Amnesty: Grim picture of Africa

2005-05-25 15:57

Johannesburg - Africa was still riddled with human rights violations as armed conflicts continued to bring widespread destruction in several parts of the world's poorest continent last year, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

"Killings, abductions and rape by government forces and armed opposition groups remained widespread in armed conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia, Sudan and Uganda," said a report by the London-based rights organisation.

It also highlighted a number of peace agreements on the continent, saying they "remained fragile in Burundi, the Ivory Coast and Somalia, where sporadic outbreaks of violence persisted in localised areas".

Amnesty said there were however, important developments in addressing human rights violations in armed conflicts through the use of international justice mechanisms.

"The governments of the DRC and Uganda referred war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in armed conflicts to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the first cases in which ICC prosecutors would initiate such investigations."

A case in point

"As the ICC can investigate and prosecute only a limited number of individual cases, there was still a need for comprehensive plans to end impunity for all such crimes, regardless of which side committed them...," it said.

One individual case was that of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was indicted for war crimes in Sierra Leone because of his active support for armed opposition forces, had "no immunity from prosecution" as ruled by the special court for Sierra Leone.

"Charles Taylor... remains in Nigeria. He had been granted refugee status, with apparent guarantees that he would be neither surrendered to the special court nor brought before Nigeria's own courts," the report said.

Women remain victims of abuse

The report stressed the plight of women, who "continued to be raped and subjected to other forms of sexual violence despite the ending of armed conflicts in the Central African Republic, Ivory Coast and Liberia."

"In Darfur and Eastern DRC, such abuse was used as a weapon of war against women and girls... There was no safe haven for women, even in refugee camps," the report said.

It also lambasted countries such as Zimbabwe and Swaziland, saying the Harare government used food as a tool of political repression.

- AFP