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Africa: Human Rights Review
AFRICA ACTION
Africa Policy E-Journal
January 26, 2003 (030126)
Africa: Human Rights Review
(Reposted from sources cited below)
This posting contains excerpts of several parts of the Africa
section of the 2003 world report by Human Rights Watch (HRW). The
full Africa report is available on the web at
http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa.html
The HRW report also has country sections on 13 countries -
Angola: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa1.html
Burundi: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa2.html
Dem. Rep. of Congo (DRC): http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa3.html
Eritrea: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa4.html
Ethiopia: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa5.html
Kenya: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa6.html
Liberia: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa7.html
Nigeria: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa8.html
Rwanda: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa9.html
Sierra Leone: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa10.html
South Africa: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa11.html
Sudan: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa12.html
Uganda: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/africa13.html
+++++++++++++++++end summary/introduction+++++++++++++++++++++++
Human Rights Watch World Report 2003
AMBIGUITY AND DUPLICITY ON HUMAN RIGHTS
African leaders' efforts throughout 2002 demonstrated a commitment
to peace and stability but sent ambiguous messages as to the
primacy of human rights. The A.U. successfully pressured Rwanda and
Uganda to reach an agreement with President Joseph Kabila's
government to move towards an end to the war in the DRC; as of this
writing both Rwanda and Uganda had for the most part disengaged
from the war in the DRC. However, the A.U. gave no indication of
what, if anything, would be done to hold Rwandan and Ugandan forces
and other parties accountable for human rights violations and war
crimes committed in the DRC.
Even more disconcerting was the A.U. decision to select Libya, with
its long record of human rights abuse, as chair for the 2003
session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). Libya had
a long record of detaining government opponents without charge or
trial, prohibiting the formation of political parties or
independent nongovernmental groups, and muzzling its press. The
Libyan government had also been responsible for torture,
"disappearances" and the assassination of political opponents
abroad. In selecting Libya to chair the UNCHR, African leaders
demonstrated disrespect for the commission and for human rights in
general.
Meanwhile, oppressive governments continued to deny basic freedoms
and new or renewed conflicts led to greater repression, increased
human rights abuse, and large numbers of refugees and displaced
persons, without any effective African response. In the context of
the strong NEPAD [New Partnership for Africa's Development] and
A.U. [African Union] commitments to promoting and protecting human
rights, African leaders' customary silence on many of these
developments was all the more discouraging. One commonly cited
example of this silence was African endorsement of the election in
Zimbabwe. The election was strongly criticized within and outside
Africa for not being free and fair. It took place amidst
widespread, politically motivated violence by supporters of
President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic
Front (ZANU-PF) against supporters of the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), the main opposition party. These abuses were highly
publicized in the international and African press. Yet, SADC's
official monitors--though not, significantly, the SADC
parliamentarians' delegation--determined that the elections were
legitimate. African leaders, including South Africa's President
Thabo Mbeki and Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo, two of
NEPAD's architects and champions, failed to speak out against the
violence inflicted on MDC supporters. However, in the end, both
Mbeki and Obasanjo voted to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth
in the "troika" set up by that intergovernmental body to consider
irregularities during the elections.
African leaders may have been justified in criticizing Western
governments for placing undue emphasis on events in Zimbabwe when
they had overlooked so many other oppressive situations in Africa,
including the simultaneous election crisis in Madagascar. But
African leaders also said little as across the continent, in
country after country, endemic human rights abuse continued, and
daily violations of civil and political liberties persisted. There
were several nations in sub-Saharan Africa that were all but
invisible to public attention and scrutiny where severe human
rights abuse went unabated in 2002, including Equatorial Guinea,
Eritrea, Gabon, Swaziland, and Togo. In Swaziland and Eritrea,
political pluralism was banned. The only party allowed to operate
in Eritrea was the government-affiliated People's Front for
Democracy and Justice. In both countries, civil liberties were
basically nonexistent and civil society was severely restricted.
Labor unions were the only CSOs allowed in Swaziland, and they were
allowed only in the interest of maintaining trade relations with
the United States (U.S.). The Swaziland government maintained tight
control of the media; in Eritrea the government completely silenced
the private press and arrested all the editors and publishers
except those who managed to flee abroad. In June, the Swazi
nongovernmental organization Lawyers for Human Rights filed a
complaint with the OAU's African Commission on Human and Peoples'
Rights against King Mswati for consistent human rights abuses
despite Swaziland's 1995 ratification of the African Charter on
Human and Peoples' Rights.
The hostile environment often faced by civil society in sub-Saharan
Africa was yet another example of the ambiguity that characterized
African leaders' statements in support of human rights. In general,
nongovernmental organizations, human rights defenders and other
CSOs operated in highly limiting political environments and faced
serious security risks. Research and advocacy efforts were
significantly constricted and even entirely shut down in many
countries, among them Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, the DRC, Ethiopia,
Eritrea, Liberia, Mauritania, Sudan, and Togo. Nevertheless, human
rights advocates and defenders managed to increase the pressure on
their governments to address human rights abuses and hold
accountable those who committed human rights violations. And, a
handful of countries, including Botswana, Kenya, Mauritius, Malawi,
Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Tanzania,
enabled civil society to operate in an environment of relative
freedom and openness.
SOUTH AFRICA AND NIGERIA: REGIONAL LEADERS
South Africa was a key political force throughout the year.
President Thabo Mbeki was one of the five principal NEPAD
architects and was the de facto point person for dealings with the
Group of Eight (G8) industrialized countries in the run-up to the
June Kananaskis G8 Summit--at which he presented the NEPAD program.
Mbeki was elected inaugural A.U. chair at the Durban summit. South
Africa's leaders were active participants in the many controversies
and challenges that faced the region during the year. Recognizing
that the international "face-off" surrounding Zimbabwe's
presidential election threatened NEPAD's future, Mbeki balanced
competing pressures to preserve relations between Africa and the
West. Western leaders looked to Mbeki as a spokesperson for all of
Africa, pressuring him, as a symbol of the new African commitment
to good governance, to denounce Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe
and reject the election results. Meanwhile, many Africans judged
such pressure to be based on concerns for the white farmers in
Zimbabwe--an assessment ably played upon by Mugabe himself--and
judged Mbeki's words and actions as indicators of whether NEPAD
truly meant African leadership or was simply pandering to Western
interests for foreign aid. Others were simply appalled at this
politicization of the African response to the precipitate descent
of a relatively prosperous and stable country into a
self-reinforcing cycle of ever-worsening disrespect for the rule of
law, economic chaos and hunger.
Mbeki was the principal mediator in the DRC peace process. He was
a constant voice for peace and compromise from the initial
Inter-Congolese Dialogue in Sun City, through the conversations
between DRC President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul
Kagame during the A.U. Summit, and into the talks in Pretoria that
led to the signing of a "memorandum of understanding" on the
withdrawal of Rwandan troops from the DRC and the disarming and
disbanding of the ex-FAR (former Rwandan armed forces) and the
Interhamwe (Rwandan Hutu militia) forces in the DRC. In the last
week of October, Mbeki again hosted the Congolese factions in
Pretoria to reach an agreement on an interim power-sharing
government.
South Africa also played a key role in bringing Burundi closer to
peace. Without incident, South African troops, deployed late in
2001, protected the interim power-sharing government. The interim
government had been agreed to in 2001 during talks mediated by
former South African President Nelson Mandela. South African Deputy
President Jacob Zuma made numerous attempts to bring all fighting
parties to the negotiating table for a peace based on the 2000
Arusha Accord. On October 7, the transitional government signed a
cease-fire with two rebel factions at the Great Lakes summit
convened by regional African leaders. The leaders gave two
hard-line factions thirty days to begin talks for a cease-fire
agreement.
President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, like Mbeki, was outspoken
about the need for change in Africa and the importance of good
governance and human rights. Yet his actions cast serious doubts on
the veracity of his words. At this writing, Obasanjo was under
impeachment by the National Assembly: he was charged with violating
the constitution by not implementing the approved national budget,
abetting corruption, and ordering army forces to attack civilians
in two incidents in 1999 and 2001.
Since Obasanjo took office in 1999, inter-communal violence and
ethnic tensions escalated in Nigeria and threatened to undermine
elections scheduled for 2003. The authorities made little effort to
prevent conflicts or limit the escalation of political violence.
Human rights abuses by the Nigerian police forces abounded in 2002.
This pattern of abuse, coupled with the general failure of Nigerian
authorities to provide security, spurred vigilante activity. In
some instances, state governments supported these vigilante groups
as they committed brutal executions, systematic torture and
unlawful arrests. In August and September, efforts were made to
crack down on vigilante activity in the southeast but little was
done to address the underlying conditions that had led to its
proliferation. Further, the efforts of the Independent National
Electoral Commission to register voters were marked by significant
irregularities, and in a closed decision process, the commission
approved only three new parties. Given Obasanjo's leading role in
NEPAD and the A.U., the significant level of ongoing human rights
abuse in Nigeria did not reflect well on the degree of reform to be
expected from other African leaders.
TOWARDS PEACE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA?
Moves towards peace were not limited to the Great Lakes. Fighting
in Angola came to an end in 2002, prompted by the February 22 death
of Jonas Savimbi, leader of the National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA). In March, President José Eduardo
dos Santos, under considerable pressure from Western and African
leaders, as well as Angolan civil society, announced that the
government and the UNITA rebels had agreed to a truce. The
cease-fire went into effect on April 4. Shortly thereafter, the
UNITA soldiers were quickly demobilized and the various UNITA
factions began unity talks, which were successfully completed in
early October. Lasting peace would depend largely on the Angolan
government's ability to rehabilitate and reintegrate demilitarized
UNITA combatants and Angola's displaced--4.1 million internally
displaced persons and 430,000 refugees, according to UN sources.
Sierra Leone moved closer to ongoing stability after January 18
when President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared that the decade-long
civil war had ended. Kabbah lifted the four-year state of emergency
on March 1. Then in May, presidential elections were successfully
completed with little violence. The successful disarmament of
combatants by the U.N. Mission in Sierra Leone and their subsequent
rehabilitation through British-led efforts contributed
significantly to prospects for continued and ongoing peace and
stability. Major steps were made towards justice and accountability
with the establishment of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. However, the poor
performance of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
(ICTR) cast serious doubts over the Special Court. In addition,
concerns for Sierra Leone's peace rose as the year progressed and
the civil war in neighboring Liberia intensified. (See below.)
Peace was, for the first time in at least twenty years, a
possibility in Sudan due to the joint efforts of the U.S., the
United Kingdom (U.K.) and Norway. U.S. Special Presidential Envoy
for Peace in Sudan John Danforth brokered four significant
agreements between the Sudan government and the Sudan People's
Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in early 2002, all of which
specifically highlighted the importance of human rights. In
particular, the government and the SPLA agreed to end attacks on
civilians and civilian objects in the south, with independent
international monitoring.
Subsequently, the Sudan government and the SPLM entered peace
negotiations, which were sponsored by the Kenya-led
Inter-Government Authority on Development. The parties signed a
peace protocol in Kenya on July 20, agreeing that after an interim
period of six and a half years, a self-determination referendum
would be held to determine whether the south wished to secede. The
interim period would begin after a final peace agreement had been
signed. They also agreed that shari'a (Islamic law) would not apply
in the south for the interim period. Although, during negotiations,
the government continued to deny humanitarian access in the south
and to bomb oil-rich areas despite the presence of civilians, on
October 15 the parties agreed to a military standstill until
December 31 and later agreed to full humanitarian access during
that period.
Elsewhere on the continent, these positive trends were
contradicted. In mid-September, Cote d'Ivoire erupted in conflict
when roughly 750 soldiers mutinied out of anger over their imminent
dismissal, returning the country to the instability that took hold
following a 1999 military coup. The incident provoked rapid
international support of the government, with Nigeria and Ghana
committing military support to government efforts to suppress the
rebellion. ECOWAS dispatched a mediation team of high-level
delegates to Bouaké, the rebel stronghold, in early October, and on
October 21 the rebels conceded to sign a cease-fire agreement.
Multinational ECOWAS troops under Nigerian leadership were
dispatched to monitor the peace. However, concerns arose over Cote
d'Ivoire's long-term prospects for stability as violence caused by
reignited ethnic, religious and political tensions spread
independently of rebel activity. It was uncertain that this
violence would subside once the rebels and the government had come
to terms.
While concerted regional efforts seemed to prevent the Cote
d'Ivoire rebellion from escalating into civil war, internal
conflicts continued in Liberia and Uganda, and abuses in these
countries received little attention. Fighting between the Liberian
government and Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy
(LURD) threatened stability in the Mano River Union area (Liberia,
Sierra Leone, and Guinea) as Liberians sought refuge in neighboring
countries such as Guinea, where serious violations of their human
rights were documented. While abuses inside Liberia were generally
worse in areas under government control, both government and LURD
forces committed serious human rights violations against civilians,
including killing, torture, rape, forced labor and forced
recruitment. Liberia's President Charles Taylor declared a state of
emergency for a large portion of the year, enabling the government
to harass all perceived opponents or rebel supporters.
Civilians in northern Uganda and southern Sudan were subjected to
similar abuses due to fighting between the government and the rebel
Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). LRA forces in particular targeted
civilians, though the Ugandan army also committed abuses. The LRA
raided and looted villages and refugee camps and abducted children,
forcing them to fight as child soldiers. It also attacked
humanitarian aid workers and camps. As in Liberia, the Ugandan
government arbitrarily arrested and detained those suspected of
being rebel sympathizers or political opponents. In addition, the
already limited political activity permitted under Uganda's
no-party "Movement" system was further constrained when the
parliament passed the Political Organizations Law.
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Date distributed (ymd): 030126
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +political/rights+ +security/peace+
The Africa Action E-Journal is a free information service
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