HUMAN RIGHTS - The African Mirror

May

28

2021

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

02

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

26

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

21

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,…