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.
Violent protests erupted in Senegal after the Constitutional Council cleared octogenarian President Abdoulaye Wade to seek a third term and opposition leaders vowed to “make the country ungovernable” to force him from power.
Human Rights Watch assailed the Ethiopian government’s forcible relocation of 70,000 indigenous peasants from the western Gambella region—amid massive government land-leasing to corporate ag-biz interests.
After a week of “Occupation” protests paralyzed the country’s cities, Nigeria’s government slashed fuel prices. But protest leaders demand prices be restored to the level before President Goodluck Jonathan dropped subsidies.
The Oromo Support Group reports that authorities in the de facto state of Somaliland are forcibly repatriating asylum-seekers from the oppressed Oromo and Ogadeni ethnic groups to Ethiopia, where they face persecution.
Deadly ethnic clashes in Nigeria and a state of emergency in response to Boko Haram attacks come amid a massive oil spill in the Delta region—and government plans to drop fuel subsidies, leading to calls for a general strike.
