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Central African Republic’s army and its allies have driven back a rebel group that seized towns around the country amid contested elections in December, but rights groups and residents told The New Humanitarian they committed a string of abuses in the process.

“I cannot file a complaint – against whom would I file it?” said a 32-year-old truck driver who was shot at in December from a checkpoint allegedly controlled by Russian mercenaries and Central African soldiers outside the northeastern town of Grimari.

Forty-one-year-old Enoch Obemeasor is more alert this week on his daily two-hour commute from his home in Tafa village, Niger state, to the Nigerian capital for his printing business.

Niger state authorities on Monday said Boko Haram militants attacked the town of Kaure, abducted women, sent thousands fleeing, and hoisted their flag.

Obemeasor said the security threat means it’s not safe to drive at night.

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.