Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 60 years on
In the 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, Africa has undergone dramatic changes. The decolonization process, and the end of apartheid in South Africa (an era which also started in 1948), have been accompanied by institution-building on a national level and increased respect for the rule of law. Many sub-Saharan African countries now have active civil societies and diverse independent news media. However, despite significant progress, the human rights promised in the Universal Declaration are far from being a reality for all the people of Africa.
A number of protracted armed conflicts have been resolved, such as those in Angola, Southern Sudan, Sierra Leone and Liberia. But their human rights consequences endure, affecting both economic and social development and the political arena. The violent struggle for power, even in states which do not descend into armed conflict, still remains an important component of political life in Africa, in spite of moves towards democratization in many countries.
Durable and lasting solutions to Africa’s conflicts have frequently proved elusive, despite the contribution of the Organization of African Unity and subsequently the African Union (AU) to conflict prevention and resolution. There has been a deplorable lack of political will to address the human rights violations that generally lie at the roots of political tensions and hostilities. The AU Peace and Security Council has failed to fulfil its mandate to address the human rights dimension of armed conflicts in Africa.
Over the decades, the human rights framework in Africa has developed through various regional human rights treaties and institutions. In 1986 the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights entered into force and the 20th anniversary of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission) was celebrated in 2007. However, despite significant developments in African human rights institutions, notably the launch of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Commission has faced continuing financial and political obstacles. Inadequate support from the AU has forced the African Commission to rely on external support for most of its staffing requirements, while many member states show little interest in hosting its meetings.
In recent years many African states have proved reluctant to engage constructively with global human rights institutions, such as the recently established UN Human Rights Council. Many have aligned their positions with a handful of states determined to weaken the work of these institutions. There are, however, notable exceptions, and some African states have played a constructive and at times courageous role in the UN, standing up for victims of grave human rights violations.
The human rights framework in Africa has developed through various regional human rights treaties and institutions. But the human rights promised in the UDHR are far from being a reality for the people of Africa
2007 under review
The rights of many people in Africa continued to be violated in 2007. Economic and social rights remained illusory for millions of people. The internal armed conflicts that continued to ravage several states were accompanied by gross human rights abuses including unlawful killings and torture, including rape. In some countries all forms of dissent were suppressed, and in many freedom of expression was restricted and human rights defenders suffered intimidation and harassment. Women endured widespread discrimination and systematic human rights abuse. Throughout the continent, those responsible for human rights violations escaped being held to account.
Economic, social and cultural rights
Despite increased economic growth in recent years in many African states, millions of people continued to live without access to the basic requirements of a dignified life, such as adequate housing, education or health care. Political instability, armed conflict, corruption, under-development and under-investment in basic social services all contributed to the failure to make economic, social and cultural rights a reality for men, women and children across the region.
Southern Africa continued to have the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the world. In South Africa poverty operated as a barrier to access to treatment and care for the rural poor, in particular women, and Amnesty International documented how women’s right to health was undermined by the physical inaccessibility of health services, costs of transport, shortage of health personnel, lack of daily access to adequate food and gender-based inequalities.
Families were forcibly evicted from their homes in a number of countries in order to make way for development or urbanization projects. Often, governments did not provide any compensation or alternative housing for those forcibly evicted, violating the right to shelter and adequate housing of hundreds of thousands of people.
From July onwards, hundreds of families were forcibly evicted and had their homes demolished by the Jardimdo Éden (Garden of Eden) construction company in the neighbourhood of Iraque in Luanda, Angola ... The forced evictions were carried out to make way for a luxury housing complex. No alternative accommodation or compensation was provided. In November, two journalists reporting on the evictions, António Cascais, a freelancer for the German radio station DeutscheWelle, and Alexandre Neto of the Angolan Radio Despertar, were assaulted bymembers of a private security company and detained for over three hours by themilitary police.
Armed conflicts
The continuing armed conflicts had devastating consequences for civilian populations, with gross human rights violations including unlawful killings, sexual violence and the recruitment of child soldiers. Forced displacement and conflict-related deaths from hunger and disease continued on a large scale.
The conflicts in Somalia and in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) escalated during 2007. In January the AU authorized the deployment of a peacekeeping force to Somalia (AMISOM), but without an explicit mandate to protect civilians. Less than one fifth of the projected 8,000 troops had been deployed by the end of the year.
Darfur (Sudan), eastern Chad and the northern part of the Central African Republic (CAR) continued to face conflict and widespread insecurity. In Darfur the armed groups involved in the conflict fragmented and proliferated, further complicating the prospects of a political solution. In July the UN Security Council authorized a 26,000 UN-AU hybrid peacekeeping force for Darfur. However, the deployment was delayed as the government of Sudan raised obstacles and UN member states did not provide the necessary military equipment to allow the deployment of an effective force. In September the UN Security Council authorized a multidimensional presence in Chad and the CAR, alongside a European military operation. However, by the end of the year these forces had not yet been deployed.
In northern Niger fighting erupted between government forces and a Tuareg-led armed opposition group, accompanied by human rights violations.
There were some steps towards conflict resolution: in March a peace agreement was signed in Côte d’Ivoire, and negotiations to end the conflict in northern Uganda continued.
The proliferation of small arms remained a major problem. Frequently, arms embargoes imposed by the UN Security Council were not respected or adequately monitored.
The African Union authorized the deployment of a peacekeeping force to Somalia, but without an explicit mandate to protect civilians
Impunity
Police and other law enforcement officers were rarely held accountable for serious human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and other ill-treatment. Such impunity prevailed in many countries including Angola, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Law enforcement officers frequently used excessive force in countries including Benin, the Republic of Guinea, Kenya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Sudan and Zimbabwe. Incidents of excessive use of force were often not investigated, even when people were killed.
Amnesty laws or regulations were considered in Burundi and adopted in Côte d’Ivoire for crimes committed during their internal armed conflicts, although government leaders gave reassurances that no amnesty would be granted to those responsible for crimes under international law. However, no progress was made in either country to investigate and prosecute those responsible for serious human rights violations during the conflicts. In Liberia too, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission made little progress.
International justice mechanisms contributed to ensuring accountability for crimes under international law in some cases.
In April the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against two individuals involved in the conflict in Darfur: Ali Kushayb, a Janjawid militia leader, and Ahmad Muhammad Harun, the Sudanese Minister for Humanitarian Affairs. Both were accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, the Sudanese government refused to surrender the accused to the ICC.
In May the Prosecutor of the ICC announced that an investigation would be opened in the CAR. War crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Ituri district, DRC, in 2003, led the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for Germain Katanga in July. The DRC government surrendered him to the ICC. However, the leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), including Joseph Kony – indicted by the ICC in relation to the situation in Uganda – remained at large.
Trials continued before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) at the same time as the ICTR began its exit strategy by proposing to transfer cases to national jurisdictions, including to Rwanda.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone convicted three members of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) in July for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Two members of the Civil Defence Forces (CDF) were also convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The trial of Charles Taylor, former President of Liberia, was postponed and was expected to start in 2008.
There was little progress in the case of Hissène Habré, former President of Chad, following the request by the AU in 2006 that he be tried in Senegal, under universal jurisdiction, for crimes under international law.
International justice mechanisms contributed to ensuring accountability for crimes under international law in some cases
Death penalty
There were a number of positive developments on the death penalty in 2007, confirming that African states are increasingly becoming abolitionist in practice or by law. Even though the death penalty continued to be applied in various countries, the number of people executed was not large.
Rwanda abolished the death penalty in July and the government of Gabon announced in September that it would abolish the death penalty, subject to approval by parliament. In October the government of Mali presented a draft abolitionist bill to parliament. In various countries death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, such as in the Republic of Congo, Ghana and Zambia.
At the vote on the moratorium on the use of the death penalty at the UN General Assembly in December, 17 African states voted in favour of a moratorium and 20 African states abstained.
However, executions took place in Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, and in Uganda military courts ordered the execution of soldiers. Research by Amnesty International in 2007 indicated that at least seven executions had taken place the previous year in Nigeria, even though government representatives officially declared that no capital punishment had been carried out in Nigeria in recent years.
On 20 September, a soldier from the Uganda Peoples' Defence Forces (UPDF), Corporal Geoffrey Apamuko, was sentenced to death by hanging for murder. Military courts in Uganda continued to hand down death sentences and order executions of soldiers in the UPDF. The exact number of soldiers put to death under military law remained unclear.
Violence against women and girls
Violence against women remained largely unaddressed although some countries strengthened their legal framework. Ghana and Sierra Leone passed domestic violence bills, but a children’s rights bill in Sierra Leone was only passed into law after the provisions criminalizing female genital mutilation were dropped.
In Kenya, which passed the Sexual Offences Act in 2006, Liberia, which introduced a new law on rape in 2006, and South Africa, where the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act was signed into law in December, women and girls continued to face widespread violence, including rape. In Nigeria a bill to implement the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) failed to pass in the National Assembly, 22 years after Nigeria ratified CEDAW. Furthermore, a bill addressing domestic violence failed to become law at federal level even though individual states within Nigeria, such as Lagos state, passed similar legislation.
Sexual violence remained widespread in various conflicts, with life-long consequences for women and girls, many of whom had no access to adequate medical and psychological care or to any justice mechanisms. Perpetrators of violence against women, including rape, were rarely held accountable. The lack of reparations for women and girls subjected to sexual violence during and after armed conflict was extensively documented in Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. Often such women and girls are stigmatized by society and further marginalized.
In July UN peacekeepers in Côte d’Ivoire were accused of widespread sexual abuse against women and girls. The allegations were investigated by the UN and Morocco, as troops from Morocco were involved, but the results of these inquiries had not been made public by the end of 2007.
In eastern Chad women and girls displaced as a result of the conflict were at risk of rape and other forms of sexual violence when they ventured outside camps for the displaced. A similar pattern prevailed in Darfur, where women and girls were at risk of sexual violence when collecting firewood and water outside camps, or when going to the market. Often the sexual violence remained unreported as women feared repercussions.
In the DRC rape and other forms of sexual violence also remained widespread, particularly in the east. The perpetrators included soldiers and police officers as well as members of the various armed groups. Some of the armed groups abducted women and girls and subjected them to sexual slavery. Numerous reports of rape also emerged from the conflict in Somalia, committed by Ethiopian troops, Transitional Federal Government forces and gunmen.
In Malawi boys and girls, some as young as 10, were employed to work on farms. Mauritania adopted a law to make slavery a criminal offence, 26 years after slavery had been officially abolished, as there were indications that slavery was still being practised.
A 14-year-old girl living in the Aradip camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) in the Dar Sila region of Chad was caught and raped by several armed men when she left the camp to collect firewood early in the morning of 30 April.
Refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants
Hundreds of thousands of people in Africa were on the move across borders in search of protection or an adequate standard of living, often at great risk to their lives.
Thousands of people tried to escape the armed conflict in Somalia by fleeing to Kenya, but Kenyan authorities closed the border in January in violation of international refugee law. In addition Kenya forcibly returned hundreds of asylum-seekers to Somalia. As a result of the armed conflict and violence in Darfur and in the CAR, tens of thousands of people fled to neighbouring countries, in particular Chad. Many did not receive adequate humanitarian assistance.
Tanzania continued in 2007 to forcibly return refugees from Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC, labelling them illegal immigrants even though many had or were seeking refugee status. The Ugandan authorities claimed that the return of 3,000 Rwandese refugees and asylum-seekers was voluntary, but many complained of being forcibly returned to Rwanda. Asylum-seekers and refugees were also forcibly returned to Eritrea from Sudan and the United Kingdom, contrary to the guidelines of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The Angolan authorities violently expelled thousands of Congolese migrants from northern Angola to the DRC. Many women were reported to have been raped by Angolan soldiers during the expulsion.
'War on terror'
The impact of the US-led “war on terror” was increasingly apparent in the Horn of Africa and other parts of Africa. In January, at least 140 people fleeing from Somalia to Kenya were detained by the Kenyan authorities. More than 80 of these detainees, who were detained incommunicado without charge or trial on suspicion of links with the Council of Somali Islamic Courts, or in some cases with al-Qa’ida, were unlawfully transferred to Somalia and then onwards to Ethiopia. More than 40 were still detained incommunicado and in secret in Ethiopia at the end of 2007.
A number of individuals, including foreign nationals, were arrested in Mauritania for suspected involvement with a cell linked to al-Qa’ida. In June and July, 14 people were tried in Mauritania, accused of belonging to the Algerian Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédiction et le Combat.
The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism expressed concern, following his visit to South Africa, at the administrative detention of immigrants for 30 days or more without mandatory judicial review, and at the failure of the authorities to respect the principle of non-refoulement in suspected “terrorism” cases as well as in other immigration cases.
The impact of the US-led 'war on terror' was increasingly apparent in the Horn of Africa and other parts of Africa
Human rights defenders and repression of dissent
In many African countries it continued to be dangerous to express critical or independent views. Political opposition groups, human rights defenders, independent journalists and wider civil society, all faced state repression.
The space for human rights defenders remained restricted in many countries including Angola, Eritrea, Gambia and Rwanda. In some countries human rights defenders were personally at risk. In many, they were intimidated and harassed, including through arrests or surveillance.
Numerous women human rights activists were arrested in Zimbabwe during peaceful protests. Many were ill-treated by the police while in detention. In the DRC a woman human rights defender was raped by a security official during a work visit to a detention facility. The daughters of another were violently sexually assaulted by soldiers.
In Sudan human rights defenders were arrested and some were reportedly tortured by the national intelligence and security forces. In Ethiopia two prominent human rights defenders were unfairly convicted in December and were sentenced to two years’ eight months’ imprisonment. A prominent human rights defender was murdered in Somalia, while in the DRC human rights defenders continued to be exposed to attacks and death threats, primarily by government agents.
The space for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists was particularly restricted. In Cameroon, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda, LGBT activists came under attack from various groups within society in reaction to efforts to defend and promote their human rights.
Political prisoners and prisoners of conscience were detained in countries including the Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Niger and the self-declared Republic of Somaliland.
The work of independent media was severely impeded in a wide range of countries and the right to freedom of expression violated, including through legislation to restrict media activities and arbitrary arrests of journalists. In Somalia and the DRC journalists were killed because of their work.
At the beginning of 2007, security forces in the Republic of Guinea violently repressed demonstrations organized by trade unions – hundreds of people were killed or injured. The government declared a state of siege, granting powers that normally lie with the civilian authorities to the military. In Zimbabwe hundreds of human rights defenders and members of the opposition were violently repressed while exercising their right to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.
In Nigeria elections in April were severely affected by irregularities and violence. Voters, candidates and supporters were threatened and attacked by opponents or armed groups sponsored by political leaders. Police officers in Kenya killed dozens of protesters during demonstrations following elections in December.
In February, the presidential guards in the Republic of Guinea arrested two people working for the radio station FM Liberty and looted the broadcasting centre. The soldiers accused the radio station of carrying out interviews which were critical of President Lansana Conté. One of the employees, David Camara, was arrested by members of the security forces who threatened to kill him and stubbed a cigarette out on his neck. He was unconditionally released after two days.
Events that have occurred in 2008
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