted by a system of permissions. Arbitrary curfews have been harshly and continually imposed in predominantly Rohingya areas for the last five years. In central Rakhine State, Rohingya are kept tightly locked down in their villages and displacement camps. In some areas they are not allowed to use roads and can only travel by waterways, and only to other Muslim villages. For Rohingya who do manage to obtain permission to travel in northern Rakhine State, frequent checkpoints mostly staffed by Border Guard Police (BGP) are a constant menace, where they are regularly harassed, forced to pay bribes, physically assaulted or arrested. One Rohingya man described witnessing such abuse when the bus he travelled on was stopped by police: “There were four police in total, two of them beat the guys with a cane on their backs, shoulders and thighs. Another slapped the lady four or five times with his hand. […] After that they took them to the police station.” While conducting research for the report, Amnesty International staff saw first-hand a border guard kicking a Rohingya man at a checkpoint, and documented at least one case of an extrajudicial execution, when BGP officers shot dead a 23-year-old man travelling during curfew hours. During the violence in 2012, tens of thousands of Rohingya were driven out of urban areas in Rakhine State, in particular the state capital Sittwe. Today some 4,000 remain in the town where they live in a ghetto-like area sealed off with barbed wire barricades and police checkpoints. They are at risk of arrest or violence from the surrounding community if they try to leave. A life on the brink of survival The restrictions on movement are having a devastating impact on the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who have been pushed to the brink of survival. While the quality of hospitals and clinics in Rakhine State is generally poor for all communities, Rohingya face serious and often life-threatening barriers in accessing health care. Rohingya are denied access to Sittwe hospital, the highest-quality medical facility in Rakhine State, except for in extremely acute cases. Even then they require authorization from the Rakhine State authorities and travel under police escort. In northern Rakhine State, many see no choice but to travel to Bangladesh to access the health care they need, but this trip can often be prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest families. One man in his 50s said: “I wanted to go to Sittwe hospital for medical treatment, but it’s forbidden, the hospital staff told me I couldn’t go to there for my own safety and said I needed to go to Bangladesh for treatment. It cost a lot of money. My brother has many paddy fields and oxen and he had to sell some of these to pay for the travel. I was lucky… most people cannot afford this, so they just end up dying.” Outside of northern Rakhine State, only a few medical facilities are accessible for Rohingyas. There, they are kept in separate “Muslim wards” which are guarded by police. One aid worker compared one such ward to a “prison hospital”. Several Rohingya described how they had to pay bribes to hospital staff and police guards if they wanted to call family members or purchase food from outside. Others avoided hospitals altogether – fearing abuses by doctors and nurses, or thinking they would not be offered care at all. “Denying Rohingya access to medical care is abhorrent – we spoke to women who said they would rather give birth at home in unsanitary conditions than risk abuse and extortion at hospitals,” said Anna Neistat. Since 2012, Myanmar authorities have tightened restrictions on Rohingyas’ access to education. In large parts of Rakhine State, Rohingya children are no longer allowed into previously mixed government schools at all, while government teachers often refuse to travel to Muslim areas. With higher education largely off limits for Rohingya, many people Amnesty International spoke to expressed a sense of despair and hopelessness about the future. Tightened restrictions on travel have also affected many Rohingyas’ ability to earn a living or to put enough food on the table. People selling produce have been cut off from trade routes and markets, while farmers are often prevented from working their fields. Malnutrition and poverty have become the norm among Rohingya in the affected areas, a situation the authorities have compounded by severely restricting humanitarian access. “It is very challenging at the moment because we don’t have enough to eat. We would be better in jail or prison because at least then we would have food regularly. It is like we live in a prison anyway,” said one 25-year-old Rohingya man. A ban on gatherings of more than four people, applying specifically to Muslim-majority areas, also means that Rohingya – the overwhelming majority of whom are Muslim – are effectively banned from worshipping together. Authorities in Myanmar have also sealed off mosques, leaving Muslim places of worship to decay. Denial of citizenship Underpinning the discrimination against Rohingya is their lack of legal rights in Myanmar. At the heart of this are discriminatory laws and practices, in particular the 1982 Citizenship Act, which have effectively denied citizenship to Rohingya on the basis of their ethnicity. Amnesty International’s research also reveals how Myanmar authorities have engaged in a deliberate campaign to strip Rohingya of even the limited forms of identification they do possess. Since 2016, the government has made it extremely cumbersome for Rohingya to register newborn babies on “household lists” – often Rohingya families’ only proof of residence in Myanmar. Meanwhile, in northern Rakhine State, those who are not home for annual “population checks” risk being deleted from official records altogether. One consequence of this campaign is that it has become virtually impossible for Rohingya who have fled the country to return to their homes. This is particularly concerning since the military operations in 2016 and 2017 have driven close to 700,000 Rohingya to flee into Bangladesh, where they are living in refugee camps in desperate conditions. “Restoring the rights and legal status of Rohingya, and amending the country’s discriminatory citizenship laws is urgently needed – both for those who remain in the country and those who wish to return. Rohingya who have fled persecution in Myanmar cannot be asked to return to a system of apartheid,” said Anna Neistat. Dismantling the system of apartheid Amnesty International has, through a thorough legal analysis of this extensive body of evidence concluded, that the Myanmar authorities’ treatment of the Rohingya amounts to apartheid, defined as a crime against humanity under the Convention against Apartheid and the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court. Myanmar is legally obliged to dismantle the apartheid system in Rakhine State, and must also ensure accountability for those responsible for committing acts that amount to crimes against humanity. “Rakhine State is a crime scene. This was the case long before the vicious campaign of military violence of the last three months. This abhorrent system of discrimination and segregation permeates every aspect of Rohingyas’ lives and unless there are immediate steps to dismantle it, it will remain in place long after the military campaign ends,” said Anna Neistat. “Authorities cannot rely on hollow arguments about the need for ‘safety’ or to combat ‘terrorism’ to impose further restrictions on Rohingya. The repression is unlawful and completely disproportionate. Crimes against humanity can never be justified - whether as ‘security measures’ or on any other basis.” “The international community must wake up to this daily nightmare and face the reality of what has been happening in Rakhine State for years. While development is an important part of the solution, it cannot be done in a way which further entrenches discrimination. The international community, and in particular donors, must ensure that their engagement does not make them complicit in these violations.” Background: What is apartheid? Under the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, apartheid is defined as a crime against humanity covering a range of acts, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and with the intention of maintaining that regime. Specific acts committed in this context and criminalised as apartheid range from openly violent ones such as murder, rape and torture to legislative, administrative and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and deny them basic human rights and freedoms. A clear example of where officials in Rakhine State have combined regulatory and violent acts is the extreme restrictions on freedom of movement on Rohingya, which constitutes the crime of “severe deprivation of physical liberty” as defined in the Rome Statute. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Amnesty International

Children walk past a hole in the ground caused by strikes in the rebel-held town of Douma in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta region, on November 15, 2017. HAMZA AL-AJWEH/AFP/Getty Images THE DESPERATE STATE of Syria’s Eastern Ghouta region made international headlines in late October when local activists released the photo of an infant girl who had starved to death. While her case received significant attention, severe malnutrition and a lack of medical supplies have killed a number of other children in the besieged suburbs outside the capital – deaths that have largely gone unreported. Before the tragic death of one-month-old Sahar, Kinan, a 6-month-old boy with leukemia, died in August, because he received only one of five drugs needed for his treatment, a physician who works for the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM), an international organization that provides free medical aid to Syria, told Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). “[Kinan was] followed by Sahar, Obaida and Maram, [children] who died from severe cases of malnutrition,” in the following months, according to the physician who asked to be identified as Dr. Jad Salem. Lack of food in conflict-torn towns has severely affected the well-being of residents, Dr. Salem explained. For him, these children aren’t the first and will not be the last to die if the siege on Eastern Ghouta is not lifted immediately. Eastern Ghouta, just outside the capital Damascus, is one of the largest remaining opposition strongholds in Syria, and the last rebel enclave around President Bashar al-Assad’s seat of power. Since 2013, the Syrian government has imposed a suffocating siege on the area, which is home to at least 350,000 people. The blockade left families and other residents struggling every day to find basic necessities. To alleviate the suffering, local activists dug tunnels from Eastern Ghouta to Barzeh, a Damascus neighborhood that has had easy and sustained access to supplies. The tunnels enabled civilians to smuggle food and medical supplies into Eastern Ghouta, until the Syrian government destroyed them in February 2017. “This is when the situation started to severely deteriorate,” local media activist Ammar Al Hassan, told PHR. Besieging civilians as a tactic of war is illegal under international law, and in Syria it is made worse by the equally illegal blocking of humanitarian aid and medical supplies. Doctors and other healthcare professionals in Eastern Ghouta are operating with virtually zero support. Aid deliveries are rare and, when they arrive, they are wholly inadequate to the needs of the besieged population. Eastern Ghouta, which historically provided various types of fruits and vegetables to the Syrian capital, is now the prime example of famine and healthcare scarcity in the country. Since the beginning of 2017, just six aid convoys reached Eastern Ghouta. Of the 29 towns in the region, only eight have received humanitarian aid, and deliveries were inadequate both in terms of quantity and variety. Most recently, the U.N. and Syrian Red Crescent led two aid convoys of 49 trucks in the towns of Saqba, Kafarbatna and Douma in Eastern Ghouta at the end of October. The convoys contained only enough supplies for 20 percent of the 370,000 people trapped inside the area. This forced residents to divide each individual package into five or six portions to distribute food to as many people as possible. Furthermore, many of those who received food were unable to cook it, as the convoys did not contain materials to compensate for the shortage of cooking and heating fuel in eastern Ghouta, according to Dr. Mohammad Katoub of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS). Lack of fuel means that civilians in the area have no means to stay warm in the coming winter months. Doctors and healthcare workers also struggle to provide even minimal care because of a severe and protracted lack of medical supplies in all of the 39 medical centers across the besieged region. Dr. Katoub told PHR that the few convoys to reach the area contained only limited amounts of insulin, pediatric oral medications and lice and scabies treatments. The recent convoy to reach Douma contained just 50 syringes. “They didn’t have any surgical supplies, not even those needed for a cesarean delivery,” Dr. Katoub said. According to Dr. Salem, doctors are using surgical sutures meant for external wounds for heart surgeries. Some are making the extraordinarily difficult choice of using expired medical supplies and are attempting surgeries their facilities are not equipped for. The alternative is not to provide any care at all, he said. “A few weeks ago, one of the local doctors performed a successful surgery on a newborn. But unfortunately the infant couldn’t escape death simply because the intensive care unit didn’t have any functioning incubators or ventilators to keep him alive,” Dr. Salem. To make matters worse, healthcare workers now fear the imminent spread of epidemics. Without vaccines, children with already weak immune systems due to malnutrition are more susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases. In the past year, local sources have reported an outbreak of measles. Five years of siege combined with targeted bombings of hospitals and medical points have been traumatizing for healthcare professionals who have been working relentlessly. Many are showing symptoms of secondary trauma, and in addition to the hardship and lack of sustainable income, healthcare workers are now expressing dread. “Doctors in Eastern Ghouta share a sense of helplessness, loss of hope, and despair for not being able to provide the help for their patients – a feeling that is affecting them beyond what words can describe,” Dr. Salem said. PHR has consistently documented the consequences of siege. The current level of vulnerability requires not only the Syrian government but all parties to the conflict to collectively respond to the human catastrophe in Eastern Ghouta and to act immediately to ensure comprehensive and unrestricted humanitarian aid deliveries. But the onus is not just on local actors. Responsibility also lies with the U.N., as a key coordinator of humanitarian aid, and the countries sponsoring the cease-fire talks. Critical patients in Eastern Ghouta must be transferred to other medical centers to receive proper treatment. The most pressing medical needs of the 156 cancer patients, the 560 patients with chronic illnesses, and the 32 cases in critical need of kidney dialysis must be met. The current crisis in Eastern Ghouta is not a case of the inevitable suffering during war. It is the result of the deliberate targeting of civilians through direct attacks on healthcare and livelihoods. We must all advocate for the urgent needs of civilians who have endured five years of blockades, bombardment and internal conflict among the divergent armed factions. These fellow human beings must have access to food and medicine. Now. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 News Deeply

This month Saudi Arabia tightened a stranglehold on the neighboring country of Yemen and 7 million people face starvation. The Saudi blockade is an escalation in Yemen's civil war. The United Nations says the war has now become a "man-made catastrophe." You've seen very little of this because the Saudis prevent reporters from reaching the war zone. Recently, we were ordered off a ship headed to Yemen. Days later the Saudis gave us permission to fly there but, after our equipment was loaded and our boarding passes issued, the Saudis closed the airspace so the plane couldn't take off. Even so, we have managed to get pictures out of Yemen to show you what the Saudi government does not want you to see. This will be hard to watch, but 27 million people in Yemen pray you will not turn away. Hungry children cry. But there are no tears at the limits of starvation. Wasting bodies cannot afford them. This is the Al Sabeen Hospital in the Yemeni city of Sana'a. Ibtisam is two and a half. She weighs 15 pounds. Haifa is seven. She weighs 11 pounds. The images, and stories from the hospital, were sent to us by people that we hired inside Yemen. One child dies every ten minutes in the country according to the U.N.. David Beasley runs the World Food Programme, the U.N.'s emergency first responder to prevent famine. David Beasley: It's just desperation and death. It is as bad as it gets. I don't know if I've ever seen a movie this bad. Scott Pelley: We were headed into Yemen with the World Food Programme, the Saudis gave us permission to come, and then when we arrived they wouldn't let us into the country. What do you think they didn't want us to see? David Beasley: I don't understand why they won't allow the world to see what's taking place. Because I think if the world sees the tragedy of this human sufferin', number one, the world will step up and provide the support financially for innocent children to eat. But when you get on the ground and see what I see, you see is chaos, is starvation, is hunger, and it's unnecessary conflict strictly man-made. All parties involved in this conflict have their hands guilty, the hands are dirty. All parties. In essence, the fight is between the two main branches of Islam. The Shia branch occupies much of the West, the Sunnis most of the South and East. Saudi Arabia, leader of the Sunni world, began airstrikes against Shia rebels, more than two years ago. The rebels, who are known as Houthis, are supported by Saudi Arabia's arch enemy, Iran, the leader of the Shia world. Houthi rebels have plenty of blood on their hands, including the deaths of 1,000 civilians. But the U.N. says the Saudi coalition has killed more than 3,000 civilians; bombing schools, hospitals and Al Kubra hall, scene of a funeral last year. 132 Civilians were killed, nearly 700 wounded. Still, the deadliest weapon in Yemen is a blockade holding up food, fuel and medical aid. David Beasley: We can't get our ships in. They get blocked Scott Pelley: Who blocks the ports? David Beasley: The Saudi coalition. David Beasley told us the Saudis bombed the cranes that unload ships. The U.S. sent replacement cranes. But the Saudis won't let them in. David Beasley: We ask any, any parties engaged in this conflict to respect humanitarian law, respect the rights of innocent people and give us the access that we need to provide the help that's needed. Scott Pelley: It sounds like the Saudis are using starvation as a weapon. David Beasley: I don't think there's any question the Saudi-led coalition, along with the Houthis and all of those involved, are using food as a weapon of war. And it's disgraceful. The U.N. World Food Programme is the largest humanitarian aid agency. The U.S. is its biggest donor, so the director is most often an American. Beasley was once governor of South Carolina. David Beasley: We're on the brink of famine. If we don't receive the monies that we need in the next few months, I would say 125,000 little girls and boys will die. We've been able to avert famine, but we know three things that are happenin'. We know that people are dying. We know that people are wasting. And we know that children are stunting. We have a stunting rate in Yemen now at almost 50 percent. That means they're smaller, the brains are smaller, the body's smaller because they're not getting the food or the nutrition they need. The World Food Programme's Stephen Anderson is trying to move millions of pounds of food to Yemen from an African port in Djibouti. Stephen Anderson: The World Food Programme is mobilizing food for seven million people. Now what that looks like is a 110-pound bag of wheat flour. We're aiming to provide two million of those every month to the people of Yemen. Scott Pelley: How long can you keep that up? Stephen Anderson: Well, we're desperately praying for peace. Because that's the only sustainable way of really rebuilding the situation our stated objective is to try to prevent a famine from occurring. While facing imminent famine, the people of Yemen are also suffering one of the biggest cholera epidemics in history. Nearly a million have been infected with the bacteria which inflicts diarrhea, dehydration and sometimes death. The disease thrives in dirty water. And water treatment and sanitation have collapsed in Yemen's cities. Nevio Zagaria heads the World Health Organization's emergency response. Scott Pelley: What do you have to have to stop the epidemic? Nevio Zagaria: We should have peace. This is what we need to stop this epidemic. So we cannot solve the problem of cholera if we do not have a proper safe water supply, if we do not have proper sanitation. If we do not have the sewage treatment plant in the main town functioning and stop because it runs out of fuel as it happened at the beginning of this epidemic in the north of Sana'a for three or four months. Scott Pelley: The main sewage plant in Sana'a ran out of fuel and didn't run for three or four months? Nevio Zagaria: Yes. So 3 million people, huh? About two million Yemenis have been forced from their homes by the war and there's been a big exodus of refugees that the world doesn't know very much about. Many of them have come 25 miles across the Red Sea to a refugee camp in the African nation of Djibouti. It is a testament to how bad things are in Yemen that the refugees believe that this place is so much better. We've seen a few refugee camps in our time but this may be the most desolate with a drought of life and flood of sun. One worker told us we were smart to come in fall when it cooled off to 110. Scott Pelley: How long have you been here? Ali Shafick: Unfortunately 28 months. Ali Shafick was once an architect in the Yemeni capital. His home was destroyed. He's alone here. And his despair was almost like madness. Ali Shafick: To be jobless in this camp is very sad. The time is going slowly, very slowly. Scott Pelley: The heat must be unbearable. Ali Shafick: Heat? Yes, boiling. Starting from June, July and August. Three months. You cannot live, you cannot live here, three months. It's impossible to live. Scott Pelley: And yet you do. Ali Shafick: I have to be patient. I have to be patient. This mother, Ameena Saleh, told us her family left after Saudi led airstrikes killed more than 70 people in her town. The planes would fly above us and fire rockets and missiles she told us. At night there was no sleep, they were holding the young ones. She said that her older son was saying 'we are going to die.' She told us we saw people die right in front of us. Scott Pelley: A little while ago we heard a rumble from the direction of Yemen. That's the bombing, isn't it? Yes, her husband said, it's near. Scott Pelley: What do you think when you hear that? Strong fear, she said. She said the terror is still inside us from the rockets, missiles and planes. Ayman Gharaibeh runs Yemeni refugee relief for the U.N. Scott Pelley: What lies ahead for these people, given where we are today? Ayman Gharaibeh: Remember, the conflict is going into a third year, some people has been displaced for literally three years or going into their third year. I honestly do not see any silver lining anywhere on the horizon that this is gonna end soon. And I'm afraid the humanitarian situation will continue to deteriorate. And we would go from a displacement to a famine, as happened, to cholera, and God knows what's next. The Saudi intervention in Yemen began with the rise of 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he's the son of the king and he's the defense minister. Salman is quickly reforming the kingdom's fundamentalist society. Recently, he lifted the ban on women drivers. This month, he arrested 200 Saudis including princes and media owners. He says it's a crackdown on corruption. His critics believe he's silencing his rivals. Salman's campaign in Yemen has now landed Saudi Arabia, for the first time, on the U.N.'s blacklist of nations that disregard the safety of children in war. The Saudis have pledged $8 billion in humanitarian aid for Yemen, but they've delivered very little of that. The head of the Saudi humanitarian agency says that its aid to Yemen is, quote, "way beyond any damage caused by any attacks." Scott Pelley: You met with some government officials involved in all of this, what kind of dialogue did you have with them? David Beasley: Well we met with officials on all sides. They said all the right things. And we come back, everything that they agreed to on visas and access, so that we can get the equipment we need in, so we can deliver the food where we need to deliver it, and the technology and the health product -- you know -- terrible. The conditions are deteriorating in an unprecedented way and none of the commitments that were made, by any and all sides, have been fulfilled. Scott Pelley: What future do you see for Yemen? David Beasley: I don't see a light at the end of this tunnel. There's gotta be a big change. As the World Food Program, I've got my mandate to feed people. But also as a U.N. leader, I call upon the leaders of the world to bring the pressure to bear whatever's necessary to get the Saudi-led coalition, the Houthis and all involved to the table and end this thing. You keep goin' like you're goin', there's not gonna be anybody left. All the children are gonna be dead. It's terrible. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 CBS

Rohingya children look on at a refugee camp in Palong Khali near Cox's Bazar, October 4, 2017. PHOTO: REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain/File Photo Over the last four decades the Rohingya people of the Rakhine State of Myanmar have been subjected to ongoing, planned, systematic oppression. Gradually, the international community is beginning to acknowledge the acts of the Myanmar government as genocide. Understanding Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya as genocidal is critical in light of narratives framing the plight of the Rohingya as a “humanitarian crisis” or “ethnic cleansing” and the Myanmar government's consistent denial of abuse. The latest exodus of Rohingyas that began on August 25, 2017 is an integral part of the realisation of the genocidal agenda. This essay is based on field-work interviews conducted in the first half of October in the Ukhia, Teknaf region by a three-member team of Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU). The narratives of the survivors provide a glimpse of the gruesome reality that Rohingyas had to endure in their own country and during their flight. “Suddenly all hell was let loose. We felt keyamat (the last day of judgment) had arrived. We rushed out of the house and began to run aimlessly. My paralysed granddad stayed put at home, hoping the army would take pity on him. Later we learnt he was charred to death when our house was torched,” says Nur Mohammad, 35, from Buthidaung. The guilt continues to haunt Nur as he struggles to eke out a subsistence in a Kutupalong shack surrounded by hundreds of refugee families of northern Rakhine. Nur was not the only one bearing such burden. There were many. The indiscriminate torching of property by the army was accompanied by killing, torture and abduction. Young girls were their explicit targets. Many were taken away in military vehicles never to be heard from again; others were raped or gang-raped in public, often in front of near and dear ones. Some were even gored to death. Narrating such experience, 21-year-old Amena from Maungdaw notes, “I am dirty (meaning dark) and poor. I always wondered why God was so unkind to me. When two good looking sisters of a rich family of our neighbourhood were picked up by the army only then I realised what God had in store for me.” Rakhine militant Buddhists led by monks were partners in crime of the Myanmar army. The army crafted a clever ploy to divide the communities, and, over the years, the cleavage widened. Not everyone was consumed by the flames of communal hatred as Noor Hakim of Maungdaw (24) informs, “When I begged my late father's Rakhine friend for shelter he didn't say a word. I could see the pain in his eyes. He gave me some money instead and his blessings. I realised that's the best he could do.” Faced with brutality of epic proportion, residents of Buthidaung started fleeing the area. Their obvious option was crossing the border for safety. Men, women and children endured a lot of hardship on the way. Within days some families ran out of dried food and cans of water that they had managed to carry with them. “It was quite a trek that lasted for days. In order to avoid the scorching sun and detection by the Myanmar army we used to begin (our journey) in the evening, walked through the night braving jungles and streams. One of our fellow travellers died of snake bite. During the entire journey I do not think my two eyelids met even once as I was scared of my teenage daughter being kidnapped. So far, God was kind to me. I am not sure what fate lies ahead of me,” says Sakhina, 34, a resident of Gundam camp. The mayhem that accompanied army atrocities in northern Rakhine split many families. Family members did not have the time and opportunity to plan their escape. While some were at home, others were away. Rumana (22) recalls, “When the armed moghs arrived my husband and mother ran in one direction, and I, with my child, in another. More than a week later I learnt that they managed to find shelter in a camp (in Bangladesh) where my relatives were already staying. I contacted them over the phone. I am not sure if I will be allowed to go there but I am dying to see them.” Over 600,000 Rohingyas have fled Rakhine State for Bangladesh since late August, many walking for days through thick jungles before making the perilous boat journey across the Naf river. Photo: AFPTwelve-year-old Sharu Shaikh was not that lucky. “As we reached the beach (in Rakhine) there was a huge crowd trying to get into the boat that was about to set sail. My father pushed me onto it. It was packed to the brim, and he and my mother failed to board. (After arriving here in Shah Pori) I waited for the whole day hoping they would come in the boats that arrived (subsequently). I do not know if I would ever get to see them,” he says with tears rolling down his dried cheeks, refusing to take a packet of food that was offered to him by relief workers.As the Rohingyas gradually settle down in their land of sanctuary despite all uncertainty and difficulties, refugees express their gratitude for the warm hospitality that the people of Cox's Bazar, Teknaf and Ukhia offer. They also recognise the outpouring of support of people from other parts of the country as the young and the old distribute much-needed water, biscuits, food, medicine, orsaline and the like. While they wait patiently for improved shelter and a better relief distribution mechanism to emerge, news of missing children, particularly those of young girls, has become a major source of concern. “I have been told that touts are bringing in offers of job and marriage and many fell prey to their deceit. Young girls had also gone missing when they went to the woods to fetch firewood and water, or respond to the call of nature. I have two daughters and I constantly worry about them,” says Rahim Mollah (55).The effort of Bangladesh authorities to register Rohingyas is being viewed by some refugees with suspicion. The registration process was not preceded by any awareness campaign on why it was necessary. Misgivings prevail. Some think it may lead to their forced repatriation to Myanmar. For Roshida Banu (55), who was waiting in the landing station in Kutupalong, the reason is somewhat different, “No, I am not going to register with men in uniform. I am scared of them.” The trauma of having to endure protracted army violence has had a permanent negative imprint in her psyche about the security forces.A stark contrast between earlier flows of Rohingyas and the current stream is the composition of the refugee population. After talking with key functionaries in refugee management, both in government and in the non-government sectors, we learnt that members of many well-to-do families have also joined the caravan of the destitute. Mohammad Haroon, who until late August was the owner of several buses, a motor parts store and a modest house in Maungdaw, recounts, “When we were preparing for Eid, little did we know that my family would have to live a destitute life on that auspicious day. Anticipating trouble I managed to send quite a bit of money to my relative in Chittagong through hundi. (After coming to Bangladesh) We had plans to join them but the restrictions on our movement have stalled the plan.” Haroon is hiding with his family of six in a private house in Cox's Bazar in constant fear of being apprehended for violating government stipulation to live in designated site/camps. He dreads at the prospect of being sent to the squalid camps. Haroon is well aware that like graveyards, camps are great levellers. Visiting the refugee sites one cannot but have an unqualified appreciation of the sacrifice being made by the locals whose daily life is massively disrupted by the almost overnight presence of tens of thousands of uninvited guests. For Renu Bala (41), a local resident of Harinathpur, Kutupalong, hosting refugees of her own faith poses the question, “How could we turn away someone who sought refuge? Yes, it is difficult to share the house with strangers but that is perhaps what God ordained.” After talking with dozens of refugees in different locations, young and old, male and female, we noted one common stand, “Of course, we will go back.” Nishat Ahmed, a school teacher, argues, “We are grateful for the hospitality extended to us but this is no life. The Myanmar government did not respect our Rohingya identity, nor does the Bangladesh state. The international community is an accomplice to Myanmar's genocide. One day their leadership will be made to stand on the dock along with the Myanmar army and Suu Kyi.” Hopefully, Rohingya refugees do not have to wait for long for that day to arrive. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Daily Star

The failed UN/African Union “hybrid” Mission in Darfur (UNAMID)—which has shamelessly and with gross inaccuracy celebrated its success for the almost ten years during which it has been charged with protecting civilians and humanitarians—continues (per its most recent reauthorization by the UN Security Council | June 2017) to draw down its forces on a scale ensuring that what exceedingly limited protection the Mission has offered will be greatly reduced. 44 percent of military personnel are now deploying out of Darfur and 30 percent of the policing personnel. The knock-on effects of withdrawing this hopelessly misconceived, demoralized, ill-equipped, and badly led Mission are many. Some of the greatest consequences will be a reduction in humanitarian access; for example, since the UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) flies only to areas militarily protected, locations abandoned by UNAMID troops will no longer be accessible. This is especially perverse since a condition for the permanent lifting of U.S. economic sanctions by the Trump administration was the improvement of humanitarian access in Darfur. The UN’s current estimate of the number of people in Darfur in need of humanitarian assistance is 3 million. The recent kidnapping of a Swiss aid worker, thankfully released, is a reminder of how vulnerable humanitarians are in Darfur—and the reason that 97 percent of all personnel for international nongovernmental humanitarian organizations (INGOs) are Sudanese nationals—who face reprisals and arrest by the vindictive Khartoum regime for their work in Darfur. They have repeatedly been labeled “criminals,” “spies,” “Zionists,” and “thieves” by Khartoum. Tragically, the greatest consequence of UNAMID’s deployment out of Darfur are the continuation, and in some places acceleration, of daily ethnically-targeted attacks on civilians throughout Darfur, primarily by Arab militias controlled or sanctioned by Khartoum. Non-Arab (African) civilians continue to be—as they have been for more than fourteen years—subject to murder, rape, displacement, and loss of property and goods. There is good reason to believe that we will see in the reports from Darfur (conveyed primarily by Radio Dabanga) continuation, even expansion, of these attacks. Only the fact of previous vast destruction of African villages and the violent expropriation of farmlands, and the massive concentration of displaced persons (some 2.7 million in Darfur itself,another 320,000 in eastern Chad refugee camps) limits the scale of attacks. Moreover, we should remember that some 600,000 people have been killed as a direct or indirect result of violence over the past fourteen years: this approaches ten percent of the pre-war population in Darfur (see | http://sudanreeves.org/2017/01/05/quantifying-genocide-darfur-mortality-update-august-6-2010/). As a crude barometer of the scale of violence, I have been assembling a brief bi-weekly compendium of foreshortened dispatches from Radio Dabanga and Sudan Tribune (all with sources on the ground). For surveys covering more extensive periods the violent expropriation of African farmlands (November 2014 – November 2016) and the rape of girls and young women (for the years 2014 and 2015), see: http://sudanreeves.org/2016/02/17/changing-the-demography-violent-expropriation-and-destruction-of-farmlands-in-darfur-november-2014-november-2015/ http://sudanreeves.org/2017/03/07/continuing-mass-rape-of-girls-in-darfur-the-most-heinous-crime-generates-no-international-outrage-january-2016/ Herewith the fourth (bi-weekly) compendium of violence reported from Darfur during the withdrawal of UNAMID. Particular emphasis has been given to reports bearing on the “disarmament” policy of the Khartoum regime, which is entered its “forcible collection” stage with ominous implications for the IDP camps, most notably Kalma camp near Nyala. Other dispatches with broader and long-range implications have been put at the beginning of the compendium: • U.S. urges Sudan and rebels to reach permanent ceasefire | Sudan Tribune | November 17, 2017 (KHARTOUM) The visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan has demanded the Sudanese government and the armed groups to reach a permanent and general ceasefire in Darfur, the South Kordofan and Blue Nile states. The Sudanese army has been fighting Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/North (SPLM-N) rebels in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan states, also known as Two Areas since 2011 and a group of armed movements in Darfur since 2003. [Sullivan offers no specifics, nor any criticism of the corrupt and incompetent leadership of the AU’s Thabo Mbeki in the futile “peace process”—or the imperative (as Khartoum sees it) of a disarmament campaign in Darfur that will inevitably lead to massive new violence in the region—Sullivan is simply offering diplomatic boilerplate—ER] Following six days of talks in Addis Ababa in August 2016, the armed movements and the government failed to conclude a deal on the security arrangements and humanitarian access in Darfur and the Two Areas prompting the African Union mediation to suspend the talks indefinitely. Since two years, the two sides continued to declare a unilateral cessation of hostilities in the conflict areas. [Khartoum’s strategy in accommodating U.S. conditions for lifting economic sanctions has been to shift to a policy of starving the Two Areas into submission. AU inability to secure humanitarian access over more than six years is an apt measure of its diplomatic incompetence and unwillingness to confront Khartoum—ER] Speaking in a lecture at the University of the Holy Quran in Khartoum Friday, Sullivan called on the Sudanese government to stop its military attacks in the conflict zones and declare a permanent ceasefire to achieve peace and stability in the country. He also demanded the SPLM-N to accept the US proposal to deliver humanitarian assistance to the affected civilians in the Two Areas. [Predictably, given previous disingenuous pronouncements by the senior U.S. diplomat in Khartoum, Charge d’Affaires Steven Koutsis, Sullivan makes no mention of the scale or length of Khartoum’s humanitarian embargo on rebel-controlled areas of South Kordofan and Blue Nile. No “U.S. proposal” has been put forward that is remotely adequate to the critical needs for food and medicines in these areas. This is more shameful U.S. posturing, from which only Khartoum benefits. More disingenuous U.S. posturing on this human catastrophe is a terrible disgrace—ER] • Displaced set strict rules for camp searches by Sudan forces | Radio Dabanga | November 17, 2017 | ZALINGEI [The weapons collection at the relatively small Hamidiya camp in Central Darfur (near Zalingei) occurred with only minor violence (“three soldiers troops assaulted displaced people in the market and seized a number of telephones”)—and of course there was no cache of weapons to be found. The conclusion to this dispatch is what is of most importance in looking forward—ER] In a statement this month, UNAMID called on the Sudanese authorities to coordinate the search of illegal weapons in camps for the displaced with the peacekeepers. The mission immediately reacted to the “show of force” by heavily armed government forces in Kalma camp on November 1, which caused panic among the displaced people. [We can expect to see a great deal more of this as the forcible phase of the disarmament campaign continues—ER] [Hussein Abusharati of the Displaced People’s Association said], “At the top of the conditions for the inspection is the formation of a tripartite committee, comprising of the camp administration, UNAMID, and the government, for supervision. Secondly, the inspection should be conducted by UNAMID. “Thirdly, the purpose of the inspection should be only for arms without the exposure of the displaced to questioning or holding their leadership. Fourthly, the government forces must immediately depart from the camp after the inspection.” [Reasonable as these demands may seem, they will not be met by Khartoum as camp searches continue with less attention from the UN and international community—ER] Opposition In August, the Sudanese government launched a large-scale campaign to disarm civilians and collect illegal weapons and vehicles in Darfur and states of Kordofan, in its attempt to improve the security and stability in these regions. The campaign has entered the stage of compulsory collection of weapons by reinforcements of Sudanese military and security forces. The compulsory arms collection is feared to lead to new conflict and internal fighting between militias in Darfur. The RSF captured Ali Rizgallah ‘Safana’, leader of a recently defected faction of the paramilitary Border Guards, after several clashes in North Darfur on 10 November. Also Musa Hilal, militia leader and chief of the Mahameed clan, strongly opposes the planned integration of the Border Guards into the RSF, as part of the disarmament campaign. [These fears are all too well justified, and major violence is only a matter of time, with civilians caught in the middle, especially in North Darfur—ER] • Weapons collection campaign increases risk of armed clashes in Darfur: Enough | Sudan Tribune | November 9, 2017 (KHARTOUM) The ongoing weapons collection campaign in Darfur region does contribute to bringing stability in the region but could increase the risk of armed confrontation, as the government target only the tribal gunmen who threaten the regime’s hegemony, says Enough Project in a report released Thursday. [This report by Suliman Baldo of the Enough Project is both timely enormously important: it gives us the clearest account to date of the catastrophic potential of Khartoum’s “disarmament” campaign; see | https://enoughproject.org/blog/new-report-ominous-threats-descending-darfur-2/] • Sudanese government faces challenges in Darfur perilous exercise of arms collection | Sudan Tribune | November 5, 2017 (Nyala/El Fasher) According to identical sources in different parts of the western Sudan region of Darfur, the collection of weapons campaign launched by the government is facing a series of difficulties, due to the lack of needed funds and the resistance of the Musa Hilal-led Border Guards Forces militia. Since the middle of last August, the Sudanese vice president has inaugurated the campaign to collect weapons from citizens, militias and tribes in a two-stage process, voluntary and coercive. However, South Darfur arm collection committee decided at the end of last October to postpone the campaign of forcible phase indefinitely due to lack of funding. A military source in South Darfur state told Sudan Tribune that the higher committee for the collection of weapons did not meet its commitment to provide the needed funds for the forcible weapon collection. Therefore, this phase which was supposed to be launched in the state in mid-October has begun only early November. The military official did not disclose the amount of money allocated for the campaign. “It is a big figure, but it should be provided to finance the fuel, per diems, and incentives to cope with emergencies and injuries if there are problems during the inspection and forcible collection.” The official statements say 30,000 arms have been collected in the five states of Darfur region during the voluntary process which started in August, while official figures estimate at 700,000 the number of illegal weapons in Darfur. Until now, the government collected weapons from the Popular Defence Forces (PDF), the Popular Police, but the Border Guards led by tribal leader Musa Hilal refused to hand over their weapons or to join the Rapid Support Forces led by Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, (aka Hametti). Hilal announced his readiness to confront government forces militarily, if they attempt to disarm his militia forcibly. To prepare for any eventuality, the government dispatched over 10,000 RSF militiamen to North Darfur state where Hilal forces estimated at 2500 fighters are based. The tribal leader and former Jajaweed leader sought to rally some armed groups like Savanna led by Abdallallah Rizqallah and others saying he has the money, weapons and ammunition just needs men to confront the government. After tolerating for long time his activities in the gold mines of Jabal Amir, the government dispatched RSF forces to control the area. In a show of force, the militiamen confiscated motorcycles in the mines. Also, on Friday morning, an additional RSF armoured regiment composed of tanks and armoured vehicles arrived in El-Fasher in reinforcement of the weapons collection force. [The scale of violence suggested by this dispatch should be terrifying: civil war in Darfur will have different actors, different ambitions—but the civilians of the region will inevitably be caught in the middle, and humanitarian relief efforts could be interrupted on a massive scale—ER] • Sudanese forces briefly surround Darfur Kalma camp | Sudan Tribune | November 2, 2017 (NYALA) In a show of force before to launch the compulsory arms collection campaign on Friday, Sudanese government forces surrounded South Darfur largest camp for displaced people on Thursday for some time before withdrawing. Sudanese government officials point to the presence of arms in the restive Kalma camp located outside Nyala. [The Khartoum regime provides no evidence, and ignores its previous murderous assaults on defenseless civilians in Kalma—ER]. Also, they speak of the presence of rebel supporters in the camp, saying they are connected to the rebel leaders. “More than 140 four-wheel drive (4WD) vehicles loaded with arms and soldiers, armoured vehicles and tanks, surrounded three blocks in the southern part of Kalma camp, but left after a quarter of an hour,” Adam Abdallah the deputy chairman of displaced persons and refugees association told Sudan Tribune on Thursday. Adam said the encirclement of the camp with the military, armoured vehicles and tanks caused fear and panic among the camp residents. • North Darfur security: Swiss aid worker released, kidnappers held | Radio Dabanga | November 16, 2017 | EL FASHER [The kidnapped woman], Margaret Schenkel, who speaks fluent Arabic, has been a humanitarian activist for more than 20 years, providing assistance to children in North Darfur, running a centre for undernourished children. [Khartoum, during 15 years of genocidal violence in Darfur, has created an environment of lawlessness and impunity that puts all civilians and humanitarians at acute risk—ER] • Small Arms Survey report: ‘UN Peacekeepers have lost thousands of weapons in sub-Saharan Africa’ | Radio Dabanga | November 15, 2017 | NEW YORK UN-backed peacekeepers have lost enough guns and ammunition in sub-Saharan Africa over the past two decades to arm an army, according to a study by the Small Arms Survey. The shocking figures contained in the report are highlighted in an analysis by James Reini for Al Jazeera news this week. The research group’s director, Eric Berman, said peacekeepers have lost “at least thousands of weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition” this century, often handing them over to local fighters without putting up a fight. Losses range from pistols and bullets to heavy machine guns, mortars, recoilless guns and grenade launchers, which can be military game-changers on the battlefields of Somalia, Democratic republic of Congo, and Sudan, Berman told Al Jazeera. “Peacekeepers are losing arms and ammunition that are going to be used against them and against civilians that they’re asked to protect, and prolonging conflicts that they’re asked to help resolve,” Berman said. The 75-page study, called Making a Tough Job More Difficult, identifies 20 forces operating under the UN, the African Union or some other international coalition that have lost guns and ammunition from 1993-2017. Most losses occurred in Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Mali and the Central African Republic. [UNAMID in Darfur is Exhibit A in this horrific account, which speaks directly to UN and African Union incompetence in Darfur, where the Mission has served largely as a fig-leaf, obscuring the absence of a vigorous, committed mission to protect civilians and humanitarians. The international community as a whole has been complicit in accepting a fig-leaf instead of a meaningful peacekeeping and civilian protection mission—ER] • More Sudan forces deployed for Darfur arms collection | Radio Dabanga | November 6, 2017 | KHARTOUM The commander of Sudan’s main militia, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), announced on Sunday that Khartoum decided to deploy more forces for its disarmament campaign in Darfur. He ruled out a confrontation with his cousin, former janjaweed leader Musa Hilal, whose fighters refuse to hand in their arms. In a press conference held at the RSF base in Teibat El Hasanab near Khartoum on Sunday, Commander Mohamed Hamdan (aka Hemeti) said that the forced collection of illegal weapons and unlicensed vehicles in Darfur will soon be expanded with “more armed forces”. He stressed that his forces “will not leave any weapon in the hands of civilians [..] in all areas and villages of Darfur.” In North Darfur alone, more than 12,500 RSF troops have been deployed to disarm civilians. The campaign is to be followed by a reform of “the supporting forces of the army,” by which the various government militias will be dissolved. The members are to join the RSF. The collection of firearms from the Popular Defence Forces and the Central Reserve Police militias happened as planned, but the government forces so far failed to collect weapons from the paramilitary Border Guards, affiliated with Musa Hilal. [And beyond the organized paramilitary forces indicated here are the countless smaller, often unnamed militia groups that prey on travelers and engage in brutal extortion schemes targeting African farmers and IDP camp residents. The whole region is awash in weapons, a tremendous number from Libya following the demise of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011—ER] • Clashes as RSF, Border Guards tensions erupt | Radio Dabanga | November 10, 2017 | KORMA / EL FASHER Large clashes took place between two of Sudan’s paramilitary forces, the Rapid Support Forces and the Border Guards, near Korma today. Their leaders have not revealed the casualty number. Eyewitnesses in Korma in North Darfur told Radio Dabanga that fighting broke out in Amar Jadeed, Eshbara, Kela and Niro. They heard explosions and gunfire coming from these areas from morning until after the Friday prayers ended. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) spokesman, Col. Abdelrahman El Jaali, confirmed the clash in Korma, which is 12 kilometres west of El Fasher. In a statement to the official Sudanese news agency (Suna) he said that they managed to arrest nine Border Guards members and seized their military equipment. He said that a number of militiamen were killed when the RSF pursued them up to the outskirts of Kutum. The RSF still give chase to the Border Guards members who managed to flee. “We will work to clean up all Darfur states from the infiltrators, especially those in the cities.” [Darfur’s new nightmare of violence, which will certainly spread during the so-called “disarmament” campaign—ER] • Ex-rebels chase away militants near North Darfur camp | November 13, 2017 | KABKABIYA A clash broke out between former rebel fighters and a group of militants, east of camp Sortony in Kabkabiya, on Saturday. Residents of the Sortony site, adjacent to the base of the AU-UN peacekeeping mission (UNAMID) reported to Radio Dabanga that the fighting was caused by a group of militants, riding horses and donkeys, who beat displaced people on the farms of Teo, two kilometres east of the camp. The attackers forced the displaced farmers to leave. UNAMID peacekeeping soldiers were unable to confront the attackers, “on the grounds that there were not enough troops to move,” the mission replied to the victims who reported the case. One of the camp residents said that the people then requested El Sadig El Fakkah to come to their aid, a former rebel movement which signed an internal peace agreement with the Sudanese government. El Fakkah’s troops stationed themselves southwest of Sortony on Saturday afternoon and clashed with the militant group, forcing them to leave the farms. One man was wounded and another of El Fakkah’s force went missing during the fighting. There are no details yet about the other party. According to the UN, their number has reduced to 21,500 people who are registered and currently reside at the site. [The implications of this fighting are enormous and give us a sense of why some armed groups, even those nominally part of a “peace” with the Khartoum regime, will simply not give up their weapons peacefully. The incompetence of UNAMID, highlighted here, gives every incentive to men such as Sadig El Fakkah to keep their weapons—ER] • Sudanese gov’t militia clashes with rebels in North Darfur | Sudan Tribune | November 10, 2017 (EL-FASHER) Bloody clashes have occurred on Friday in Korma areas, North Darfur state between government militia, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudan Army Movement-Revolutionary Forces (SAM-RF) of Abdelallah Raziqallah aka (Savanna), reliable sources told Sudan Tribune. A source at the Korma administrative unit in the locality of El-Fasher, North Darfur capital said sounds of weaponry and fire exchange were heard from Amari Gadid, Kaila, Niro and Abshara areas. He added gunmen have arrived in the abovementioned areas from Kabkabiya and Kutum several days ago, saying they clashed with the RSF on Friday afternoon. Later on Friday, an RSF source told Sudan Tribune that their fighters managed to defeat outlaws belonging to the SAM-RF in Jaga area which lies between Tawila and Kabkabiya localities. He disclosed that dozens of the SAM-RF fighters have been captured and two four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser vehicles were seized. Also, the official news agency SUNA has quoted the RSF spokesperson Abdel-Rahman al-Ga’ali as saying they captured 9 SAM-RF fighters, stressing several rebels have been killed while the rest of the rebel force have fled the battlefield. He underscored the RSF would clean Darfur’s five states of the outlaws and end their presence, particularly in the major towns. [Yet another source of violence in Darfur—ER] • Four children die in South Darfur ammo storage explosion | Radio Dabanga | November 13, 2017 | NYALA •Five Darfur children injured in grenade blast | Radio Dabanga | November 9, 2017 | NYALA [Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) and the huge storage sites for ammunition will pose threats to the children of Darfur for many years to come—ER] • Darfur camp residents, farmers wounded in attacks | Radio Dabanga | November 10, 2017 | GIREIDA / SIRBA Militiamen wounded three students in a camp for displaced people in South Darfur on Thursday, where a fire destroyed a number of houses three days ago. In two separate incidents, armed men with livestock attacked groups of farmers. One of the victims, all higher secondary school students, told Radio Dabanga that armed men injured a group of young men in Gireida [South Darfur] camp who gathered building materials from the Abola area, east of Gireida. The material would be used to re-construct the buildings that were burned on Tuesday. The attackers opened fire into the air, wounding students Fathi Idris Siyam, Mohamed Adam Ali, and Saeed Adam Ali. “Fathi Idris was seriously wounded and taken to a hospital in Nyala.” On Tuesday a fire broke out at a camp in Gireida in South Darfur and damaged 25 houses and a quantity of crops. [All fires are potentially arson in the current climate of assaults on IDP camps—and the particular violence described here continues to confront non-Arab/African Darfuris on a daily basis—ER] On Thursday, armed herdsmen opened fire on a group of farmers and wounded two of them south of Gireida. A witness informed this station that they attacked the farmers when they attempted to chase away cattle that the herders released onto the farms.Mohamed Eisa and Ibrahim Daoud were injured. “The herders’ livestock has destroyed large areas of agricultural crops south of Gireida,” the witness reported, adding that the areas which were affected the most are called Sennar, Banaya, Ous and Joghana. Local police has been informed about the incident, the witness said, but has not moved to drive the livestock out of the farms. On Sunday, armed men also attacked farmers in Gireida. An activist in the area reported that the men were herders and wore military uniforms. Two women were injured. A group of armed men attacked four displaced women from Abu Suruj in Sirba, West Darfur, on Thursday. The men attacked the farming women reportedly to assault and rape them. The coordinator of the Sirba camps told Radio Dabanga: “When they resisted, they beat the women and caused them varying injuries. Two of the women were taken to Abu Suruj hospital.” The victims are Hawa Abdallah Abakar, Maryam Mohamed, Kaltoum Abakar and Aisha Abakar El Nur. • Young farmer raped during South Darfur harvest | Radio Dabanga | November 9, 2017 | MERSHING A young woman was raped was raped by militiamen as she harvested crops in Mershing locality in South Darfur on Monday. The victim’s brother, who is a soldier of the Sudan Armed Forces, told Radio Dabanga that on Monday three militiamen attacked his 16-year-old sister while she was harvesting groundnuts at her farm, and raped her at gunpoint. He said that he took his sister to Mershing Hospital, but the hospital officials did not examine her for a whole day. This prompted him to put on his military uniform and go to the doctor’s house. He says “the doctor examined her after a long argument and confirmed the rape, but no one has moved to hunt down the perpetrators.” On Tuesday a herder assaulted a displaced woman and seriously injured her inKabkabiya locality in North Darfur. A woman activist from the camp told Radio Dabanga that one of the herders beat Fathiya Adam Hasan while she was trying to stop camels from entering her farm and caused her a deep injury on her head. She was taken to Kabkabiya hospital. The farmers of the Wadi Bari area have complained of the armed herders’ trespassing their farms with cattle by force of arms. [These are the weapons that are extremely unlikely to be collected during the current “disarmament” campaign—and which can be easily replaced, given the vast number of weapons in the region—ER] They pointed out that camels and cattle have caused extensive destruction and damage to crops and that the most affected areas were Dori, Kala, Khartoum Jadeed and Saga. • Soldiers seize, beat merchant in West Darfur | Radio Dabanga | November 7, 2017 | SIRBA / KUTUM A merchant was severely beaten by military intelligence members in a military garrison in Sirba, West Darfur, on Sunday. Members of the military intelligence severely beat merchant Abdallah Haroun in his shop in the Sirba camp for displaced people on Sunday. “They had asked about the price of women clothing. When Haroun mentioned the price of 150 Sudanese pounds, the soldiers said the pricing is too high,” explained the coordinator of the camps in Sirba. They then took Haroun to the military garrison where they beat him. He was only released after a group of people protested his detention, in front of the garrison and the headquarters of the locality. “A medical examination confirmed that Haroun was seriously injured in the head, causing his head to bleed. Doctors are treating him in the hospital in El Geneina,” the coordinator told Radio Dabanga. Kidnap Adam Ibrahim Ahmed has been detained in the military garrison in Abdel Shakur area in Kutum locality, North Darfur, since October. One of his relatives told Radio Dabanga that Sudanese soldiers arrested Ibrahim Ahmed on 2 October, when he was in Kutum for a social occasion. “They took him to the military garrison in the area without explaining the reasons and motives for the arrest.” [Khartoum’s military and security forces continue to enjoy complete impunity in Darfur–ER] • Herders abduct two farmers, attack others in Darfur | Radio Dabanga | November 6, 2017 | TAWILA / KUTUM / MUKJAR A group of herders abducted two villagers from their farms in North Darfur’s Tawila locality on Saturday. Herders are grazing their livestock on farms in Kutum. In Central Darfur, militiamen robbed a number of farmers of their belongings. [This grazing of livestock on farmlands by armed Arab nomadic herders during the harvest season is extraordinarily destructive and deeply compromises food supplies for the non-Arab/African people in the affected regions, i.e., most of Darfur—ER] Speaking to Radio Dabanga, a relative of one of the victims reported that four gunmen riding camels attacked Adam Abakar Haroun (45) and Suliman Omar Saleh (35) and on their farms near Timo village, 10 km west of Khazan Tunjur. “The camelmen accused them stealing a number of cows that went missing some days ago. But Adam and Suliman had nothing to do with the matter,” he said. He added that others from Timo village informed the military garrison of Murtal about the incident. [This facile fabrication of a pretext for assaults has log been used by well-armed nomadic herders against non-Arab/African farmers in Darfur–ER] Farmers in Kutum complained about livestock destroying their farms. “Three days ago, herders began grazing camels and sheep at the farms belonging to Jengouli and Gharban villages, less than 3 km east of Kutum town,” a farmer told this station on Sunday. “The herders threaten to kill anyone who protests the grazing or tries to remove the animals from the farms.” In Mukjar locality in Central Darfur, militiamen attacked a number of farmers in Kombo Umbera on Sunday morning. “At 4 am, a group of militiamen stormed the village. They were shooting heavily in the air to intimidate us,” one of the victims reported. “They then began to take our property. When Khadija Adam protested, they beat her with a baton, and broke her hand,” he added. The agreed period for grazing in Sudan’s western region does not commence until February, about two months after the start of the dry season. However, each year herders graze their livestock on farms prematurely, causing repeated tension with farmers. This year, farmers in Darfur began to report assaults by herders grazing their livestock on farms by force of arms in October. A number of farmers have been killed and injured. • Two dead, man’s hand hacked-off in Darfur robberies | Radio Dabanga | November 3, 2017 | NYALA / KUTUM / GULDO A displaced man was killed, and his brother’s hand hacked-off on the road between camp El Salam and Kalma camp near Nyala, South Darfur on Tuesday evening. In separate incidents, a man was shot dead in North Darfur, and a woman seriously injured in Central Darfur. Yagoub Furi, Coordinator of the Darfur Displaced and Refugees Association told Radio Dabanga that on Tuesday evening four gunmen attacked brothers Suleiman and Hassoun Abdallah while they were on their way from camp Kalma to camp El Salam for a visit of some relatives. The gunmen opened fire on Hassoun and killed him instantly. They then cut-off the hand of Suleiman with a knife, took the amputated hand with them and fled. He explained that the incident was reported to Beleil police and Suleiman Abdallah was taken to Nyala Hospital. Gunmen shot dead Siddig Suleiman, resident of Kassab camp in Kutum locality in North Darfur at noon on Wednesday. A camp sheikh told Radio Dabanga that gunmen riding camels attacked Siddig Suleiman while he was winnowing grain on his farm at Jumbo area north of the camp. They tried to take his grain and when he refused, they fired two bullets at him which killed him instantly. Displaced people and residents of Fata Borno of Kutum locality in North Darfur have complained about continued attacks by the militias against the residents and their cattle trespassing the farms by force of arms. Yesterday displaced persons and residents of Fata Borno told Radio Dabanga that large numbers of militias after being driven out of Kutum by the rapid support forces have moved to Fata Borno and stationed there. A farmer said that 10 days ago these militias began taking their livestock to graze in the farms by force of arms and assaulting the residents in the market, the camp and the districts of Fata Borno. A woman named only as Amina was wounded in a shooting at Guldo in Jebel Marra in Central Darfur on Thursday. One of Amina’s relatives told Radio Dabanga that one of the herders shot her while she was trying to drive the camels from her farm. He said the shooting caused serious wounds to her thigh, abdomen and shoulder and that she was taken in a serious condition to Guldo Hospital. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 SUDAN Research, Analysis, and Advocacy