AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

leader to be prosecuted before a court in
another country for crimes under
international law.
In March, the ICC convicted Jean-Pierre
Bemba, former Vice-President of DRC, for
war crimes and crimes against humanity
committed in CAR. The ICC’s sentence of 19
years followed its first conviction for rape as a
war crime and its first conviction based on
command responsibility. The guilty verdict
was a key moment in the battle for justice for
victims of sexual violence in CAR and around
the world.
The ICC also began the trial of Côte
d’Ivoire’s former President Laurent Gbagbo
and his Youth Minister, Charles Blé Goudé,
on charges of crimes against humanity. The
ICC also convicted Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi –
an alleged senior member of the Ansar
Eddine armed group – for attacks on
mosques and mausoleums in Timbuktu, Mali,
in 2012, a crime under international law.
Elsewhere, South Africa’s Supreme Court
rebuked the government for its failure to
abide by its domestic and international
obligations when it failed to arrest Al-Bashir
during a visit to the country in 2015. This
affirmed the international norm of rejection of
immunity of perpetrators for international
crimes, irrespective of official capacity.
DISCRIMINATION AND
MARGINALIZATION
Women and girls were frequently subjected
to discrimination, marginalization and abuse
often because of cultural traditions and
norms, and discrimination institutionalized by
unjust laws. Women and girls were also
subjected to sexual violence and rape in
conflicts and countries hosting large numbers
of displaced people and refugees.
High levels of gender-based violence
against women and girls were reported in
many countries such as Madagascar,
Namibia and Sierra Leone.
In Sierra Leone, the government continued
to ban pregnant girls from going to
mainstream schools and taking exams. The
President also refused to sign a bill legalizing
abortion in certain situations despite it having
been adopted by Parliament twice and
despite Sierra Leone’s high maternal mortality
rate. The country rejected UN
recommendations to prohibit female genital
mutilation by law.
Early and forced marriage in Burkina Faso
had robbed thousands of girls as young as 13
of their childhood, while the cost of
contraception, along with other barriers
prevented them from choosing if and when to
have children. But following an intense civil
society campaign, the government
announced that it would revise the law to
increase the legal marriage age to 18.
LGBTI people, or those perceived to be so,
continued to face abuse or discrimination in
countries including Botswana, Cameroon,
Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo and
Uganda. In Kenya, two men petitioned the
High Court in Mombasa to declare the anal
examination, HIV and hepatitis B tests they
were forced to undergo in 2015 were
unconstitutional. However, the court upheld
the legality of anal examinations on men
suspected of engaging in sexual activity with
other men. Forced anal examinations violate
the right to privacy and the prohibition of
torture and other ill-treatment under
international law.
In Malawi, an unprecedented wave of
violent attacks against people with albinism
exposed a systemic failure of policing.
Individuals and criminal gangs perpetrated
abductions, killings and grave robberies as
they sought body parts that they believed
contain magical powers. Women and
children were particularly vulnerable to
killings, sometimes targeted by their own
relatives.
In Sudan, freedom of religion was
undermined by a legal system under which
conversion from Islam to another religion was
punishable by death.
Lack of accountability for corporations was
also another factor for gross violation of the
rights of children. Artisanal miners –
including thousands of children – mine
cobalt in hazardous conditions in the DRC.
This cobalt is used to power devices
including mobile phones and laptop
22 Amnesty International Report 2016/17