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The UN Security Council has called for an accelerated availability of coronavirus vaccines for Africa and said the continent had so far only received 2% of the vaccines produced globally.
In May, Burundi held a presidential election which was won by Evariste Ndayishimiye, candidate of the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy - Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) party.
Ndayishimiye was hurriedly sworn in after the untimely death of president Pierre Nkurunziza in June.
Rights violations continue
The Council encouraged donor countries which had suspended aid to Burundi to continue dialogue towards resumption of development assistance.
A report by a UN watchdog in September said human rights violations were still being committed in Burundi, including sexual violence and murder.
The country was plunged into a crisis in April 2015 when Ndayishimiye’s predecessor Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a controversial third term, which he ultimately won in July 2015.
His candidature, which was opposed by the opposition and civil society groups, resulted in a wave of protests, violence and even a failed coup in May 2015.
Hundreds of people were killed and over 300,000 fled to neighboring countries.
The attack took place early Sunday morning, a day after the first presidential results were announced.
Most of Mali, in West Africa, lies in the Sahara. A landlocked country four-fifths the size of Alaska, it is bordered by Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania, Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, and the Côte dIvoire. The only fertile area is in the south, where the Niger and Senegal rivers provide water for irrigation.
Republic.
Caravan routes have passed through Mali since A.D. 300. The Malinke empire ruled regions of Mali from the 12th to the 16th century, and the Songhai empire reigned over the Timbuktu-Gao region in the 15th century. Morocco conquered Timbuktu in 1591 and ruled over it for two centuries. Subjugated by France by the end of the 19th century, the land became a colony in 1904 (named French Sudan in 1920) and in 1946 became part of the French Union. On June 20, 1960, it became independent and, under the name of Sudanese Republic, was joined with the Republic of Senegal in the Mali federation. However, Senegal seceded from the federation on Aug. 20, 1960, and the Sudanese Republic then changed its name to the Republic of Mali on Sept. 22.
In the 1960s, Mali concentrated on economic development, continuing to accept aid from both Soviet bloc and Western nations, as well as international agencies. In the late 1960s, it began retreating from close ties with China. But a purge of conservative opponents brought greater power to President Modibo Keita, and in 1968, the influence of the Chinese and their Malian sympathizers increased. The army overthrew the government on Nov. 19, 1968 and brought Mali under military rule for the next 20 years. Mali and Burkina Faso fought a brief border war from Dec. 25 to 29, 1985. In 1991, dictator Moussa Traoré was overthrown, and Mali made a peaceful transition to democracy. In 1992, Alpha Konaré became Malis first democratically elected president.
In the early 1990s, the government fought the Tuaregs, nomads of Berber and Arab descent who inhabit the northern desert regions of Mali and have little in common with Malis black African majority. The Tuaregs accused the government
Anti-government demonstrations gripped several countries in the Middle East in early 2011, and protests in Libya followed those in Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain. The crackdown by the government in Libya, however, was the most vicious. The protesters took to the streets on Feb. 16 in Benghazi, the countrys second-largest city, demanding that Qaddafi step down. The next day, declared the Day of Rage, saw the number of demonstrations burgeon throughout the country. Security forces began firing on protesters, and by Feb. 20 Human Rights Watch estimated that as many as 200 people had been killed by troops. Several government officials and diplomats defected, and members of the military joined the ranks of the opposition as the government attacks on civilians grew increasingly brutal. Some reports had fatalities numbering near 1,000 or more. Qaddafi refused to resign, but offered to double the salaries of public workers and freed some Islamic militants from jail. Protesters dismissed the move as a hollow gesture and continued their actions throughout the country. Qaddafi enlisted the help of mercenaries as the number of defections by troops swelled. He cast blame for the uprising on the West, which he claimed wants to assume control of Libyas oil, and Islamic radicals who want to expand their base.
On Feb. 27, the UN Security Council voted to impose sanctions on Qaddafi and several of his close advisers. The sanctions included an arms embargo on Libya, a travel ban on Qaddafi and other leaders, and the freezing of Qaddafis assets. The Security Council also requested that the International Criminal Court investigate reports of widespread and systemic attacks on citizens. The UN sanctions followed unilateral action by the U.S., and the European Union also sanctioned Libya. By Feb. 28, rebels had taken control of Benghazi and Misurata and were closing in on Tripoli. The rebels organized a military and formed an executive committee, the Transitional National Council, illustrating that they could establish a
[VOA] Mogadishu, Somalia -- Somalia's federal government said Wednesday that efforts to resolve the stalemate on elections collapsed after leaders from the states of Puntland and Jubbaland failed to agree on the way forward.
On 9 June, Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan resumed talks on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), raising hopes that they can strike a deal before Addis Ababa makes good on its intention to begin impounding water in the dam’s reservoir, with or without an agreement.
Addis Ababa argued that the deal would commit it to drain the dam’s reservoir to unacceptably low levels in the event of prolonged drought and that it was designed to perpetuate Egypt’s unfair claimed quota of the Nile waters.
While such an agreement could be a way to reduce tensions and build trust while working toward a comprehensive deal – as Crisis Group argued in March – Cairo rejected it, saying a piecemeal approach would allow Ethiopia to avoid committing to an all-encompassing agreement on GERD’s filling and operating rules, and would therefore leave Egypt exposed to water shortages over the long term.
While Ethiopia is prepared to agree to release predetermined amounts – which would vary depending on the starting volume of the GERD reservoir and projected annual Blue Nile flow – in any hydrological year when drought reduces water flow below a certain threshold, Egypt has also pressed it to make additional commitments for situations when there is a multi-year drought.
Ethiopia objected to these proposals in the draft agreement, expressing particular concern about formulas that would place it in the situation of “owing water” to Sudan and Egypt if river flows to the latter fall short of certain levels over a period of years.
Analysis - President Idriss Deby has ruled Chad for 30 years. His nomination to run for a sixth term in the April election is inflaming tensions in a country marked by economic woes and frustration with the political elite.
[Egypt Online] Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry stressed Saturday 17/04/2021 the importance of concerting the international efforts for fighting the coronavirus pandemic and providing its vaccine.
MDC leader Nelson Chamisa writes that there have been four elections in Africa that were rubber-stamped by the international community, thereby perpetuating a culture of unfair competition and illiberal democracy.
The Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry was responding to comments by his Ethiopian counterpart in an interview with the Associated Press Friday.
At this juncture we are depositing the issue with the security council with the desire that it undertakes its responsibilities.
“At this juncture we are depositing the issue with the security council with the desire that it undertakes its responsibilities.
If the security council does not undertake its responsibilities, this is even a greater threat to international peace and security”, the Ethiopian foreign affairs minister said.
Egypt, which relies on the Nile for more than 90% of its water supplies, sees the issue as a potentially existential threat.
Bobi Wine spoke to Africanews as concerns are growing at the wave of violent arrests, disappearances and shootings that have rocked the east African country ahead of the January 14 vote.
[SPS] Pretoria (South Africa) -- Former South African Ambassador to Cuba and Chief of Staff in the office of ANC Secretary General, Phatse Justice Piitso, adressed an Open Letter to Joe Biden, Friday 1 January, calling on the US President elect to set things right and help end the illegal occupation of Western Sahara by Morocco.
[allAfrica] The United States on Saturday ordered all non-essential personnel, including families of diplomats, out of Chad, as armed groups advanced towards the capital N'Djamena.
[RFI] Countries of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) will hold another summit in 10 days to discuss the situation in the Central African Republic. A summit held on Friday reaffirmed the regional bloc's support for the validity of elections held on 27 December.
The UN Security Council is planning to discuss Western Sahara diplomats have said, after US President Donald Trump recognised Morocco's sovereignty over the disputed region.
Atlanta City Council President Felicia A. Moore Announces 2021 Committee Chairs and Appointments ATLANTA — Council President Felicia A. Moore announced the 2021 committee chairpersons and appointments during the final regularly scheduled Council meeting of 2020. City Utilities Committee: Natalyn Archibong – Chair Andrea L. Boone Dustin Hillis J.P. Matzigkeit Joyce Sheperd Howard Shook … Continued
The post Atlanta City Council President Announces 2021 Committee Chairs and Appointments appeared first on Atlanta Daily World.
Armed groups known locally as al-Shabab have been sowing terror for more than three years in the strategic province of Cabo Delgado.
Security forces in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have been accused of unlawfully killing or causing the disappearance of around 200 people.
Forces in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have launched offensives against militants linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Sahel region, south of the Sahara desert.
Islamist militants first emerged in Mali in 2012, and then spread to Burkina Faso and Niger.
'War crimes'
\"The deliberate killings of unarmed civilians by security forces in Mali and Burkina Faso may constitute war crimes under international law and should be thoroughly investigated,\" said Amnesty.
Mali's defence minister vowed to investigate allegations, including charges that soldiers killed 43 people during attacks on two villages last week.
BY RICHARD MUPONDE THE United States has adjudged President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government as one of the worst administrations in terms of human rights violations in the world. This came out in a report titled 45th Annual Country Reports of Human Rights Practices 2020 released by US State secretary Antony J Blinken on Tuesday in the House of Commons, where Zimbabwe was included on the list for taking advantage of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions to crack down on political dissent and to consolidate authoritarian rule. In the report, Zimbabwe was named together with countries such as China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua as the worst rights violators. Blinken said the pandemic impacted, not only individuals’ health, but their ability to safely enjoy their rights and fundamental freedoms as some governments used the crisis as a pretext to restrict rights and consolidate authoritarian rule. “State-sanctioned violence in Zimbabwe against civil society activists, labour leaders, and opposition members continued a culture of impunity, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex LGBTQI+ persons continued to be vulnerable to violence, discrimination, and harassment due to criminalisation and stigma associated with same-sex sexual conduct,” Blinken said. US Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jim Fisch, in his reaction to the report, said Zimbabwe and other countries that were abusing human rights should be denied access to resources that would facilitate the abuses. “The international community must continue to hold these regimes accountable, in part by denying them the resources to facilitate gross human rights violations. The connection between corruption and #human rights abuses is particularly transparent in #Zimbabwe. Reporting on government corruption or demanding government accountability leads to harassment, jail time, and torture for those who speak up,” Fisch said. He said dictators, authoritarian regimes, kleptocrats and autocrats alike denied their citizens access to the most basic human freedoms. “These bad actors will stop at nothing to cling to power. All the while, they detain, abuse, torture, and even murder those who dare to dissent. This report serves as an important diplomatic tool that gives us the resources to name and shame those who undermine or suppress the will of the people.” Human rights defenders in Zimbabwe told NewsDay that it was a shame for the country to be rated among the worst rights abusers in the world. Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum director Musa Kika said: “This state of affairs bleaks Zimbabwe’s chances of full acceptance as an equal among the family of civil and progressive countries, and does damage to the government's reformist rhetoric. The US report is on all fours with the reports the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum and other local human rights groups have been releasing in 2020.” Kika said with a plethora of anti-democratic laws put in place, the abuse of criminal justice systems, security sector impunity and gross corruption, Zimbabwe was one nat
Kenya is banking on repeated endorsements by the African Union and Nairobi's own networks to clinch a seat at the UN Security Council when a vote comes up this evening.
In Africa, Kenya will be competing against Djibouti, which it beat three times at the African Union endorsement vote last year, but which stuck to the race, challenging the validity of the elections.
It was the third time the mission was clarifying the issue, after Djibouti contested the decision at the AU, saying the committee of permanent representatives who voted in Kenya had no authority to transmit the decision, unless endorsed by the AU Executive Council (a group of foreign ministers from AU member states).
In October last year, two months after Djibouti challenged Kenya's victory, Namira Negm, AU's Legal Counsel, wrote to AU members advising that the vote was conducted by African permanent representatives to the AU, on the authority of the Executive Council and hence did not require any further endorsements from the foreign ministers.
Kenya could also enjoy an edge over Djibouti, given that the African Union might want to prevent any possible falling-out from its decisions, argued Dr Wilfred Nasong'o Muliro, an international relations lecturer at Technical University of Kenya.
It was Canada's second-consecutive defeat in a bid for a seat and an especially big blow to Trudeau.
Trudeau blamed the loss on Canada's late start in campaigning for the seats.
Norway and Ireland had declared their candidacies for the seats well before Trudeau was elected in 2015, after which he announced Canada's intention to run.
Trudeau tried to sell Canada's bid by noting that the multilateral system is challenged by large countries withdrawing their support for engagement on the world stage.
Trudeau actually finished with fewer votes than Canada's previous prime minister, Conservative Stephen Harper, received in 2010.
1915: Allied forces take Neuville in France from Germans in World War I.
1925: Britain and France accept in principle Germany's proposals for security pact to guarantee Franco-German and Belgo-German boundaries.
2004: France and Germany, the sharpest critics of the Iraq war, back a revised UN resolution laying out the powers of Iraq's new Government, an important step toward gaining the approval of the UN Security Council.
2013: US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping end a two-day summit in the California desert with few policy breakthroughs but the prospect of stronger personal ties.
2014: Egypt's former military leader is sworn into office as president nearly a year after he ousted the nation's first freely elected leader.
2015: Acknowledging setbacks, President Barack Obama says at the close of a G-7 summit in Germany that the United States still lacked a “complete strategy” for training Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State.
With COVID-19 still raging in America, according to nationwide case reports there are over 27 million positive cases and nearly 470,000 deaths, numbers that we never thought to reach. And with new strains popping up locally, many Black residents might be wondering when they can roll up their sleeves and receive the COVID-19 vaccine. That … Continued
The post It’s Not So Black and White: Getting The COVID-19 Vaccine May Depend On Your Race appeared first on The Michigan Chronicle.
Iran has issued an arrest warrant for Donald Trump and 35 others over the killing of top general Qassem Suleimani and has asked Interpol for help, a Tehran prosecutor, Ali Alqasimehr, has said.
The move caused unease in Europe but the US claims that Suleimani’s death has weakened Iran’s grip on Iraq.
Three Students Make History at Northwestern University as the First All-Black MFA Directing Cohort
The US special envoy on Iran, Brian Hook, dismissed the warrant as a propaganda stunt that “nobody takes seriously”.
Interpol said it would not comply with the Iranian request, which was likely to be seen in the context of the growing tensions between Tehran and Washington over the future of the UN embargo on conventional arms sales to Iran.
A US draft resolution retaining the arms embargo is due to be debated at the UN security council on Tuesday, and the US is trying to put pressure on the EU not to allow the embargo to lapse.
Islamist militants are beheading children as young as 11 in Mozambique's northern province of Cabo Delgado, aid agency Save the Children said in a new report.
Soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo took part in an operation against rebels in the north-east on Wednesday. The region of Djugu has been under threats from armed groups, where at least 46 people were killed in a single attack last month.
The 40,000-seat Amadou Ahidjo Stadium saw a buzz of activities before the opening match between the host, Indomitable Lions of Cameroon and Zimbabwe.
Just in recent weeks, fighters allied to Libya's internationally recognised Government of National Accord have made significant gains against their rivals in the Libyan National Army, led by self-proclaimed Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
As various would-be mediators attempted to fill the leadership void - from French president Emmanuel Macron to Italy's prime minister, Giuseppe Conte - Haftar's Libyan National Army slowly consolidated its grip on large parts of the country.
When it appeared that Salamé would try to circumvent Haftar and start a national dialogue process, the Libyan National Army launched its assault on Tripoli last April with backing from Egypt, the UAE and Russia.
There was hope that Germany could parlay its neutrality to bring Libya's internationally recognised prime minister, Fayez al-Serraj, and Haftar together along with their main backers, respectively Turkey and Russia.
Given Haftar's recent declaration of military rule over the areas he controls, darker days could be ahead, especially when external powers insist on playing out their great game for the Middle East in Libya.
The Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has expressed concern about the challenges facing St Vincent and the Grenadines in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as the La Soufriere volcano continues to erupt.
