Tag: Africa

Africa
RSF

UAE-backed network in Libya fuels Sudan war

A new Lighthouse Reports investigation has brought to light new evidence of the United Arab Emirates’ role in sustaining Sudan’s civil war by backing the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) through a covert logistics and training network based in eastern Libya. The report draws on social media analysis, geolocation data, satellite imagery, and witness interviews to trace alleged RSF-linked camps, convoy routes, and transfers of weapons and fuel between Libya and Sudan. The investigation identified four previously unknown RSF staging areas in Libya, including one near Benghazi. RSF defectors described training alongside Libyan National Army soldiers and UAE-contracted Colombian mercenaries before being sent back to Sudan. (Photo of RSF forces in Darfur via Sudan Tribune)

Africa
AES

Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso withdraw from ICC

Amnesty International warned that the recent move by Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso to submit formal notifications of withdrawal from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) paints a bleak future for thousands of conflict survivors, threatening their right to truth, justice and reparations. The three countries recently formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), a mutual defense and economic confederation that seeks to reject the political influence of Western powers. The AES countries are currently engaged in coordinated military actions to beat back surging jihadist offensives, which have resulted in massive civilian casualties across their shared borders. The Sahel war has contributed to an ongoing humanitarian crisis in the region, and resulted in multiple massacres and extrajudicial killings committed by state security forces and paramilitaries with Kremlin ties, as well as by insurgent groups. (Photo: Mali Government Information Center via Morning Star)

Africa
Mali

Mali: rising violence against civilians

Human Rights Watch criticized insurgent armed groups, the Malian armed forces and allied militias, and Russian mercenaries, which have all committed “serious abuses of human rights against civilians” amid an internal conflict that has further fueled long-standing ethnic tensions in the country. A sudden intensification of violence ​began this April after the al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam & Muslims (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM) formed a pact with Tuareg fighters of the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a faction with which they have had a rocky relationship, to carry out attacks across Mali. The Malian armed forces have responded with drone strikes that resulted in multiple civilian fatalities. The armed forces and militia groups are also believed to have carried out reprisals against Fulani communities, who are stigmatized as JNIM collaborators. Russian fighters from the paramilitary Africa Corps have also participated in atrocities. (Map: PCL)

Africa
ICJ

DRC files ICJ case against Rwanda

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) filed an application to bring proceedings against Rwanda over decades of war crimes and violence perpetrated in the DRC’s east. The case filed with the International Court of Justice cites “abuses attributable to Rwanda over a period extending from 1996 to the present day,” including massacres, forced displacement, and other atrocities. The case comes after years of worsening tensions, with the Congolese government repeatedly accusing Rwanda of supporting armed groups operating in the eastern DRC, particularly the M23 rebel group, which has seized large areas of territory in recent years. (Photo: ICJ)

Africa
Sudan

Sudan: atrocity alert as RSF rings El Obeid

Warnings are mounting that Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) could carry out new mass atrocities as the paramilitary army prepares an assault on the government-held city of El Obeid in North Kordofan state. After the UN secretary-general and human rights chief sounded the alarm, the African Union and several governments also warned of the extreme danger facing civilians if the UAE-backed rebels capture the city. The warnings have drawn comparisons with El Fasher and the nearby Zam Zam displacement camp in Darfur, which saw general massacres after they fell to the RSF last year. Reports suggest the RSF has moved substantial reinforcements to its siege of El Obeid, while stepping up drone strikes on the city. A crossroads linking RSF-controlled Darfur with government-held Sudan, El Obeid was under RSF siege until the Sudanese Armed Forces broke the blockade last year, but it is now being encircled once again. (Map: PCL)

Africa
Chibok

Nigeria: gender-based violence against minorities

UN rights experts condemned Nigerian authorities in response to ongoing reports that mass killings, kidnappings, forced conversion, sexual violence, and enforced disappearances are disproportionately targeting women and girls in Christian and minority religious communities. (Photo: Hilary Matfess/IRIN)

Africa
Central African Republic

Persistent armed attacks in Central African Republic

The UN Independent Expert on the human rights situation in the Central African Republic, Aristide Nononsi, expressed concern about the persistent violence in the country, and its impacts on humanitarian needs. Reporting on his visit to the CAR, Nononsi noted that despite the mostly peaceful electoral process that took place in December, the country continues to face instability due to attacks by armed groups against civilians, tensions involving nomadic pastoral communities, and spillover consequences of the conflict in Sudan. (Map via Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

Africa
Ituri

DRC: appeal for peace to to fight Ebola

The head of the World Health Organization has appealed for a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri province, where Ebola is rapidly spreading. Director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ statement said even a temporary truce would allow health workers through and save lives. “I urge you, I implore you: give us the space to help the people who need it most,” he said, addressing the armed factions active in the province. Out of nearly a thousand suspected Ebola cases in the DRC and Uganda, over 220 people may have died, with the WHO warning that the outbreak could potentially be much larger. (Photo of displaced persons camp in Ituri: Alexis Huguet/MSF via TNH)

Africa
Sudan

UAE recruits Colombian fighters for Sudan’s RSF: report

A company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has hired and transported hundreds of Colombian private military contractors to Sudan to fight for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Human Rights Watch charges in a new report. HRW found that the recruits passed through a UAE military base in Ghiyathi and an apparent private military facility in Al Wathba, both in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. HRW called on the international community to press the UAE to end its support for the RSF by suspending military cooperation and arms sales. (Map: PCL)

Africa
Sudan

Sudan: RSF commander named in war crimes

Amnesty International demanded the removal of a commander of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), citing war crime allegations against him. Al-Fatih Abdallah Idris AKA “Abu Lulu” was arrested by the RSF in late October 2025 following global outrage from a viral video appearing to show him executing unarmed civilians during the taking of the Darfur city of El Fasher. Following a Reuters investigation, multiple sources confirmed that Abu Lulu has been released from detention and is back on the battlefield. (Map: PCL)

Africa
Nigeria

Trump again intervenes in crisis-torn Nigeria

US and Nigerian forces jointly conducted a raid that killed one of the Islamic State’s highest-ranking leaders in the country. Abu Bilal al-Minuki was said to be a commander of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). The strike took place in the Lake Chad area in Nigeria’s northeast. Meanwhile, dozens of Nigerian fishermen are feared dead after Chadian forces struck alleged Boko Haram strongholds along Lake Chad, which straddles the border of the two countries. Additionally, at least 100 civilians were killed in a Nigerian government air-strike on a crowded market in bandit-affected northwest ​Zamfara state, according to Amnesty International. Nigerian authorities have denied the report, but if confirmed, it would be thesecond air-strike to kill scores of people in a northern Nigerian market in a month. (Map: Wikipedia)

Africa
drones

Drones now leading cause of civilian deaths in Sudan

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk issued a high alert on the widening use of drones in the conflict in Sudan. Türk warned that unless the international community takes action without delay, the conflict in Sudan could enter a new, even deadlier phase. The Sudan team at the Human Rights Office found that upwards of 80% of all civilian deaths from January to April—numbering at least 880—can be attributed to drone attacks. Türk warned: “This increasing reliance on drones allows hostilities to continue unabated in the approaching rainy season, which in the past has brought about a lull in ground operations. An intensification of hostilities in the coming weeks, as the parties seek to gain or consolidate control of territory amid shifting conflict dynamics, risks hostilities expanding even further to central and eastern states, with lethal consequences for civilians across enormous areas.” (AI-generated image of various drones used in Sudan, via Sudan Tribune)