On the eve of the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, a Friends of the Earth report reveals widespread rights violations and environmental destruction from a Bank-funded “land grab” in Uganda.
After re-taking the contested oil-rich border enclave of Heglig, Sudan’s President Omar Bashir called the South Sudanese “insects” and said he will will not allow the South to export any oil through the cross-border pipeline.
With Sudan and South Sudan effectively at war, each are apparently arming guerillas in the other’s territory. The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey finds that the South is arming rebels in Kordofan, while Khartoum arms insurgents across the border.
The latest coup d’etat in Guinea-Bissau is being linked by Western diplomats to the international drug trade. Presidential candidate Carlos Gomes may have ran afoul of the military by pledging to crack down on cocaine transshipments.
South Sudan accused Khartoum April 5 both of bombing an oil pipeline near the town of Heglig, in South Kordofan state, and of trying to build an “illegal” pipeline crossing the border towards the South’s oil fields.
The International Criminal Court issued its first verdict, a unanimous decision that Congo militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is guilty of conscripting children and using them to participate actively in hostilities.
Former Somali prime minister Mohamed Ali Samantar accepted legal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity in US federal court. The civil suit was brought by survivors of his repression who now have asylum in the US.
As Ethiopian forces press their offensive in Somalia, Shabaab rebels relinquished control of Baidoa, a key southern city that had been under their control for three years. The rebels still control the largest swath of Somalia’s south.
Chevron and coastal communities in Nigeria’s Bayelsa state are odds on whether oil from a spill at the offshore KS Endeavor platform has affected local communities, but state authorities say they are rushing in emergency aid.
Arms sales from China and Russia are fueling human rights violations in Darfur, Amnesty International said. While the war has disappeared from headlines, some 70,000 were displaced from Darfur in 2011, in a renewed wave of ethnically targeted attacks.
There whereabouts of 29 Chinese road workers abducted by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) in South Kordofan remain unknown. Rights groups charge the new road is being used to facilitate counter-insurgency.
Landlocked South Sudan has ordered oil production shut down, at an impasse in talks with Khatroum over terms for use of the pipeline linking the two countries. South Sudan accuses Khartoum of stealing $815 million worth of oil.
