Africa

The Chairman of the Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, announced the readiness of the security committees to gather former rebel forces in the cantonment sites as provided in the Juba peace agreement.

Under the peace agreement signed between the Sudanese government and the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF)’s factions on October 3, 2020, the assembling of forces should have taken place two months after the signing of the agreement, but the step was delayed for months, due to lack of funding.

Kenya on Thursday rescheduled its planned closure of refugee camps to June next year, following discussions with the UN Refugee Agency to stagger the shut-down.

As such Kakuma and Dadaab Refugee camps will be closed down by June next year, allowing refugees time to leave gradually rather than in masses.

The attack in Yattakou village also left one person severely wounded and displaced residents, local governor says.

A local official in northern Burkina Faso has said at least 18 people were killed and one seriously wounded in an attack this week that also caused “massive displacement”.

Salfo Kabore, governor of Seno province located in conflict-hit Burkina Faso’s Sahel region, said unidentified gunmen carried out the attack on Monday in Yattakou village.

Why We Wrote This

What costs are acceptable to pay for peace? A handful of local negotiations with insurgents in the Sahel puts a spotlight on a debate about whether to talk with militants.

The Sahel is awash in jihadi insurgencies. From Nigeria to Mali, the stakes are high. About a million people have been displaced by conflict in Burkina Faso alone, where hundreds of people have died.

For months, human traffickers beat and drugged Blessing, hauling the 27-year-old from one gold mine encampment to the next, where each night she was forced to sleep with dozens of men for less than $2 a person.

The madam who lured Blessing to the landlocked West African nation of Burkina Faso with promises of a hair salon job, threatened to kill her if she tried to run away.

More than 10,000 Angolans have taken refuge in Namibia due to the drought, an official said Wednesday.

Angola shares a 1,100km border with Namibia in the provinces of Cunene, Namibe and Cuando Cubango.

The border is porous and allows easy illegal crossings.

The U.N. Security Council held an informal meeting Thursday focusing on the repatriation of more than 20,000 foreign fighters and mercenaries from Libya, a demand of the country’s transitional government as it heads toward December elections after a decade of fighting and upheaval.

Vietnam’s U.N. Ambassador Dang Dinh Quy, the current council president, told several reporters that members stressed the importance of implementing last October’s cease-fire agreement which included the withdrawal of all foreign fighters and mercenaries within three months. That didn’t happen.

But a summit for heads of state to ratify the plan has been postponed.

Southern African ministers have agreed to deploy a regional force in Mozambique to help that country defeat an Islamic State-linked insurgency.

The ministers, representing the troika of the security organ of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), appear to have accepted a plan proposed by their military officials to send in a 2,916-strong rapid response force.

On March 24, Ansar al-Sunna, a militant group linked to the Islamic State, launched a bloody attack on the coastal town of Palma, in northern Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, leaving at least 61 dead and scores more unaccounted for.

Somalia stepped back from the brink of widespread violence Wednesday, when incumbent President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed abandoned his controversial effort to unilaterally extend his term amid months of electoral turmoil. Mohamed’s about-face came after several weeks of escalating conflict, sparked by his decision on April 14 to sign a law extending his mandate and that of federal lawmakers by two years.