AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

continue attacking its civilian population
without fear of accountability for its violations
of international law.
Despite the signing of the peace deal in
South Sudan between government and rival
forces, fighting continued in different parts of
the country throughout the year, and
escalated in the southern Equatoria region
after heavy fighting broke out in the capital,
Juba, in July. During the fighting, armed
forces, particularly government soldiers,
committed human rights violations including
targeted killings and attacks including against
humanitarian personnel. The UN mission in
South Sudan (UNMISS) was criticized for its
failure to protect civilians during the fighting.
A UN Security Council resolution to establish
a regional protection force was not
implemented. The UN Special Advisor on the
prevention of Genocide and the UN
Commission on Human Rights in South
Sudan raised the alarm that the stage was
being set for a genocide.
In CAR, despite peaceful elections in
December 2015 and February 2016, the
security situation deteriorated later in the
year, threatening to plunge the country into
more deadly violence. Armed groups
launched numerous attacks: on 12 October,
ex-Séléka fighters from at least two different
factions killed at least 37 civilians, injured 60,
and set fire to a camp for internally displaced
persons (IDPs), in the city of Kaga Bandoro.
Yet despite such bloodshed and suffering,
the world’s attention arguably shifted even
further away from Africa’s conflicts. Certainly,
the international community’s response to
conflict in the continent was woefully
inadequate, as evidenced by the UN Security
Council’s failure on sanctions on South
Sudan, and the insufficient capacity of
peacekeeping operations to protect civilians
in CAR, South Sudan and Sudan. There were
hardly any measures, including from the UN
Security Council and the African Union (AU)
Peace and Security Council, to put pressure
on the government of Sudan to allow
humanitarian access and to investigate
allegations of grave violations and abuses.
The AU’s response to crimes under
international law and other serious human
rights violations and abuses committed in the
context of conflict and crisis remained mostly
slow, inconsistent and reactive rather than
forming part of a comprehensive and
consistent strategy.
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE
Africa’s conflicts – including in Cameroon,
CAR, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia,
South Sudan and Sudan – remained major
drivers of the global refugee crisis, and the
internal displacement of people within
borders. Millions of women, children and
men were still unable to return home, or were
forced by new threats to flee into unknown
dangers and uncertain futures.
People from sub-Saharan Africa formed
the majority of the hundreds of thousands of
refugees and migrants travelling to Libya
fleeing war, persecution or extreme poverty,
often in the hope of transiting through the
country to settle in Europe. Amnesty
International’s research revealed horrifying
abuses including sexual violence, killings,
torture, and religious persecution along the
smuggling routes to and through Libya.
In northern Nigeria, at least two million
people remained internally displaced – living
in host communities and some in
overcrowded camps with inadequate food,
water and sanitation. Tens of thousands of
IDPs were held in camps under armed guard
by the military and Civilian Joint Task Force,
which were accused of sexually exploiting
women.
Thousands of people have died in these
camps due to severe malnutrition.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees from
CAR, Libya, Nigeria and Sudan continued to
live in poor conditions in refugee camps in
Chad. According to the UN, more than
300,000 people fled Burundi, most of them
to refugee camps in neighbouring Rwanda
and Tanzania. More than 1.1 million Somalis
remained internally displaced, with another
1.1 million Somali refugees remaining in
neighbouring countries and elsewhere.
In the three years since the start of the
conflict in South Sudan, the number of
20 Amnesty International Report 2016/17