HUMAN RIGHTS - The African Mirror

Nov

10

2020

Catalogue of failures behind growing humanitarian crisis in northern Mozambique

HUMAN RIGHTS

CABO Delgado, the northernmost province of Mozambique, has been under attack for three years. The violence was triggered in 2017 when armed men attacked a police station, killing one police officer and critically injuring another. Locals identified the assailants as “al-shabaab”, alluding to an Islamic connection. CRISTIANO D'ORSI, Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the South African Research Chair in International Law (SARCIL), University of Johannesburg This year, the violence has escalated. In August, militants linked to the Islamic State seized the province’s strategic port town. The militants are reported to have formal ties to Islamic State. They are also…

Nov

09

2020

By The African Mirror

In escalating conflict, people of Ethiopia’s Tigray risk displacement, U.N. says

HUMAN RIGHTS

GIULIA PARAVICINI NINE million people risk displacement from an escalating conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray region, the United Nations said, warning that the government's declaration of a state of emergency was blocking food and other aid. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is pressing ahead with a military campaign he announced on Wednesday, despite international pleas to pursue dialogue with the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) rather than risk civil war. Tigrayans dominated Ethiopian politics for decades until Abiy took office in 2018 and are fighting his efforts to remove their grip on power. Clashes between federal troops and Tigrayan forces had broken…

Oct

20

2020

By The African Mirror

Algerian women push for more rights at Berber soccer tournament

HUMAN RIGHTS

ALGERIAN women in bright Berber dress ululating, singing and beating drums at a soccer tournament last week were pushing their fight for gender equality - a cause that has come under greater scrutiny in Algeria after a brutal attack this month. The quiet cobbled village of Sahel was hosting the third annual competition between female teams in the mountainous Kabylie region to push for a bigger role for women in Algerian society. "Women before weren't free, weren't allowed to work outside of the house ... now we have rights, we can be lawyers, pilots, or do any other jobs, and…

Oct

19

2020

By The African Mirror

Picked by Slaves: Coffee crisis brews in Brazil

HUMAN RIGHTS

FABIO TEIXEIRA

Oct

17

2020

By The African Mirror

Virus fears as Mozambique conflict fuels overcrowding, hunger

HUMAN RIGHTS

TAVARES CEBOLA THREE months ago, Sofia Bombina and her family of 11 had to flee their home on the Mozambique coast after their town was attacked by a militant group. The 39-year-old farmer, her nine children and her sister travelled nearly 400km (250 miles) by bus from Mocimboa da Praia to Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado province, where they now live with a host family. Bombina is among the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced since an insurgency erupted in the northern province three years ago. Most of those escaping the ongoing conflict are finding shelter…

Oct

16

2020

By The African Mirror

Refugee women in Africa say domestic violence rose during pandemic

HUMAN RIGHTS

NITA BHALLA MORE than 70% of displaced and refugee women in Africa have seen a rise in domestic violence in their communities during the coronavirus pandemic, a newly-published survey has found. More than half the 850 women interviewed in 15 African nations also reported a rise in sexual violence and almost one in three had observed growth in early and forced marriage, said the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Lockdowns to curb the spread of COVID-19 have fuelled an upsurge in gender-based violence (GBV) across the world, with victims forced to spend more time with their abusers and prevented from seeking…

Oct

15

2020

By The African Mirror

One year on, Tunisia’s #MeToo movement grapples with race

HUMAN RIGHTS

BAN BARKAWI FEMINIST activist Khawla Ksiksi did not expect a backlash from supporters of her country's #MeToo movement when she used the campaign to highlight the double discrimination faced by Black women in Tunisia. Inspired by the global movement to expose sexual abuse and harassment, Tunisian women's campaigners launched their own version #EnaZeda in 2019, sparking street protests and a long-overdue debate about sexual violence and gender inequality. But 28-year-old Ksiksi, who is Black, said that while EnaZeda had been instrumental in helping women speak up against sexual abuse, awareness about racism in the North African country was still in…

Nov

14

2020

By The African Mirror

Women and girls bear brunt of Africa ‘transport poverty’

HUMAN RIGHTS

KIM HARRISBERG LONG queues in the rain, daily four-hour trips in a public taxi, the constant threat of road accidents, and nearly having to use a pen as a knife to fight off an aggressive male passenger. These are just some of the challenges Busisiwe Nongauza has faced while commuting to and from her job as an insurance underwriter in Johannesburg, South Africa's biggest city. Nongauza, who lives in Soweto, the country's biggest township, is not alone in her experience. A new study shows that in Sub-Saharan Africa "transport poverty" - when inaccessible or unsuitable transport negatively impacts a person's…

Oct

21

2020

By The African Mirror

Child labour rising in West Africa cocoa farms despite efforts – report

HUMAN RIGHTS

ANGE ABOA and AARON ROSS THE use of child labour has risen in cocoa farms in Ghana and Ivory Coast over the past decade despite industry promises to reduce it, academics said, largely supporting earlier findings that were questioned by both states. The prevalence of children doing hazardous work, including using sharp tools, has also gone up in the world's top two cocoa producers, according to the study funded by the U.S. government. The levels were higher than in 2010 when companies including Mars, Hershey, Nestle and Cargill agreed to reduce the worst forms of child labour in Ghana and…

Nov

21

2020

By The African Mirror

To honor slave trade victims, a memorial in the depths of the Atlantic

HUMAN RIGHTS

ELLEN WULFHORST TRIBUTES to victims of the transatlantic slave trade can be found in museums and through statues, but a new proposal is calling for a memorial that can neither be visited nor even seen. A virtual memorial of ribbons on maps of the Atlantic deep seabed could honor the estimated 1.8 million Africans who died at sea during the trans-oceanic slave trade, said a proposal published this month in the Journal of Marine Policy. "It would be on a map ... they can't visit it," said Phillip Turner, a science policy consultant who worked on the paper as a…