Democratic Republic of Congo v. Uganda: A Decade of Negotiations and Unfounded Judgment

By Guest Writer Pritika Negi and Eilin Maria Baiju By honoring and upholding the victim’s right to receive remedies and reparations, the international community maintains strong empathy for the victims of gross violations of International Humanitarian Law. After more than a decade, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on February 9 2022, delivered a contentious judgment with respect to the international armed conflict between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda after the failure to reach a consensus in negotiations. Contrary to the goal, the mode of reparation was restricted to a mere $325 million in monetary compensation. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were to pay this amount in five annual installments instead of the initially claimed lump sum of $11 billion. The court awarded this compensation on an exceptional basis in the form of “global sums''—a rough estimate of the amount of damages that a court may grant when there are serious evidentiary difficulties, after denying all the...
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Rwanda’s National Security Approach to COVID-19

Rwanda’s National Security Approach to COVID-19

By guest contributor & HRSMA alumnus Dr. Laine Munir   The Rwandan capital's military compound of Camp Kigali, once the site of tragic violence during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, is now a site for saving lives during the omicron variant of COVID-19. It is Rwanda's leading vaccination site that undergirds the country's impressive success in managing the pandemic. There have been fewer than 1,400 COVID deaths in the second most population-dense country in Africa. Daily infections continue to decrease, thanks mainly to Rwanda's swift response to social distancing measures and its capacity to build on its foundational pre-pandemic vaccination programs (WHO 2021). Over 30% of the total population has been vaccinated to date, more than twice the continent's rate as a whole, and booster shots are currently available (Kyobutungi 2021). These are not only remarkable public health outcomes but also a statement on national security. The Rwandan National Police and the national army, the Rwanda Defense Force (RDF), have a ubiquitous...
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Ethiopia’s Year Long Tigray Conflict Advances to the Capital

Ethiopia’s Year Long Tigray Conflict Advances to the Capital

By RightsViews Staff Writer Emily Ekshian A year of conflict rages across the border in Ethiopia, constituting a genocidal war against the non-Oromo peoples of the region. The Ethiopian government launched a military offensive in the north, and is fighting opposition forces in Tigray, closing off the region. Ethiopia’s yearlong Tigray conflict threatens to tear the country apart. Tensions emerged between the Ethiopian Federal Government troops and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), where the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, executed a military offensive against the ruling faction in Tigray on November 4, 2020. Thus, in the north, Tigray rebels are fighting Ethiopian government forces and their allies. Tigray, where most of the fighting has been happening, is located in the North, where the government is called the Tigray People's Liberation Front. The government even has its own regional army - militias and special forces. The TPLF ran the country for almost 30 years, even though they made up a minority, only 6%....
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How is Climate Change Affecting Southern Madagascar? The Climate Crisis and Extreme Drought

How is Climate Change Affecting Southern Madagascar? The Climate Crisis and Extreme Drought

By RightsViews Staff Writer  Emily Ekshian MADAGASCAR - Four years of prolonged drought has taken a toll on Madagascar as the country is on the brink of the world’s first climate change-induced famine. Madagascar is an island-nation off the southeastern coast of Africa. Currently, the country is suffering from a destructive drought, where more than a million people are left food insecure and 400,000 people are confronted with a famine in the south, the epicenter of the crisis.  The drought poses an imminent threat to the right to life, and opportunities for health, access to clean water, sanitation and food of people in southern Madagascar. As the crisis intensifies , people in the south have been left with no other choice than to  migrate in search of food. Tens of thousands of people were already suffering from the catastrophic levels of hunger and food insecurity after four years without rain. The drought has played a role in isolating farming communities, generating water...
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Rights at Risk: COVID-19 and the Rights of People with Disabilities in Kenya

Rights at Risk: COVID-19 and the Rights of People with Disabilities in Kenya

By: Guest Contributors Shubham Airi* and Sarah Ayreen Mir* Towards mid-2020, disabled persons' organizations surveyed 312 persons with disabilities in Kenya and Bangladesh to understand the effects of COVID-19 and how to prevent its spread. More than 90% of respondents in Kenya reported their daily lives had been impacted by the virus. They singled out factors such as unavailability of vital necessities, limited transport facilities, restricted movement, social alienation, decreased earnings, and loss of employment. In Bangladesh, all those polled alleged that COVID had changed their lives for the worse. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic threatens to be a stumbling block in the international community's efforts towards delivering the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, particularly for the marginalized groups, especially persons with disabilities. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit Kenya in early 2020, the government instituted safety precautions and protocols. Since then, people with disabilities across the country have struggled with sticking to the safety protocols and understanding COVID-related information. The blatant disparities in guidance...
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COVID-19 in Africa: Responses and Prospect for Recovery

COVID-19 in Africa: Responses and Prospect for Recovery

By Lindsey Alpaugh, staff writer, RightsViews, Human Rights MA student.  On Wednesday, January 27th, Columbia University held an event examining the impact of COVID-19 on the African continent. Panelists included Belinda Archibong, an Assistant Professor of Economics at Barnard College, Pedro Conceicao, the director of the Human Development Report Office and lead author of the Human Development Report, UNDP HDR office, and Dr. Wilmot James, Senior Research Scholar in the Institute for Social and Economic Research Policy. This event followed a series in the fall looking at COVID-19 in Latin America and was sponsored by the Economic and Political Development concentration at SIPA, the Institute for African Studies at Columbia University, Center for Development Economics and Policy, and SIPA Pan-African Network. African countries were able to have a significantly smaller first wave than predicted due to the dramatic measures that countries took to prevent the spread, such as closing schools and limiting travel. While this had a very successful impact on combatting the...
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Sudan: On the Path to Transition?

Sudan: On the Path to Transition?

By Reem Katrib, a RightsViews staff writer and a graduate student in the Human Rights MA Program. After a 30-year conflict over its autonomy, South Sudan gained its independence from Sudan through a referendum in 2011. The Enough Project explains that this secession “caused a severe economic shock in Sudan, as the country lost nearly 75 percent of its oil reserves and 95 percent of its foreign currency reserves.” Since then, the Sudanese government has repressed political opposition, often using violence against civil society and opposition groups who have expressed their dissent at the mismanagement of the economy.  Prior to secession, Sudan had been plagued by conflict with continuing human rights violations that has meant a distrust of the judiciary in the present. In April 2019, a military council replaced Omar al-Bashir when he was forced out of office. The military leaders and opposition members negotiated to form a “sovereign council” the following August. This council acts  as a transitional government and...
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Non-Violence in Communal War in Central Nigeria

Non-Violence in Communal War in Central Nigeria

By James Courtright, Staff Writer for RightsViews On January 30th Dr. Jana Krause came to speak with students and faculty at Columbia’s School for International and Public Affairs about her new book, “Resilient Communities: Non-Violence and Civilian Agency in Communal War.” Her work centers on communal conflict - non-state armed conflict between identity groups - in Plateau state in Nigeria and Maluku province in Indonesia. In both places the violence tended to be simplistically referred to as Christian against Muslim, but upon further investigation she found it was deeply rooted in local political and economic dynamics and narratives. After explaining how communal violence was organized, she then delved into neighborhoods in Nigeria and Indonesia where violence did not occur, analyzing how the choices of civilians and their collective efforts to prevent fighting saved the lives of hundreds of people. Conflict in Jos When she first visited Jos, Nigeria in 2010, Dr. Krause had to pass through multiple checkpoints along the road from the...
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Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations…But What About Justice? An Interview with Nana-Jo Ndow

Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations…But What About Justice? An Interview with Nana-Jo Ndow

RightsView contributor James Courtright recently sat down with Nana-Jo Ndow to discuss Gambia’s transitional justice process. For 22 years, Yahya Jammeh ruled The Gambia through widespread corruption, repression of media, torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. He was voted out of office in December of 2016, and fled after a political impasse at the end of January 2017. At the beginning of this year the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) began hearing testimony in The Gambia from victims and perpetrators of Jammeh’s regime.  The interview has been edited for clarity. Can you introduce yourself? My name is Nana-Jo Ndow and to put it simply I like to say I’m from Ghana - Gambia – UK. My Dad was a business man, he went wherever there was opportunity.  What brought you to human rights work? I had a father who was very into human rights and politics, so we’d always have debates and conversations. I volunteered with Amnesty International about 12 years ago in London....
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LGBTIQ rights |Recent developments in Kenya

LGBTIQ rights |Recent developments in Kenya

Guest contributor Brian Dan Migowe is a graduate of the 18' LL.M class at the Center for the Study of Human Rights at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK.  July 2019 marks a month since the Kenyan High Court dismissed a consolidated petition of the National Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission (‘NGLHRC’) and other interested parties seeking inter alia abolishment of sections 162(a),(c) and 165 of the Kenyan penal code, which forbid same-sex relations and prescribe a jail sentence of up to 14 years for those found guilty. A long-awaited pronouncement, the NGLHRC’s challenge to the constitutional standing of these two legal provisions has been a subject before the court for the last quadrennium. Petitions have come to the court on two separate occasions. The first petition was initiated by Eric Gitari (then the Executive Director of NGLHRC) in 2016. Two other organizations, the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (‘GALCK’) and the Nyanza, Rift Valley and Western Kenya Network...
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