Geneva, Switzerland | AFP | Displaced women and girls are facing a heightened risk of gender-based violence during the coronavirus crisis, the UN Refugee Agency said Monday. The UNHCR said they may be forced into “survival sex” or child marriages. Lockdowns imposed to control the spread of COVID-19 have restricted movement and led to the …
Read More »Violence and looting point to food crisis in S.Africa lockdown
Cape Town, South Africa | AFP | “Mr President we are in the middle of a food crisis. It’s war out here,” warned Joanie Fredericks, a community leader in Mitchells Plain township in Cape Town. The desperate plea was made in a video posted on social media to South African President …
Read More »Activist profiling violations against women amid lockdown
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The government needs to put up temporary shelters for women whose rights are being violated during the current lockdown aimed at preventing further transmission of COVID-19. The call was made by Primah Kwagala, the Executive Director of Women’s Pro Bono Initiative, an organization of …
Read More »Kenya president sorry for coronavirus cop violence
Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Kenya’s president on Wednesday apologised for violence meted out by police following the declaration of a nationwide curfew last week to curb the spread of coronavirus. “I want to apologise to all Kenyans for… some excesses that were conducted,” President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a live …
Read More »Militia ‘sect’ wreaks havoc in remote DR Congo region
Bunia, DR Congo | AFP | With three fingers chopped off his left hand, Father Guy-Robert Mandro bears physical witness to a resurgence of violence in DR Congo that has gone widely unnoticed in a world fixated by the coronavirus pandemic. Since the start of the month, around 50 people have …
Read More »South Sudan’s road to peace marred by ‘unconscionable’ violence
Juba, South Sudan | AFP | The cattle rustlers were asleep, resting ahead of a raid, when automatic gunfire tore through their camp. Ambushed by rival herdsmen, encircled and outgunned, they were cut down, one by one. Koba Ngacho was lucky. Shot three times and left for dead, the young rustler …
Read More »President Museveni calls for women economic empowerment to fight gender based violence
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has called for women’s economic empowerment as a strategic way of ending gender based violence against women – GBV. Speaking at the International Women’s day celebrations on Sunday at Mbale district head quarters, Museveni said that the only way of …
Read More »40 killed in attacks in restive central Mali
Bamako, Mali | AFP | Forty people, including nine soldiers, have been killed in a spate of attacks in central Mali, authorities said Friday, with most of the deaths caused by inter-ethnic violence in the deeply troubled region. Thirty-one people were killed in an attack overnight in Ogossagou, a village mainly …
Read More »Cameroon elections overshadowed by boycott and violence
Yaoundé, Cameroon | AFP | Voters in Cameroon will cast their ballots Sunday in a country where the mood has been darkened by separatist violence and calls for an election boycott. Elections to renew the central African country’s legislature and local councils are taking place for the first time in seven …
Read More »MP Ssekikubo maintains resolve to defy quarantine
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Lwemiyaga county Member of Parliament, Theodore Ssekikubo vowed to defy the quarantine restrictions in Sembabule district, minutes after being granted bail for the second time this week. Ssekikubo appeared this morning before the Masaka Chief Magistrate, Deogratius Ssejjemba on charges of inciting violence …
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