Tag Archives: Human Rights Watch

Opinion, Regional

NACI RESPONSE TO HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH’S UNFOUNDED REPORT ON BURKINA FASO

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The New African Charter International (NACI) notes with deep concern the ungrounded and misplaced apprehensions disseminated worldwide by the US based Human Rights Watch regarding human rights in the AES region, in particular Burkina Faso. It is regrettable that the Human Rights Watch continues to ridicule the competent authorities in Ouagadougou by concocting and publishing fictitious and groundless comments on Burkina Faso, in an attempt to mislead public opinion about the leadership of President Ibrahim Traore.

This statement is issued in response to Human Rights Watch’s recent report about human rights in Burkina Faso, which was published on 2nd April, 2026. In this report, the Human Rights Watch blamed Burkina Faso Military for the assumed deaths of about 1, 800 civilians and forcefully displaced tens of thousands since 2023. The Organisation also claimed that the Burkinabe military is engaged in acts of ethnic cleansing against the Fulani community in the Sahel nation. All these, according to Human Rights Watch, amount to crimes against humanity.

Much as NACI condemns and strongly rejects any comments that seek to build false narratives, the Organisation (NACI) regards the recent report by Human Rights Watch as a selective compilation of largely unverified information. It is overtly prejudiced, fallacious, tendentious and ill-motivated and seeks to undermine efforts of member-states of the Alliance of Sahel States to take all measures necessary to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Sahel states from cross-border terrorism.

Referring to Burkina Faso’s defensive attacks against terrorism in the Human Rights Watch’s report as an act of ethnic cleansing against the Fulani communities is not only incorrect, inciting and race-filled; it is also mischievous, misleading and unacceptable. No member-state of the AES ever singled out a particular tribe or religious followers for attacks in their campaign to rid the Sahel region of acts of terrorism and transnational organised crimes. 


The truth is that Human Rights Watch has deliberately and conveniently decided to ignore the pattern of cross-border terrorism emanating from Northern Nigeria, Mauritania, Ivory Coast and the Republic of Benin against the Sahel states. It is disturbing that Human Rights Watch has chosen in its latest report to mislead the international public with fallacious, vicious and unfounded comments ascribing activities of internationally designated and UN-proscribed terrorist organs as ethnic community.

This systematic pattern of selective approach of the Human Rights Watch unfortunately undermines global consensus on zero tolerance to terrorism. The report also ignores the ongoing successes in the war against terrorism in the Sahel region, and should be regarded by all and sundry as inaccurate, fictitious and ill-motivated narratives that misrepresent Africa’s longstanding tradition of respect and ethnic cohesion.

It is ironic that ongoing US military attacks, Aerial and naval bombings of Muslim communities in Northern Nigeria were ignored in Human Rights Watch’s recent report for obvious reasons. NACI is of the belief that Human Rights Watch’s report belongs to the junked information bin; it fails to report the truth and instead encourages foreign terrorists to accelerate their activities in order to justify any military intervention in the Sahel region.  One cannot understand why the Human Rights Watch should overlook state-sponsored terrorism that is being exported on the soil in the Sahel region by forces that are hell-bent on recolonising the African continent.

With much regret, NACI observes a selective and unfair bias in certain quarters, where the success of the war against terrorism in the Sahel is being misrepresented and propagated to incite one ethnic African community against another. The claim that the Burkina Faso Military is committing acts of ethnic cleansing in its war against terrorism is maliciously stated in the Human Rights Watch report to propagate anti-AES sentiments across the global community.

The unremitting attacks on Muslim communities in Northern Nigeria at the hands of US military occupation forces of aggression are a matter of grave concern. NACI condemns those attacks in Northern Nigeria as also in any parts of Nigeria, and targeting a particular people for their faith is acts of war and crime against humanity. The situation in Northern Nigeria cannot be brushed aside as mere exaggerations. It is a religious purification campaign, spearheaded by the US and its Israeli ally to achieve a long-time neo-colonial agenda. NACI calls on the Human Rights Watch to take a long and hard look in the mirror before propagating the anti-AES agenda.

Members-states of the AES remain steadfast and fully committed to protecting and strengthening their own human rights, human dignity, basic freedoms, and constructively engage to promote international human rights agenda, and uphold fairness and objectivity in the international human rights discourse. NACI is deeply concerned that Human Rights Watch’s recent report supposedly tailored to highlight human rights situations around the world turns a blind eye on the most urgent hotspots of gross human rights violations of innocent civilians. Only an ill-motivated report can ignore the alarming situation in US military occupied Northern Nigeria.

NACI concludes by calling on the Human Rights Watch to at least demonstrate objectivity, impartiality and responsibility in its intervention in the internal affairs of the AES. NACI demands that the New York based Organisation demonstrates the requisite moral courage to speak truth about the violence in the Sahel region in an attempt to play a constructive role in supporting efforts aimed at bringing peace and stability in the region.

NACI welcomes constructive criticisms and is ready to work with any foreign instruments in working towards upholding fairness and objectivity in the human rights discourse, especially when it concerns Africa. NACI expresses its gratitude to all those solidarity messages that have been aired swiftly in response to the unfair, biased, selective and motivated report by Human Rights Watch with regards to the human rights situation in the Sahel region, in particular Burkina Faso.

Long live Africa!

Long live Pan African solidarity!!

Signed by:

Alimamy Bakarr Sankoh
President and Co-founder
The New African Charter International
NACI

AMA, Environment

UN Urges Ethiopia to Tackle Pollution at Gold Mine

MaraviPost

Civic Group’s Report Shows Child Health Harms at Lega Dembi Mine

New York, USA, 12 March 2026 -/African Media Agency (AMA)/- “The company’s chemicals have contaminated our land, water, and people,” 28-year-old “Elizabeth” recently told Kontomaa Darimu Alliance, an Ethiopian nongovernmental organization. Elizabeth’s 2-year-old son died a few years ago and she suffered miscarriages in 2024 and 2025; she believes the mine is to blame.

Residents living near Lega Dembi mine, located in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, have  complained of serious health impacts for years, including miscarriages, stillbirths, and children born with long-term health conditions. Severalstudies have found high concentrations of  toxic heavy metals and other chemicals, including cadmium, mercury, lead, and arsenic, near the mine.

A recent decision by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child could bring hope to residents. In February, the committee called on the Ethiopian government to “urgently and effectively” resolve the mine’s “social, health and environmental effects on children.” It urged the government to pay compensation, rehabilitate affected children, and create an “independent mechanism for transparency and accountability from the mining company.”

In 2018, following large-scale demonstrations, the Ethiopian government closed the mine, promising to reopen it only after environmental concerns had been addressed. The government signed an—unpublished—memorandum of understanding with the global company operating the mine, Midroc Investment Group, and reopened the mine in 2021. Midroc stated in a 2023 letter to Human Rights Watch that it had taken steps to address the mine’s impacts, including paying compensation to victims, improving cyanide waste management, and providing clean drinking water.

But local residents have continued to report ill-health and miscarriages since the mine reopened. A new report by  Kontomaa Darimu Alliance with powerful accounts from 2025 includes shocking cases of children’s ill-health and deaths, as well as stillbirths. Residents also say they have to drink water from Midroc’s tailings dams because there is insufficient clean drinking water.

In response to Human Rights Watch questions, Midroc denied that there were any human rights impacts resulting from its operations, stating that its monitoring system found the contaminants to be in the “allowable range of international standards,” and highlighting its recent certification under the International Cyanide Management Code. Midroc also said it constructed a hospital, and that the drinking water provided was sufficient.

The findings of the UN committee and the Kontomaa Darimu Alliance should prompt the Ethiopian government to finally tackle the pollution at the mine fully and transparently. The families of Lega Dembi have waited long enough.

Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of Human Right Watch

The post UN Urges Ethiopia to Tackle Pollution at Gold Mine appeared first on African Media Agency.

Lifestyle

U.S. sanctions on ICC prosecutor cripple tribunal’s work

Maravi Post Reporter

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has lost access to his email, and his bank accounts have been frozen.

The Hague-based court’s American staffers have been told that if they travel to the U.S. they risk arrest.

Some nongovernmental organizations have stopped working with the ICC and the leaders of one won’t even reply to emails from court officials.

Those are just some of the hurdles facing court staff since U.S. President Donald Trump in February slapped sanctions on its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, according to interviews with current and former ICC officials, international lawyers and human rights advocates.

The sanctions will “prevent victims from getting access to justice,” said Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch.

Trump sanctioned the court after a panel of ICC judges in November issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

Judges found there was reason to believe that the pair may have committed war crimes by restricting humanitarian aid and intentionally targeting civilians in Israel’s war on Gaza.

Staffers and allies of the ICC said the sanctions have made it increasingly difficult for the tribunal to conduct basic tasks, let alone seek justice for victims of war crimes or genocide.

A spokesperson for the ICC and for Khan declined to comment. In February, ICC President Judge Tomoko Akane said that the sanctions “constitute serious attacks against the Court’s States Parties, the rule of law based international order and millions of victims.”

Order targets chief prosecutor

The February order bans Khan and other non-Americans among the ICC’s 900 staff members from entering the U.S., which is not a member of the court. It also threatens any person, institution or company with fines and prison time if they provide Khan with “financial, material, or technological support.”

The sanctions are hampering work on a broad array of investigations, not just the one into Israel’s leaders.

The ICC had been investigating atrocities in Sudan and had issued arrest warrants for former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges that include genocide. That probe has ground to a halt even as reports mount of new atrocities in Sudan, according to an attorney representing ICC prosecutor Eric Iverson, who is fighting the sanctions in U.S. courts. Iverson filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking protection from the sanctions.

Iverson “cannot do, what I would describe as, basic lawyer functions,” said Allison Miller, who is representing Iverson in the suit.

American staffers at the organization, like Iverson, have been warned by its attorneys that they risk arrest if they return home to visit family, according to ICC officials. Six senior officials have left the court over concerns about sanctions.

One reason the the court has been hamstrung is that it relies heavily on contractors and non-governmental organizations. Those businesses and groups have curtailed work on behalf of the court because they were concerned about being targeted by U.S. authorities, according to current and former ICC staffers.

Microsoft, for example, cancelled Khan’s email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said. His bank accounts in his home country of the U.K. have been blocked.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.

Staffers at an NGO that plays an integral role in the court’s efforts to gather evidence and find witnesses said the group has transferred money out of U.S. bank accounts because they fear it might be seized by the Trump administration.

Senior leadership at two other U.S.-based human rights organizations told the AP that their groups have stopped working with the ICC. A senior staffer at one told the AP that employees have stopped replying to emails from court officials out of fear of triggering a response from the Trump administration.

The cumulative effect of such actions has led ICC staffers to openly wonder whether the organization can survive the Trump administration, according to ICC officials who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

One questioned whether the court would make it through the next four years.

Source: Africanews

https://video.euronews.com/mp4/ED/14/96/22/07/ED_PYR_1496227_20250515090103.mp4
Lifestyle

Burkina Faso forces killed 100 civilians in March – HRW

Maravi Post Reporter

At least 100 civilians were killed by Burkina Faso government forces in March near the western town of Solenzo, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

According to victim testimony and videos shared on social media gathered by the rights group, the attackers were Burkina Faso special forces and members of a pro-government militia, the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland.

The victims were all ethnic Fulani, a pastoralist community that is widespread across the region, which the government has long accused of supporting Muslim militants.

An earlier report from Human Rights Watch stated that the government’s involvement was likely, because of video evidence on social media, although the findings were not definitive.

The government issued a sharp denial when first reports surfaced, saying in a statement it “condemned the propagation, on social media, of images inducing hate and community violence, and fake information aimed at undermining social cohesion” in the country.

“The viral videos of the atrocities by pro-government militias near Solenzo sent shock waves through Africa’s Sahel region, but they told only part of the story,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Further research uncovered that Burkina Faso’s military was responsible for these mass killings of Fulani civilians, which were followed by deadly reprisals by an Islamist armed group. The government needs to impartially investigate these deaths and prosecute all those responsible.”

Burkina Faso authorities did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the group’s new report.

The landlocked nation of 23 million people has symbolized the security crisis in the arid Sahel region south of the Sahara in recent years. It has been shaken by violence from extremist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, and the governments fighting them.

The military junta, which took power in 2022, failed to provide the stability it promised. According to conservative estimates, more than 60% of the country is now outside of government control, more than 2.1 million people have lost their homes and almost 6.5 million need humanitarian aid to survive.

The attack in the western Boucle du Mouhoun region, including Solenzo and other towns, began on Feb. 27 and lasted until April 2, involving hundreds of government troops and drones, according to eyewitnesses quoted in the report.

“The VDPs shot at us like animals, while drones were flying over our heads. Many women and children died because they could not run,” said a Fulani herder, 44, from Solenzo, referring to the pro-government militias.

After the attack, hundreds of Fulani residents fled across the border into neighbouring Mali, the report said.

“Today, in the whole province, there are no more Fulani — they all fled or were killed or taken hostage,” said a 53-year-old man from Solenzo. “But the other (ethnic) communities remain.”

After the government forces left, the report said that jihadist fighters from a group known as JNIM reentered the towns and carried out reprisal killings against residents, targeting the men whom it considered to be military collaborators.

“All the men had been executed in front of the health center,” said a 60-year-old woman who witnessed JNIM abuses in Tiao village, a town to the northeast of Solenzo on April 5. “I counted up to 70 bodies.”

According to analysts, the junta’s strategy of military escalation, including mass recruitment of civilians for poorly trained militia units, has exacerbated tensions between ethnic groups.

It it impossible to get an accurate picture of the situation in the country since the military leadership has installed a system of de facto censorship, rights groups said, and those daring to speak up can be openly abducted, imprisoned or forcefully drafted into the army.

Source: Africanews

Lifestyle

Biggest refugee camps in northeastern Nigeria to close in next weeks, governor said

Maravi Post Reporter

The governor of the state of Borno, in the north-east of Nigeria, visited the refugee camp of Muna on Monday and announced its closure in the next few weeks. 

Since 2021, the Borno regional government has already shut down 17 refugee camps around the city of Maiduguri, in a region that has been the epicentre of jihadist violence in Nigeria. 

The closure of the Muna camp had been delayed by the floods that affected the state of Borno last September. Governor Babagana Zulum said crime levels within the camp required swift action. 

Muna was the biggest camp for displaced people in the region, with more than 10,000 families listed in early 2024. 

Over the past 15 years, official refugee camps welcomed more than 80% of the 2 million people displaced by the conflict between the Nigerian army and jihadist group Boko Haram. 

Authorities give refugees between €20 and €50 for them to return to their hometowns, or to relocate to so-called safe zones.  

But human rights groups say the government has provided insufficient support to help families live with dignity.  

“The Borno State government is harming hundreds of thousands of displaced people already living in precarious conditions to advance a dubious government development agenda to wean people off humanitarian aid”, said Anietie Ewang, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch in a 2022 press release.

“By forcing people from camps without creating viable alternatives for support, the government is worsening their suffering and deepening their vulnerability.”

Nigeria’s northeastern region has also been experiencing a recent surge in violence. Two jihadist attacks killed almost 50 people in late April. Another attack killed at least 40 farmers in January. 

Additional sources • RFI, Reuters

Source: Africanews

https://video.euronews.com/mp4/SHD/14/08/97/01/SHD_PYR_1408971_20250506064639.mp4
Human Rights, Regional

Ghana: Chaining people with mental health conditions persists

Maravi Post Reporter

– –

Ghana’s government has taken inadequate steps to end the chaining and inhumane treatment of people with real or perceived mental health conditions – psychosocial disabilities – in faith-based and traditional healing centers despite a 2017 ban on such treatment, Human Rights Watch said today.

A decade after the adoption of the 2012 Mental Health Act, which establishes a structure to provide and monitor health care in Ghana, the government has only recently established regional Visiting Committees and a Mental Health Tribunal, mandated to monitor implementation of the law and investigate complaints.

“Chaining people with psychosocial disabilities in prayer camps and healing centers is a form of torture,” said Shantha Rau Barriga, disability rights director at Human Rights Watch.

“Ghana’s newly formed Visiting Committees and Mental Health Tribunal need to ensure that the chains come off and that people have access to local services that respect the rights of people with mental health conditions.”

From November 28 to 30, 2022, Human Rights Watch visited five prayer camps and traditional healing centers in Eastern and Central region and interviewed more than 50 people. These included people with psychosocial disabilities, mental health professionals, staff at prayer camps and traditional healing centers, mental health advocates, religious leaders, and two senior government officials.

– –

In all five camps and healing centers visited, Human Rights Watch found that people were chained or confined in small cages, in some cases for more than seven months. During the visits, Human Rights Watch identified more than 60 people were chained or caged, including some children.

At Edwuma Wo Wo Ho Herbal Center in Senya Beraku, Human Rights Watch found 22 men closely detained in a dark, stifling room, all of them with chains, no longer than half a meter, around their ankles. They are forced to urinate and defecate in a small bucket passed around the room. Despite the sweltering conditions, they are only allowed to bathe every two weeks.

Many of them called out to the Human Rights Watch researchers, begging to be released. “Please help us,” one man said. “We have a human right to freedom.”

As many as 30 more men are detained in another section, which the traditional healer prohibited Human Rights Watch researchers from visiting. The herbalist said that they were undergoing special spiritual treatment.

– –

In all five camps, people were held against their will in what amounts to indefinite detention. A 40-year-old man held for more than two months at Mt. Horeb Prayer Centre said, “We spend 24/7 locked up in this room. Can you imagine that?” Another man said, “This Christmas we won’t be going home. We want to go home and be with our family. Help us. Please help us.”

On hearing that the practice of chaining continues, Ghana’s deputy health minister, Tina Mensah, said, “With all this education, they’re still chaining?”

Caroline Amissah, acting chief executive of the Mental Health Authority, said, “People with mental health conditions are human beings just like you and me. They are entitled to their rights. A mental health diagnosis is not a death sentence. We should invest in services in the community.”

In all five camps visited, Human Rights Watch witnessed serious human rights abuses, including lack of adequate food, unsanitary conditions, lack of hygiene, lack of freedom of movement, and one case of repeated sexual violence.

A 41-year-old woman in one camp said, “A man [living here] came to rape me here five months ago, in this room. He raped me three times. It is improper for such a thing to happen in the House of God.” The woman said she did not receive any post-rape care.

Human Rights Watch also documented chaining of several people with psychosocial disabilities in Jesus Divine Temple Prayer Camp in Nyankumasi, a reversal of practice that had been stopped since 2017 when the Ghana Mental Health Authority released 16 residents there from chains.

At Heavenly Ministry Prayer Camp in Edumfa, eight men, five women, and two girls with real or perceived mental health conditions were confined in cages. The men are forced to urinate and defecate in small buckets placed outside their cells. The cages where the men are detained are so narrow that the people inside cannot even stretch out their arms.

Ghana’s 2012 Mental Health Act provides that people with psychosocial disabilities “shall not be subjected to torture, cruelty, forced labour and any other inhuman treatment,” including shackling. The act establishes Visiting Committees and a Mental Health Tribunal to monitor prayer camps and traditional healing centers on compliance with the law.

The government claims that it took 10 years to comply with the act because of a lack of resources. The Mental Health Tribunal should uphold international human rights standards, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Ghana ratified in 2012.

Based on its research since 2011, Human Rights Watch found that families often take people with real or perceived mental health conditions to faith-based or traditional healers because of widely held beliefs that such disabilities are caused by a curse or evil spirits, and because their communities have limited, if any, mental health services. In some cases, the family member may have been using drugs such as marijuana; in others, they were outcasts because of so-called deviant behavior.

Local nongovernmental organizations, especially those led by people with psychosocial disabilities, have been active in pushing for improvements in mental health services and monitoring of existing facilities in Ghana.

The Mental Health Society of Ghana is supporting training for the Visiting Committees and Mental Health Tribunal and advocating for increased investments in community mental health. MindFreedom Ghana is establishing community support networks in 6 out of the 16 regions of Ghana. Another organization, Basic Needs Ghana, has been facilitating peer support groups.

The government of Ghana should take immediate steps to end shackling by ensuring that the Visiting Committees and Mental Health Tribunal have adequate resources to carry out their responsibilities and by investing in community mental health services that respect human rights, Human Rights Watch said.

The government should also ensure that people with psychosocial disabilities get adequate support for housing, independent living, and job training. The government should follow through on commitments to sensitize traditional and faith-based healers as well as the general public to combat the stigma associated with mental health conditions. Finally, the government should set up the levy envisaged under the 2012 Mental Health Act to fund mental health services as a matter of priority.

“Despite Ghana’s ban on chaining, the government has failed to ensure that people with psychosocial disabilities no longer live under such inhumane conditions,” Barriga said. “The Visiting Committees and Tribunal have an important role to play in ensuring an end to these longstanding abuses.”

Source: Africa Feeds

AMA

Niger: New Government Should Investigate Massacres

MaraviPost

Bazoum Administration Should Make Justice a Priority

NEW YORK, USA, May 06, 2021,-/African Media Agency (AMA)/- Niger’s first democratic transition since independence provides President Mohamed Bazoum’s new administration with an opportunity to prioritize accountability for alleged war crimes committed by all sides in Niger’s armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to the new justice and defense ministers. Massacres by alleged armed Islamist groups in Niger that have killed over 310 people since January 2021 highlight the need to investigate grave abuses and hold all those responsible to account.

On March 15, in the deadliest attack on civilians in Niger’s recent history, armed men attacked several villages and hamlets in the Tillia area of Tahoua, killing at least 137 people, according to official reports. A media source reported that many of the victims were watering their livestock at wells at the time of the attack.

“With a rising civilian death toll, scores of disappeared people, and increasing unlawful attacks by armed Islamist groups, it’s clear that abuses by one side beget abuses by the others,” said Jonathan Pedneault, crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch. “President Bazoum’s government should take urgent and bold action to reverse this trend by aggressively pursuing justice for all war crimes, whether by Islamist fighters or the security forces.”

In the letter, Human Rights Watch urged the new administration to investigate 18 serious allegations of abuses by armed Islamist groups and government security forces in the border regions of Tillabéri and Tahoua since October 2019. Human Rights Watch found that the security forces were allegedly responsible for at least 185 of the 496 deaths reported.

The Tillabéri region, which borders Mali and Burkina Faso, is a focal point of armed Islamist group activity in Niger, as well as of national, regional, and international counterterrorism operations. The Tahoua region, bordering Mali, has also faced attacks by Islamist fighters.

Since 2015, armed Islamist groups in Niger have allegedly killed hundreds of villagers, executed aid workers and village leaders, attacked election officials, and targeted schools. And since at least 2019, security forces engaged in counterterrorism operations have allegedly executed scores of suspects shortly after detaining them at marketplaces, in their villages, or at waterpoints, and subjected dozens to enforced disappearances. There have been few credible investigations and little accountability for these crimes, which have dramatically worsened over the past year.

In 2020, Human Rights Watch remotely interviewed 12 people from Tillabéri who provided information about 12 incidents in which men in uniform arriving in military vehicles arbitrarily arrested, tortured, and summarily executed civilians and suspected Islamists.

Eleven of these incidents were included in a report produced in May 2020 by local Fulani civil society activists. In total, Human Rights Watch has collected the names of 178 people who were allegedly unlawfully killed or forcibly disappeared and 7 who were allegedly tortured by Nigerien security forces between October 2019 and May 2020.

One witness and two other local sources said that on the morning of March 25, 2020, men dressed in military fatigues arrived in military vehicles at a hamlet where members of the Fulani Djalgodji clan have spent the dry season for the last 20 years, 6 kilometers from the village of Adabdabe, in Banibangou commune. The witness said security forces arrested all the 13 Djalgodji men they found, ages 18 to 66, and then took them outside the hamlet and executed them.

Human Rights Watch is only aware of one government investigation into allegations of war crimes by the security forces. In April 2020, the previous defense minister ordered an investigation into the alleged enforced disappearance of 102 men in Inatès commune in the Tillabéri region in March and April 2020. While investigators found no credible evidence of security force involvement in these incidents, it provided no reasonable explanation for the men’s disappearances, claiming that armed Islamists dressed in stolen military fatigues may have been responsible.

However, a subsequent investigation into the same allegations by Niger’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), from May to July 2020, found 6 mass graves containing 71 bodies in Inatès commune, some of the people reported missing, and concluded that security forces were most likely responsible for the killings.

Under international humanitarian law applicable in Niger, all parties to the armed conflict, including Islamist armed groups, are prohibited from executing, torturing, or forcibly disappearing anyone in their custody, including civilians and captured combatants. Those responsible for committing serious violations of the laws of war with criminal intent, including as a matter of command responsibility, may be prosecuted for war crimes. States have an obligation to investigate and appropriately prosecute alleged war crimes committed within their territory.

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, to which Niger is a party, codifies the prohibition on enforced disappearances and sets out the obligations of states to prevent, investigate, and prosecute all enforced disappearances.

The failure of Niger’s military justice system to seriously investigate alleged abuses by military personnel against civilians points to the need for civilian investigators and courts to handle these cases. Such criminal investigations should meet international standards regarding transparency, impartiality, and independence, Human Rights Watch said. Investigations should seek to establish the line of command, assess responsibilities, and bring appropriate prosecutions in accordance with international fair trial standards.

“President Bazoum, while facing troubled times and armed groups that have committed numerous atrocities, has an opportunity to show strong leadership by prioritizing accountability for abuses by all sides,” Pedneault said. “Niger’s international partners should support these efforts by keeping justice squarely on the agenda and supporting national efforts to strengthen the rule of law.”

Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of Human Rights Watch.

Source : African Media Agency (AMA)