Author: Online Portal

A new report by the U.N. Development Program, UNDP, warns violent extremism is growing in sub-Saharan Africa and threatening to reverse hard-won development gains for generations to come.

Sub-Saharan Africa has emerged as the new global epicenter of violent extremism, with nearly half of global terrorism-related deaths in 2021. More than one-third of these deaths have occurred in just four African countries: Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Somalia.

Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator, said his agency’s report sheds new light on what drives people to join fast-growing extremist groups. He stresses the importance of understanding why “violent extremist groups are able to both succeed in penetrating nation states, communities, and essentially spread their networks of influence.”

Nearly 2,200 men and women in eight countries — Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan — were interviewed for the study. More than 1,000 are former members of these groups, both voluntary and forced recruits.

At the core of this report, said Steiner, is the effort to identify what factors are most influential in persuading people to join extremist groups.

“Is it religion that is attracting people and radicalizing them or is it a push factor that has a great deal to do with the economic reality.”

The lead author of the report and regional peacebuilding adviser, Nirina Kiplagat, cites work, not religion, as the main driving force. She said one-quarter of voluntary recruits cited job opportunities and the urgent need of livelihoods as their primary reason for joining extremist groups.

“It is only 17% that cited religious ideologies for the primary reason motivating them to join and this is compared to 40% in 2017,” she said.

This is a reference to UNDP’s 2017 groundbreaking study, the first that attempted to understand the journeys to violent extremism.

Kiplagat adds women’s reasons for joining extremist groups differ from those of men.

“Women were less likely to join for ideological reasons and tended to join with family and in particular their spouses, their husbands.

“And what we find in contrast, is that male recruits tend to join with friends,” she said.

In another interesting finding, the report notes that an extra year in school decreases the odds of voluntary recruitment by 30%.

Between 2017 and 2021, UNDP reports extremist groups were responsible for 4,155 attacks in Africa and 18,417 fatalities.

Achim Steiner said he agrees the numbers are alarming, but that he believes too much emphasis is being placed on security-driven militarized responses to counter violent extremism.

He said militarized approaches often exacerbate the problem, yet they continue to predominate in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Nearly half of the respondents cited a specific trigger event that pushed them to join violent extremist groups,” he said. “And a striking 71% of those quoted human rights abuse often conducted by the state security forces as a tipping point.”

Steiner said violent extremism is not just a localized phenomenon. He said it also has a geopolitical dimension.

“Whether it is the Wagner group, whether it is the spread of Boko Haram or ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] or al-Qaida, we have seen that…once these groups gain a foothold,” this inevitably sometimes becomes part of a geopolitical drama or competition.

This, he said “is very much the tragedy for many African countries because they become part of a larger battleground.”

Wagner is a Kremlin-linked mercenary military group. Nigeria-based Boko Haram is a militant terrorist group that has killed thousands of people in its bid to force the government to adopt strict Islamic law.

The report explores pathways out of violent extremism. Most interviewed said they left the groups they had joined because their financial expectations were unmet, and they no longer agreed with the actions or ideology of the group’s leadership.

The report recommends greater investment in basic services including child welfare education, quality livelihoods, and investing in young men and women to counter and prevent violent extremism.

Lead author Kiplagat said, “Research shows those who decide to disengage from violent extremism are less likely to re-join and recruit others.

“This is why it is so important to invest in incentives that enable disengagement,” she said.

Source: Voice of America

M23 rebels killed at least 171 civilians during a massacre in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in November, the United Nations said Tuesday, revising an earlier reported toll of 131.

In a document summarizing abuses committed in the DRC last year, the U.N. Joint Human Rights Office said the M23 had executed at least 171 civilians in the settlements of Kishishe and Bambo, in eastern North Kivu province.

The massacre provoked outrage in the DRC, where the Tutsi-led M23 has captured swathes of territory in North Kivu since late 2021 and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

A preliminary U.N. probe initially found that 131 civilians had been killed.

Reported figures for the scale of the massacre vary widely.

The DRC’s government initially said that some 300 had been killed, for example, while the M23 said that eight civilians were killed by stray bullets.

On Monday, Human Rights Watch said in a report that the M23 had executed at least 22 people in Kishishe and killed another 10 while searching for enemy militia members.

Elsewhere in its statement on Tuesday, the U.N. noted that it had recorded nearly 6,000 human-rights violations in the DRC last year — marking a 15-percent reduction compared to 2021.

Abuses committed by state forces also fell, the U.N. said, with 2,400 recorded cases last year compared to 3,162 in 2021.

Armed groups committed about 60% of the recorded abuses. About 85% of the total number of violations occurred in four provinces in the DRC’s volatile east.

Despite the overall drop in recorded rights violations, there had been a “substantial increase” in the number of summary executions, the UN said.

Although it did not specify a figure, it attributed the rise to an uptick on attacks on civilians in Ituri and North Kivu provinces.

The U.N. pointed to the M23, Codeco, Nyatura and Allied Democratic Forces armed groups as being responsible for the trend.

The M23 resumed fighting in late 2021 after lying dormant for years, claiming that the DRC had failed to honor a pledge to integrate its fighters into the army.

Its re-emergence sparked a crisis in the country’s east and led to a spike in tensions with neighboring Rwanda, which Kinshasa accuses of backing the group.

U.N. experts, the United States and other western states agree with Kinshasa. Rwanda denies the accusation.

Source: Voice of America

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday vowed that Russia will continue helping Mali improve its military capabilities in a joint press conference aired live on state television.

Standing alongside his Malian counterpart, Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop, Russia top diplomat touted the August 2021 delivery of several fighter jets and helicopters, adding that more military support is assured.

“We have delivered very important aircraft,” he said, “and this has considerably increased the capacity of Malian armed forces to eradicate the terrorist threat.”

Russian support for the West African nation’s efforts to sustain a decade-long battle against al-Qaida and Islamic-State-linked militants has increased since France’s withdrawal from the country last year.

The French army intervened in Mali in 2013 after the north of the country was taken over by Islamist militants but withdrew last year on concerns about Mali’s military government working with Kremlin-backed Wagner Group mercenaries

The growing partnership between Moscow and Bamako has prompted Western concern. Mali has been under international scrutiny for cooperating with Russian Wagner mercenaries since last year, with the U.N. and several international human rights organizations calling for investigations of massacres committed by the mercenaries working with the Malian army.

Lavrov and Diop both referenced efforts by the United Nations to investigate human rights abuses in Mali. Both ministers described those efforts as “neocolonial,” with Diop claiming they are an effort to “destabilize” Mali.

Rights groups and journalists reported human rights abuse allegations committed by Russian mercenaries several times last year. Following one investigation, French broadcasts were banned from the country.

Last week U.N. experts called for an investigation into “international crimes” committed by the Wagner Group in Mali.

Following testimony at a U.N. Security Council meeting on January 27, Mali’s military government expelled the chief of the U.N. mission to Mali’s human rights division for “destabilizing and subversive” actions against the Malian government.

Violence has continued to spread south in recent years, with several attacks in recent months near Bamako attributed to Islamist militants. In July of last year, Mali’s main military base in Kati, 15 kilometers from Bamako, was attacked by Islamist militants.

Lavrov’s visit comes as Moscow seeks to shore up relations with its allies amid Western isolation because of its invasion of Ukraine.

Russian news agency RIA quoted Lavrov as saying that Moscow hoped to start delivering wheat, fertilizers and oil products to Mali soon.

Lavrov has visited a series of African countries recently as Moscow, hit by Western sanctions over its war in Ukraine, seeks to strengthen ties and strategic partnerships elsewhere.

Source: Voice of America

ATHENS, Feb 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Four children and a woman died Sunday after a boat carrying around 40 migrants from Turkiye sank off the Greek island of Leros, Greece’s coastguard said.

Three rescue boats and a helicopter were continuing with search operations but were being hampered by strong winds and choppy seas after the migrants’ inflatable boat sank in the Mediterranean.

The teams managed to rescue 41 people, including six children and two adults who were transferred to hospital in Leros, the coastguard said.

A fisherman raised the alarm after discovering the lifeless body of the woman floating at sea, said local press reports.

Doctors were unable to revive four of the children hospitalised, Greece’s ANA news agency reported. The agency said two of the four were boys aged about five with another fatality a girl of four.

The dead woman was around 20 years old, ANA reported, adding that all the migrants aboard were from Africa, including several with reduced mobility.

“Unfortunately, once again we have innocent victims who have lost their lives because of the criminal behaviour of traffickers,” Greece’s Merchant Navy Minister Yannis Plakiotakis said in a statement.

The number of migrants requiring rescue has risen as more attempt to reach Greece from Turkish shores on shoddy and overcrowded vessels despite the rough winter seas.

In December, a two-month-old baby died in a shipwreck off the Greek island of Lesbos.

Some 2,246 people fleeing wars and poverty are known to have lost their lives in the eastern Mediterranean since 2014, according to statistics from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

BAMAKO, Feb 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Mali’s ruling junta said that it was expelling the head of the human rights division of MINUSMA, the United Nations mission there, giving him 48 hours to leave the country.

The decision comes after a Malian rights activist last month denounced the security situation in the country in a speech to a UN gathering, and accused the regime’s new Russian military partners of serious rights violations.

The foreign ministry had declared Guillaume Ngefa Atonodok Andali, head of MINUSMA’s human rights section, persona non grata, said a statement issued by government spokesman Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga.

“This measure comes after the destabilising and subversive actions of Monsieur Andali,” added the statement, which was also read out on national television news.

Andali had taken it upon himself to decide who were the representatives of civil society, ignoring the authorities and national institutions, the statement added.

“Andali’s bias was even more evident during the last review of the United Nations Security Council on Mali”, the statement added.

On Jan 27, rights activist Aminata Cheick Dicko criticised the regime at a special UN Security Council briefing on Mali.

Then on Jan 31, UN rights experts in Geneva called for an independent probe into abuses and possible war crimes in Mali carried out by government forces and Russia’s Wagner group, which has been operating alongside them.

MINUSMA was set up in 2013 to try to stabilise Mali in the face of the growing threat from rebel fighters.

Its mission also included the protection of civilians, contributing to peace efforts and defending human rights.

Although its mandate was renewed in 2019, the deteriorating security situation has raised questions in Mali and abroad about the continuing usefulness of the UN mission.

Some of the countries that once contributed to it have either already pulled out or are planning to. They include France and Ivory Coast, both of which have had major diplomatic breaks with Mali’s military regime.

Other countries including Egypt, Germany and Sweden have either pulled out of the mission or announced that they are going to do so.

Germany’s defence ministry said last Monday its soldiers would be pulling out by May 2024 because it made no sense to stay on when the troops could not fulfill their mission.

Tensions between the Malian authorities and the UN mission have increased with the arrival of the military junta, which seized power two years ago, promising to tackle the insurgencies.

But the security situation has continued to deteriorate in the west African country.

The military regime has repeatedly blocked MINUSMA’s attempts to investigate reports of human rights abuses carried out by the armed forces

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

A United Nations peacekeeper from South Africa was killed and another wounded in an attack on their helicopter in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday, the organization said.

The aircraft came under fire at around 3:00 pm (1200 GMT) during a flight to Goma, the provincial capital of Nord-Kivu province, where it was able to land, a spokesman told AFP.

The source of the fire that struck the helicopter was not yet known and its precise location had yet to be determined, said Amadou Ba, a spokesman for the UN mission in the DRC (MONUSCO).

South Africa’s military also confirmed the incident.

“An Oryx helicopter came under fire in Goma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Sunday February 5, 2023,” the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) said in a statement.

“A crew member was fatally shot, another suffered injuries but managed to continue flying the chopper and landed safely at Goma Airport.

“The SANDF is in the process of informing family members of the soldiers who were involved in this unfortunate incident.”

MONUSCO chief Bintou Keita said she “strongly condemns this cowardly attack on an aircraft bearing the UN emblem”, adding that “attacks against peacekeepers can constitute a war crime”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Congolese authorities “to investigate this heinous attack and swiftly bring those responsible to justice”, said his spokesman Stephane Dujarric in a statement.

Raging conflict

On March 29, 2022, eight UN peacekeepers — six Pakistanis, one Russian and one Serb — were killed when their helicopter crashed over a combat zone between the Congolese army and M23 rebels.

Militias have plagued the mineral-rich eastern DRC for decades, many of them a legacy of regional wars that flared during the 1990s and the early 2000s.

Since November 2021, the M23 rebel group has seized chunks of territory and come within miles of the east’s main commercial hub Goma.

East African leaders called Saturday for an immediate ceasefire in eastern DRC, at an extraordinary summit called to find ways of calming the raging conflict.

The talks were hosted in Burundi by the seven-nation East African Community (EAC), which is leading mediation efforts to end the fighting in the vast central African nation.

The resurgent M23 has taken control of swathes of land in the mineral-rich east and fighting is continuing despite a peace roadmap hammered out in Angola last July, and the deployment of an East African Community force in November.

The DRC is awash with minerals and precious stones, but the decades of war and chronic mismanagement mean that little of the vast wealth trickles down to the population of some 100 million.

Source: Voice of America