The recent arrest of an American lawyer by the heavy-handed Rwandan government has human rights implications for the resource war in neighboring eastern Congo. Eve Ensler, who wrote "The Vagina Monologues" and is now a major advocate for Congolese women suffering sexual violence, says the Rwandan government is part of the problem when it comes to ending the violence against women.
As soccer stars and fans converge in South Africa for the World Cup, this video looks into the Cape Town slums to investigate reports that people are being displaced to make way for the games.
During the 1960s, when decolonization movements were sweeping the world, it was joked that after achieving independence a country had to do three things: design a flag, launch an airline and found a film festival. Audience member at festival
The hijacking of merchant ships by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden has been widely condemned in UN resolutions and news reports. Yet illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and the dumping of nuclear and toxic waste in Somali waters by foreign fleets continues to be ignored.
There are elections in countries with well-worn political structures, such as the recent elections in the United Kingdom. There, elections serve as a certain circulation of the elites and modest changes in policy.Then there are elections in countries that have not known multi-party elections in many years, where there are few existing political structures but a willingness to use violence for political ends and where the consequences of the elections are not clear. Such was the case with the April 11 elections in Sudan.Omar al-Bashir
A 23 year old Congolese woman told Human Rights Watch that the soldiers "raped us and dragged us to their camp which was not far away. I stayed there for one month, under constant supervision. Even when I went to fetch water, he came with me to ensure that I did not run away.... There was no conversation between us, he had sex with me at any moment, when he felt like it, and with a lot of violence. I spent my days crying. I begged God to free me from this hell." Stories of this nature are not unusual in the DRC.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019