HUMAN RIGHTS - The African Mirror

Jun

2021

Actor Blanchett sees pandemic as chance for reflection on plight of refugees

MARIE-LOUISE GUMUCHIAN THIS year's World Refugee Day offers a chance to reflect on the uncertainty faced by those forced to flee their homes, Oscar winner Cate Blanchett says as the world grapples with the unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Australian actor, a goodwill ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said the annual June 20 event came during a time of "challenge and reflection". "We've been forced to confront what uncertainty feels like and of course that is the situation that the majority of refugees live with, year in, year out," Blanchett told Reuters in an interview. "There's a…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

OPINION: We must understand the context of cocoa farming to stop child labour in West Africa

HUMAN RIGHTS

MICHAEL EHIS ODIJIE IT is now two decades since reports of child slavery and child labour in cocoa cultivation in West Africa led to a global campaign against these practices. Numerous initiatives to combat child labour have been launched by groups such as chocolate manufacturers through sustainability schemes, standards organisations like Fairtrade, multi-stakeholder groups such as the International Cocoa Initiative, and NGOs. However, research suggests that child labour in cocoa farming in West Africa is still rampant. Although trafficking is difficult to study, media reports suggest that children are still being trafficked into cocoa farms in large numbers. Several factors explain the lack of success of these programmes…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

U.S. Supreme Court rules for Nestle, Cargill over slavery lawsuit

HUMAN RIGHTS

THE U.S. Supreme Court yesterday threw out a lawsuit accusing Cargill Inc and a Nestle SA subsidiary of knowingly helping perpetuate slavery at Ivory Coast cocoa farms, but sidestepped a broader ruling on the permissibility of suits accusing American companies of human rights violations abroad. The 8-1 ruling authored by Justice Clarence Thomas reversed a lower court decision that had allowed the lawsuit, brought on behalf of former child slaves from Mali who worked at the farms, filed against the companies in 2005 to proceed. The court ruled the claim could not be brought under the Alien Tort Statute, which…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Child labour rises globally for the first time in decades

HUMAN RIGHTS

EMELINE WUILBERCQ CHILD labour has risen for the first time in 20 years, the United Nations has said, with one in 10 children in work worldwide and millions more at risk due to COVID-19. The number of child labourers has increased to 160 million from 152 million in 2016, with the greatest rise in Africa due to population growth, crises and poverty, said the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF). "We are losing ground in the fight against child labour, and the last year has not made that fight any easier," UNICEF's executive director Henrietta Fore…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Millions of Ugandans denied vital services over digital ID cards

HUMAN RIGHTS

LIAM TAYLOR MILLIONS of Ugandans struggle to access vital public services and entitlements as they lack digital identity cards, six years after they were introduced, human rights groups said on Tuesday. Government data shows that a quarter of Ugandan adults, or 4.5 million people, did not have a biometric identity card in 2020, with pregnant women being turned away from health centres and old people unable to claim welfare payments, they said. "There are significant weaknesses in the digital ID system," said Salima Namusobya, head of the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER), one of three co-authors of Tuesday's…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Uganda drive to certify customary land runs into culture clash

HUMAN RIGHTS

LIAM TAYLOR WHEN the residents of a northern Ugandan village heard about a plan to document their land, they worried it was going to be stolen. But after photographing the land in Owele and taking coordinates, government officials gave people there something they never had before: pieces of paper proving the land they lived on was theirs. The lush grasslands of Owele, in Pader district, are regulated by clans, families and tradition, and before then had no formal land titles. Santa Otyeka, a 73-year-old parish leader, said her new land ownership document stopped her brothers-in-law from taking her land after…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Prehistoric cemetery in Sudan shows war has been hell forever

HUMAN RIGHTS

WILL DUNHAM ALL was not well among the peoples who inhabited the east bank of the Nile River in northern Sudan some 13,400 years ago, as revealed by the battered bodies buried in a cemetery at one of the world's oldest sites showing human warfare. Researchers said on Thursday a re-examination of remains from the Jebel Sahaba cemetery excavated in the 1960s provides new insight into this prehistoric bloodshed, including evidence that there had been a succession of violent encounters rather than a single deadly showdown as previously believed. Of the skeletal remains of 61 men, women and children, 41…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Caught in the middle: Peace activists in Cameroon try to end a brutal war

HUMAN RIGHTS

JESS CRAIG A small but growing grassroots peace movement is trying to bring an end to the four-year secessionist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions – an internationally neglected crisis that is becoming increasingly deadly and complex. Formal attempts to negotiate a settlement between the government and fighters demanding independence for “Ambazonia” have stalled. Internationally led efforts are hamstrung by deep divisions within the separatist movement, and by the refusal of the government – which argues that the conflict is an internal affair – to engage with external mediators. Spurred by the lack of progress in getting the warring parties around a…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Governments urged to boost cash grants to end pandemic-fuelled child labour

HUMAN RIGHTS

KIM HARRISBERG FROM brick kilns to carpet factories, COVID-19 has pushed children as young as eight years old into dangerous and abusive jobs, rights groups have said, urging governments to roll out cash allowances to reduce child labour. Human Rights Watch and advocacy organisations in Ghana, Nepal and Uganda interviewed 81 children working in often risky settings, including gold mines, fisheries and construction sites, during the coronavirus pandemic. "The most shocking finding for me was the exploitation ... some children were paid in alcohol at stone quarries," said Angella Nabwowe Kasule, programmes director for the Ugandan charity Initiative for Social…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Pandemic pushes more child vendors onto Central African Republic’s streets

HUMAN RIGHTS

INES KPAKOLE ABDIAS is not afraid of contracting coronavirus when he leaves home each day with a basket of hard-boiled eggs to sell on the busy streets of Bangui, the Central African Republic's capital. But the 11-year-old street vendor does fear the punishment he will endure if he fails to earn enough money for his family. "My mother beats me and blames it on me," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation one afternoon while selling his wares under the scorching sun with little to eat or drink. Abdias left school last year as his mother could not afford the fees,…