MRG 18899:MRG 18899

A T L A N T I C

O C E A N

I N D I A N

O C E A N

TUNISIA

MOROCCO

ALGERIA LIBYA

SUDAN

EGYPT

ETHIOPIA

KENYA

UGANDA

CHAD

NIGER

NIGERIA

CAMEROON

GABONREP. OF

THE CONGO

DEM. REP. OF THE CONGO

CENTRALAFRICAN REP.

MALI

MAURITANIA

WesternSahara

SENEGAL

SIERRALEONE

LIBERIA

GUINEA-BISSAU

CÔTE D’IVOIRE GHANA

TOGO

BURKINA FASO

THE GAMBIA

BENIN

EQUAT. GUINEA

SAO TOMEAND PRINCIPE

ANGOLA

ZAMBIA

BOTSWANA

SOUTH AFRICA

SWAZILAND

MOZAMBIQUE

MALAWI

RWANDA

BURUNDI

TANZANIA

NAMIBIA

LESOTHO

GUINEADJIBOUTI

ZIMBABWE

SOMALIA

ERITREA

MADAGASCAR

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AfricaEric Witte

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On the whole, conditions for minorities in Africaremained bleak during 2006, and were clearly worsein those places where minorities lackedrepresentation. Mass atrocities in Darfur intensifiedfollowing a May peace agreement that largelyexcluded two important minority groups. Likewise,a July 2006 peace agreement in the Cabinda regionof Angola appeared to be in jeopardy following theexclusion of key Cabindan factions. In Nigeria,conflict in the Niger Delta region continuedunabated as credible representatives of Deltaminorities were largely excluded from discussionsabout the sharing of oil revenues and that issue’slink to endemic violence. In other parts of Nigeria,systematic exclusion of minorities in the name of‘indigeneity’ fuelled ethnic violence. In the Horn ofAfrica, pastoralist minorities competing for everscarcer resources came into worsening conflict witheach other, even as they remained under-representedin government institutions dealing with their plight.At the end of 2006, the US-backed Ethiopianmilitary action to break the grip of the Islamistalliance in Somalia raised the spectre of a growingconflict, drawing in many different foreign actors, asthe humanitarian plight of Somalis worsens.

Liberia saw improved prospects as new PresidentEllen Johnson Sirleaf aimed to include all ethnicgroups in her government and emphasized theempowerment of girls and women. Burundi hadreason to hope that cyclical inter-ethnic atrocitiesmight finally cease as the final rebel faction signedup to a peace agreement. Though still sufferingfrom years of brutal conflict, the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo went to the polls for the firsttime in 40 years with the hope that an electedgovernment might finally end the rampage ofwarlords who have brought suffering to all of itsmany minorities and chronic sexual violence toCongolese women.

West AfricaCôte d’Ivoire A stand-off continues between a governmentdominated by southern ethnic groups, notably thoseof the Akan linguistic-cultural area and the minorityBété (of which President Laurent Gbagbo is one),and northern New Forces rebels largely consisting ofMuslim ethnic Dioulas (Mandé) and Senoufos. Fordecades, Côte d’Ivoire had one of Africa’s strongesteconomies and attracted large immigrant

communities from Burkina Faso and Mali, many ofwhom stayed for generations, but whose citizenshipis now disputed by many southerners.

The seeds of the current conflict were sowed in1999 when Robert Guei (himself a Yacouba, aminority group along the Liberian border) seizedpower in a 1999 military coup and promoted hispredecessor’s xenophobic notion of ‘Ivoirité’ toquestion the citizenship of northerners, and tosideline prominent northern presidential candidateAlassane Outtara in 2000. Laurent Gbagbo replacedGuei following troubled elections that same year,but embraced ‘Ivoirité’, and his supporters killedscores of northerners. Northern army unitsmutinied in September 2002 and the resultingclashes killed thousands, leaving the country de factopartitioned.

Apart from a spike of violence in November2004, an international buffer of 7,000 UnitedNations (UN) peacekeepers and 4,000 Frenchtroops has been successful in preventing theresumption of large-scale clashes. Following thefailure of peace agreements in January 2003 andJuly 2004, the two sides signed a new compact inApril 2005. The agreement aimed to addressnorthern concerns about identification, nationalityand electoral laws; it led to the demobilization ofmilitant groups linked to President Gbagbo andprovided for a transitional power-sharinggovernment until elections in October 2005. Withlagging implementation and tension still palpable,the UN Security Council approved an extension ofthe provisional government until October 2006,albeit under an internationally appointed primeminister alongside President Gbagbo.

In November 2006, with elections cancelled andleaders on both sides of the north–south dividecultivating ethnic division, the UN Security Councilextended this arrangement until October 2007elections. Though the Security Council resolutiontransfers military and civilian authority fromPresident Gbagbo to appointed Prime MinisterCharles Konan Banny, Gbagbo immediatelyannounced that ‘any articles, any clauses in theresolution which constitute violations of Côted’Ivoire’s constitution will not be applied’.

Liberia In January 2006, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf wasinaugurated as Liberia’s new president. She pledged

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to end the political manipulation of ethnicity,empower Liberia’s women, and pursue broadeconomic development. In February, Johnson Sirleafinaugurated a Truth and ReconciliationCommission tasked with helping the country facethe past and overcome its divisions. At her request,the following month Nigeria surrendered formerPresident Charles Taylor to Liberia for delivery tothe international war crimes tribunal in SierraLeone. In a stunning break with warlordism andimpunity in Africa, he now awaits trial in TheHague, while Liberia seeks to overcome the deepscars to which he contributed.

Around 95 per cent of Liberia’s populationconsists of 16 indigenous ethnic groups, withAmerico-Liberian descendants of freed slavesmaking up most of the rest. Americo-Liberian elitesestablished Liberia in 1847, employing divide-and-rule practices and limited voting rights againstindigenous Liberians to maintain dominance until1980, when Samuel K. Doe overthrew the rulingparty. Rather than empowering all indigenousLiberians, Doe built a brutal dictatorship based onfavouritism for his small ethnic Krahn and relatedgroups. His persecution of such other minorities asthe Gio, Grebo and Mano fuelled a December 1989insurgency led by Charles Taylor.

Rallied to ‘kill the Krahn’, Taylor’s forces engagedin years of brutal conflict against other factions andWest African peacekeepers before Taylor assumedthe presidency in 1997. His repression ofdisfavoured minorities encouraged a new rebellionin 1999. As rebels advanced on the capital – andfollowing announcement of his indictment for warcrimes in neighbouring Sierra Leone – Taylor fled toNigeria in August 2003. After two years oftransitional government noted for weak leadershipand corruption, in November 2005 Ellen JohnsonSirleaf won the presidency with broad support fromdiverse ethnic groups.

NigeriaIn the course of 2006, Nigeria, the most populouscountry in Africa, strained under its complicatedfederal system, the political manipulation ofethnicity, and unrest over resource sharing.

The Igbo (Ibo), Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba peoplesmake up around 65 per cent of Nigeria’s population,but there are over 250 ethnic groups. During thecolonial era, Britain gave preferred educational

opportunities to the largely Christian populations ofthe south, with northern Muslims relying to a greatextent on Koranic education. Beginning in colonialtimes, there have been varying attempts to manageor exploit Nigeria’s ethnic, religious and linguisticdiversity through various forms of federalism. Since1996, the country has been divided into 36 statesand 774 Local Government Areas.

Beginning with the country’s 1979 Constitution,the concept of ‘indigeneity’ has been perpetuated inthe current 1999 Constitution. This systemcategorizes all Nigerians as indigenes or non-indigenes (also labelled ‘settlers’) to a region basedon where their parents or grandparents were born.The mechanism’s intent was to ensure ethnic parityin education and employment, as well as to protecttraditional cultures. But in 2006 Human RightsWatch and the International Crisis Groupseparately reported that the principle has insteadsystematically marginalized millions of Nigeriansand encouraged ethno-linguistic identity politicsthat have fanned the flames of inter-communalviolence, even where the roots of many conflicts lieelsewhere or pre-date policies of indigeneity. Themere definition of which groups are indigenous to aregion creates many controversies; disputedhistorical migration patterns and intermarriageoften make clear delineations impossible. Thepolicy has become a tool for indigenes across thecountry to exclude competing ‘settlers’ from scarceeducational and employment opportunities, even ifthese are life-long residents of the community. Notsurprisingly, this has led to fierce resentment amongthe excluded.

For example, in diverse Plateau State, indigeneityhas been used by Christian politicians to maintaindominance through exclusion of Muslim Hausa andFulani ‘settlers’. The Jarawa ethnic group is alsoclassified as ‘non-indigene’, although it also fails toqualify for indigenous status anywhere in Nigeria.Between 1999 and 2004 in Plateau State, inter-communal fighting arising from disputes overindigeneity, land and religion resulted in 250,000internally displaced persons. April 2006 fightingbetween members of the Pan and Gomai ethnicgroups over issues of indigeneity resulted in over100 killed and 8,000 displaced persons.

In the wake of the September 2005 publication ofDanish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed,in February 2006 Muslim mobs attacked minority

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Christians in northern Nigeria, killing 16 andburning 11 churches. The government deployedsoldiers and riot police to contain the violence.

Niger DeltaOil from the Niger Delta has made Nigeria theworld’s twelfth largest oil producer and accounts for95 per cent of its foreign currency revenue. Despitehigh world oil prices, such minority groups of theNiger Delta as the Ijaw and Ogoni remain mired inpoverty, lacking in education and jobs, and sufferingfrom oil companies’ pollution of their air and water.Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution gives the centralgovernment ownership of the country’s naturalresources. Most of the derivative percentage passedback to state and local accounts is stolen by corruptofficials. Tensions have mounted, with ethnicresistance groups in the Delta increasingly turningto violent means. Militants launched a series ofattacks on oil installations in January and February2006. In April, President Olusegun Obasanjoproposed a ‘Marshall Plan’ for the Delta, but onlywith involvement of corrupt local officials andexclusion of many civil society organizations thatenjoy credibility in the region. Following furtherattacks, in August 2006 Obasanjo ordered acrackdown on militants while still pursuingnegotiations. The abduction of oil workers inOctober 2006 pointed to continuing radicalizationamong minority populations of the Delta, and anongoing need to address the causes of their anger.

North AfricaAlgeria In 2006 the Berber minority of Algeria, comprising20–30 per cent of the population, viewed withtrepidation a possible thaw in the relationshipbetween the government and Islamic militantorganizations, all the more so following attacks onBerber political leaders.

In 2001, years of agitation for greater recognitionof their Tamazight language, music and cultureculminated in rioting. Implementation of vagueJanuary 2005 government concessions to Berberdemands stemming from the unrest has beenovershadowed by a rapprochement between thegovernment and Islamic extremists. In February2006, the cabinet of President Abdelaziz Bouteflikadeclared a six-month amnesty for government forcesand most Islamist militants who were involved in

the civil war of the 1990s if they agreed to disarm,but by its expiration fewer than 300 militants hadaccepted the offer. The sweeping ‘law implementingthe charter on peace and national reconciliation’ alsocriminalized discussion of the conflict. Some Berberorganizations that favour a secular Algerian state,such as the Movement for Autonomy in Kabylie,feared that the Bouteflika government was gettingtoo close to the Islamists, even as this relationshipremained ambivalent. In October 2006, thepresident of the Popular Assembly in the TiziOuzou province of the Kabylie region was shot andkilled. The government blamed Islamic militants forthis and two other assassinations of Berber leadersover the previous 13 months.

Egypt Continuing religious intolerance in Egypt during2006 led Christian Copts to seek the protectionfrom the government, and the Baha’i minority tofear that government’s active role in their torment.

The Copts are Egyptian Christians, mostlyOrthodox, who trace their roots to Pharaonicpeoples and their conversion to the arrival of StMark in the first century AD. Nationally, Coptsmake up around 5–10 per cent of the populationbut are more concentrated in Cairo and Alexandriaand comprise an estimated 18–19 per cent of thepopulation in southern Egypt. They face statediscrimination in such areas as universityadmissions, public spending, military promotionsand required authorizations for the building orrepair of churches. Islamist attacks on Copts haveled the latter to fear legalization of Egypt’s largestopposition force, the Muslim Brotherhood. April2006 knife attacks on Copts outside churches inAlexandria led to sectarian violence.

Whereas Shari’a law recognizes Coptic Christiansas ‘people of the book’, no such tolerance exists forthe tiny Baha’i community of 500–2,000. Baha’i is areligion with roots in Shia Islam that emanated fromPersia in the nineteenth century. Because the Baha’ibelieve that God’s word is passed to humansthrough an ongoing series of revelations, it clasheswith Islam’s view that the Prophet Mohammed’srevelations were the final ones. Currently, manyBaha’i believers in Egypt are denied birth certificatesand the identification required to open bankaccounts or enrol their children in school, and theirmarriages are not recognized. The Egyptian


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government is appealing a court ruling from April2006 that allows Baha’i to have identity cards listingtheir faith. A related government report in October2006 argued that Baha’is must be ‘identified,confronted and singled out so that they can bewatched carefully, isolated and monitored in orderto protect the rest of the population as well as Islamfrom their danger, influence and their teachings’.

Morocco: Western SaharaIn 2006, Morocco continued in its refusal to allow areferendum in Western Sahara that might end thelong-standing impasse with the Saharawis in thatoccupied land.

The Saharawis of Western Sahara are traditionallynomadic herders, now largely urbanized, of mixedBerber, Arab and black African descent. They speak adialect of Arabic called Hassaniya. In 1975, thecolonial ruler Spain ceded Western Sahara, which isrich in phosphates, fisheries and suspected offshoreoil, to Morocco and Mauritania. That same year theInternational Court of Justice (ICJ) found thatneither had legitimate claims to territorialsovereignty over the region. The Saharawiopposition, the Polisario Front, fought bothcountries. Mauritania withdrew in 1979, ceding itsclaim to Morocco, against whom the rebels foughtfor 16 years with Algeria’s support. Of a populationof around 250,000, some 160,000 Saharawis fled torefugee camps in southern Algeria, where theyremain today. The conflict ended with theintroduction of UN peacekeepers in 1991, and theexpectation that there would be a referendum onself-determination in accordance with the 1975 ICJruling and subsequent UN resolutions.

Morocco has consistently refused to allow areferendum and, in October 2006, the UN SecurityCouncil extended the 15-year-old UN peacekeepingmission for a further six months. Following a May2005 crackdown by Moroccan authorities, aSeptember 2006 UN report leaked to the press raisedconcerns about Saharawis suffering police brutality,torture, lack of freedom of expression or due process.Nevertheless, Moroccan ally France blocked proposalsto include these concerns in the latest UN resolutionprolonging the peacekeeping force. A controversialJuly 2005 fishing agreement between the EU andMorocco, pending approval by the EuropeanParliament, would allow EU fishing vessels to catch inoccupied Western Sahara’s rich coastal waters.

Central AfricaAngola: Cabinda Hopes of progress to end the conflict over the oil-rich enclave of Cabinda faded in that latter half of2006 as the government sidelined a civil societyorganization representing the minority population.

The Bakongo people of Central Africa make uparound 14 per cent of Angola’s population, and thepreponderance of the 300,000 people of thenorthern Angolan province of Cabinda. Cabinda isseparated from the rest of Angola by the sliver of theDemocratic Republic of Congo that runs to theAtlantic. Though tiny in size and relativepopulation, the area represents an estimated 60 percent of Angola’s vast oil reserves.

The natural resource has raised the stakes forCabindan efforts to achieve self-determination thatdate back to 1961. With the end of Angola’s civilwar in 2002, fighting in Cabinda betweenseparatists and the Angolan army intensified,resulting in widespread human rights abuses againstCabindans. From March 2006, an umbrellaorganization, the Cabinda Forum for Dialogue(FDC), entered into discussions with thegovernment. In July 2006, the government bannedone element of the FDC: Cabinda’s only humanrights organization, Mpalabanda. In August oneCabindan rebel leader signed a separate peace withthe government that was disavowed by otherCabindan factions. The head of Mpalabanda wasarrested in September 2006 and released one monthlater, pending trial for ‘instigating, inciting andcondoning crimes against the security of the state’.Chevron, the largest oil operator in Cabinda,conceals the amount they pay to the Angolangovernment. Non-governmental organizations(NGOs) criticize the oil giant for contributing tograft that only fuels resentment among theimpoverished Cabindan population.

BurundiIn 2006, war-torn Burundi had reason to hope thatit could finally end decades of mutual atrocitiesbetween its Hutu majority and Tutsi minority as thelast rebel group signed up to a peace agreement andtransitional justice mechanisms were being developedto help the country process its tortured history.

The population of Burundi is 85 per cent Hutu,14 per cent Tutsi and 1 per cent Twa. Although Tutsipastoralists generally enjoyed privilege in pre-colonial


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times, colonialism and political manipulationfollowing the country’s independence in 1962sharpened ethnic differences, and these eclipsed othersocial divides. Successive Tutsi military regimesoversaw several massacres of Hutu, notably in 1972,when between 100,000 and 200,000 Hutu werekilled and 300,000 forced to flee the country. Theassassination of a newly elected Hutu president in1993 sparked an uprising that resulted in 100,000Tutsi deaths; the Tutsi-dominated army killed tens ofthousands of Hutu in retribution. Fighting continuedthroughout the decade, exacerbated by the 1994genocide in neighbouring Rwanda. Throughout, thesmall Twa minority of forest dwellers suffered at thehands of both Hutu and Tutsi fighters.

The 2000 Arusha Accords created a transitionalgovernment. By 2003, one of two hold-out Hutumilitias had signed up to the peace agreement, andUN peacekeepers arrived in 2004. In 2005,Burundians voted overwhelmingly to approve a newpower-sharing constitution with ethnic quotas forrepresentation in government, administration andthe military. In August 2005 elections, PierreNkurunziza and his Hutu-dominated party, aformer rebel faction that allegedly committedmassive human rights abuses, took control of everybranch of government. The election campaign sawintra-Hutu rivalries overshadow the Hutu–Tutsidivide. In April 2006, the government deemed thesituation in Burundi safe enough to lift a midnight-to-dawn curfew that had been in place since 1993.Amid halting progress on political reform, temperedby continued reports of government torture andother human rights abuses, the last hold-out Hutumilitia signed a peace agreement in September2006. Despite a limited amnesty granted to theserebels, the government and UN are moving forwardwith creation of a special war crimes court and aTruth and Reconciliation Commission.

Democratic Republic of the CongoIn 2006 the first democratic elections in nearly 40years offered some hope that the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo (DRC) might finally


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Right: Election materials stockpiled in the warehouseof the Independent Electoral Commission. TheDemocratic Republic of Congo’s first multi-partyelections in over 40 years were held in July 2006.Sven Torfinn/Panos Pictures

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overcome ethnic divisions long exploited bydomestic and foreign powers for political andmaterial gain. Against the backdrop of deep ethno-linguistic divides, a devastated economy and themilitarization of much of the country, thedemocratic election of incumbent President JosephKabila and his party’s strong showing in elections tothe weak national Parliament may have signalled anew chance for the DRC, but by no means assuredits peaceful future.

The DRC is a geographically diverse country thesize of Western Europe, with a population of almost60 million made up of hundreds of ethno-linguisticgroups. Throughout its history of brutalexploitation as a personal fiefdom of Belgian KingLeopold II from 1881 until 1908, Belgian colonialrule until independence in 1960, and its plunderingby US-backed dictator Mobutu Sese Seko duringthe Cold War years, the territory’s ethnic diversityhas been manipulated to serve the interests of thoseseeking to control its tremendous wealth of naturalresources, including rubber, timber, gold, copper,cobalt, coltan and diamonds.

Following the 1994 genocide in neighbouringRwanda, many Hutu extremist perpetrators joinedhundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees who fearedretribution in eastern DRC (then still known asZaire). From there, the militants, with the support of

Mobutu, launched attacks on the new Rwandangovernment as well as on Congolese Tutsi, theBanyamulenge. In 1996 Rwanda and Uganda senttheir own forces into Zaire, and backed the rebelLaurent Kabila in a westward sweep through the vastcountry. In the process, Rwandan government forcesand Kabila’s forces killed thousands of Hutus,combatants and non-combatants alike. Mobutu fledas Kabila took the capital Kinshasa in May 1997 andrenamed the country DRC. However, Kabila quicklyfell out with Rwanda and Uganda, and in 1998 thesecountries sponsored rebel movements to invade theDRC anew. The rebels also had the support ofBurundi, while the Kabila government had that ofAngola, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Seven nations werenow involved and, because their various roles wereoften rewarded with natural resource concessions,they had little incentive to withdraw. Fightingcontinued despite a July 1999 ceasefire agreementand deployment of an understaffed UNpeacekeeping mission (MONUC) in 2000. A studyby the International Rescue Committee found thatbetween 1998 and 2004 nearly 4 million people inthe DRC – the equivalent of the entire population ofIreland – died as a result of the war.

Laurent Kabila was assassinated in January 2001and his son, Joseph Kabila, assumed the presidency.Under international pressure, he entered into a


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Growth in Sub-Saharan African post-conflict countries

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1982

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1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

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2002

2003

UGANDA

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DRC

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power-sharing government with rebel factions andcivil society in July 2003. Violence in the north-eastern Ituri province flared, despite the improvedsituation in Kinshasa, and French-led EuropeanUnion (EU) peacekeepers intervened in 2003 toquell the violence in and around Ituri’s capitalBunia. In July 2003 and October 2004 the UNSecurity Council bolstered MONUC to a nearly17,000-strong force, and gave it a new mandate toprotect civilians ‘under imminent threat of violence’.In April 2006, the EU approved deployment ofadditional peacekeepers to provide security for UN-administered national and local elections foreseen bythe 2002 peace agreement that led to the power-sharing government.

Over 30 presidential candidates emerged during2006 in a campaign marred by incitement to ethnichatred. According to Human Rights Watch, in May2006 one of DRC’s four vice-presidents engaged inanti-Tutsi rhetoric at a campaign rally for JosephKabila in the North Kivu town of Goma. Anothervice-president, and Kabila’s main rival for thepresidency, Jean-Pierre Bemba, was a leadingUgandan-backed warlord in north-eastern Congoprior to entering the government in 2003. Hestands indicted in the Central African Republic inconnection with a rebellion there, and is widelybelieved to be under investigation by theInternational Criminal Court. He based much of hiscampaign on xenophobic rhetoric aimed at castingdoubt on Kabila’s Congolese identity. When resultswere announced on 20 August 2006, Kabila had 45per cent to Bemba’s 20 per cent, requiring a run-off.The announcement sparked three days of violencebetween their supporters in Kinshasa that killed atleast 23 people and required intervention by UNand EU peacekeepers.

The run-off election was held on 29 October and,despite violence in part of Ituri province,international observers deemed the voting to belargely free and fair. Kabila won with 58 per cent ofthe vote, mostly from the Swahili-speaking east,creating concern about his ability to overcome thedivide with the Lingala-speaking west. Bemba losthis challenge of the results in court and, despiteearlier violent outbursts by his supporters inKinshasa, Bemba announced in late November thathe would respect the election results.

The years of war since the 1996 and 1998invasions have resulted in a proliferation of militias

and a spread of lawlessness, particularly in theeastern DRC provinces of Ituri, North and SouthKivu, and Katanga. The Kinshasa government andinvading forces alike have established ethnicallybased militias, including local Mai-Mai defenceforces, usually organized along tribal lines. Armedfactions were encouraged by their sponsors to preyon local populations for subsistence and lootedgoods. The larger context of DRC’s chaos andnatural resource wealth combined with marauding,predatory militias has sharpened various ethnicconflicts, put the country’s minority groups at riskand resulted in staggering levels of sexual violenceagainst women.

Inter-communal violence has gone well beyondthat associated with the divide between Hutu andTutsi/Banyamulenge, most prevalent in North andSouth Kivu. Tensions between Hema and Lendupeoples, incited during colonial times and theMobutu era, have destabilized Ituri province. As thepower-sharing government was taking shape in2002–3, clashes between heavily armed Hema andLendu militias and massacres of civilians resulted inat least 50,000 deaths and sparked EU intervention.Despite a demobilization programme, extended inJuly 2006, there were reports in September 2006that splintered Hema and Lendu militias were re-arming and engaging in new clashes. In Katangaprovince, allies of Kabila engaged in violentintimidation of the opposition, consisting largely ofthe Luba people who have roots in Kasai province.

As MRG found in 2002, even Twa or Bambuti(pygmy) peoples living deep in the forests of easternDRC had become targets of various militias, includingthat of Jean-Pierre Bemba. Militias target the Twa inorder to deprive rivals of Twa hunting skills andknowledge of forest paths. Twa women have beensingled out for rape due to the belief that sleepingwith them confers special powers on the rapist.

All of DRC’s many minority groups, andespecially women, remain under threat from anunprofessional government army and the manymilitias. Their greatest hope rests with efforts toovercome the country’s corruption, mal-governance,impunity and lack of state control in the east.

RwandaDuring 2006, the Tutsi-dominated RwandanPatriotic Front (RPF) government continued topursue policies of playing down ethnicity as a means


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of overcoming the minority’s endangerment – alltoo evident in the 1994 genocide that claimed anestimated 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu victimsat the hands of Hutu nationalists. Rwanda’spopulation consists of 85 per cent Hutu, 14 percent Tutsi, and 1 per cent Twa.

Critics claim that its bans on ‘divisive’ parties andorganizations are designed to serve RPF powerinterests. In February 2006, Rwanda’s first post-genocide president, Pasteur Bizimungu – a Hutu –lost an appeal against his 2004 conviction for‘criminal association’ in his attempt to form a rivalparty in 2002. Human Rights Watch documentedflaws in his first-instance trial.

In the course 2006, the International CriminalTribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) continued to hear top-tier genocide cases, while Rwanda’s traditionalgacaca courts continued to try large numbers of lessprominent cases. In January 2007, the Rwandancabinet voted to abolish the death penalty. Ifapproved by parliament, the move will allowcountries which object to the death penalty toextradite genocide suspects back to Rwanda.Abolition of the death penalty was also a pre-requisite for the transfer of some ICTR cases toRwanda’s national court system. The ICTRprosecutor still hadn’t taken up serious allegations ofwar crimes committed by the RPF’s predecessor, theRwandan Patriotic Army, during the genocide. Theprosecutor faced the implicit threat that if he did sothe government would rescind all cooperation withthe tribunal.

The indigenous Twa people of Rwanda,numbering an estimated 25,000–30,000, remain onsociety’s margins, disadvantaged in education, healthcare and land rights. The government of Rwandahas threatened to cut off all assistance to the Twaand their organizations if they continue to considerthemselves as a distinct people.

UgandaAcholiIn Uganda during 2006, the search for an end tothe brutalizing war of the north gathered pace, asthe Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), notorious forabducting children and turning them into killers,signalled a willingness to negotiate following itsleaders’ indictment in 2005 by the InternationalCriminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimesagainst humanity.

Under British colonial rule the Acholi people ofnorthern Uganda were favoured for service in thepolice and army. When Milton Obote seized powerin 1966, four years after independence, hesurrounded himself with Acholi and othernortherners, and repressed southern peoples. IdiAmin, himself a northerner from the minorityKakwa group in the West Nile area, unleashedhorrific retribution against the Acholi from 1972to 1979. Rebel leader Yoweri Museveni, asoutherner, came to power in 1985, and broughtincreasing stability and prosperity to Uganda, withexception of the north.

For 20 years, the Acholi have been victimized bythe LRA. The rebel group receives support from theSudanese government and are led by an erratic Acholinamed Joseph Kony. The LRA has abducted anestimated 25,000 children over the years, forcingthem to commit heinous atrocities against the Acholipeople. In response, Museveni’s government hasforced 1.4 to 1.9 million civilians into camps wherethey remain prone to attack by the LRA and thenational army alike, and unable to grow their ownfood. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Kony andfour other LRA leaders on charges of war crimes andcrimes against humanity in February 2005. Through2006, the LRA has insisted on immunity fromprosecution in exchange for an end to the fighting.Acholi opinion on the matter is divided. Negotiationsare continuing despite the international indictments;the discussions included a meeting between Kony andUN Under-Secretary-General Jan Egeland.

BatwaIn July 2006, the Uganda Land Alliance for Coalitionof Pastoral Civil Society Organizations warned thatthe few thousand Batwa (Twa) of Uganda are indanger of extinction. The organization’s reportwarned of starvation and loss of social cohesionamong desperate Batwa who lost their homes in theBwindi Impenetrable Game Park when this became aWorld Heritage Site for preservation of endangeredmountain gorillas in 1992.

East AfricaEthiopiaThe efforts of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi tocontrol separatism in Ethiopia appeared to beunravelling in 2006, as various ethnic movementsdrew inspiration from government repression and


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lack of democratic participation. Ethnic liberation movements toppled former

Communist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in1991, and Meles Zenawi, the leader of the TigreanPeople’s Liberation Front, set about organizing thestate as an ethnic federation, albeit one in which hewould lead co-opted representatives of otherethnicities under a single-party umbrella: theEthiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front.This proved a particularly difficult undertaking asTigreans comprise only around 6 per cent of theEthiopian population. Prime Minister Meles’s re-election in flawed May 2005 balloting onlydeepened the resentment of other ethnic groups.

This was especially true of Ethiopia’s Amharapeople, about 30 per cent of the population of thecountry. The Amhara are prominent in the politicalopposition and suffered in the governmentcrackdown on protests at election fraud, whichresulted in at least 193 deaths and 763 injuries.

In February 2006, the government arrestedthousands of Oromo – an ethnic group making upapproximately 30–50 per cent of the country’spopulation – following its protests of the electionirregularities called for by the rebel OromoLiberation Front (OLF) in the south of the country.In September, two senior Ethiopian military officersdefected to the OLF.

In December 2006, the Ethiopian military,backed by the USA, took on the Islamist alliance inneighbouring Somalia, driving it from control of thecapital Mogadishu on 28 December. Ethiopia is theprincipal backer of the weak Somali transitionalfederal government headed by President AbdullahiYusuf Ahmed. Prime Minister Meles Zenawijustified the invasion by citing national defenceinterests, claiming that the Islamists had beeninfiltrated by al-Qaeda. Sabre-rattling by the Unionof Islamic Courts – calling for a holy war on AddisAbaba, and overt support for the Ogaden self-determination groups – raised tensions in 2006.Two wars have already been fought over the Ogadenregion in the South-East of the Ethiopia, where themajority of the population is ethnic Somali.Although Ethiopia has vowed to withdraw its forcescompletely from Somalia, it is unclear whether thepromised AU peacekeeping mission will transpire.Without Ethiopian military support, a question-mark remains over the TFG’s ability to hold ontothe territory seized in December’s offensive.

Meles also faced rebellions among smaller ethnicminority groups. The Anuak – traditional hunters,farmers and fishers – make up approximately 1 percent of the country’s population, and for centurieshave lived in the area that is today’s Gambella regionof south-western Ethiopia. The Anuak have livedalongside, and in competition with, Nuerpastoralists. Under the Mengistu regime, the Anuakfaced considerable suppression as the authoritiesseized land and forcibly conscripted Anuak villagersfor service in the army and on collective farms.Some 60,000 peasants, mostly lighter-skinned‘highlanders’ from other parts of Ethiopia, were alsoforcibly resettled in Gambella. Tensions have risen ascompetition for land and water has intensified.

In recent years, the Meles government has alsomoved against the Anuak, with human rights activistsreporting murder, rape and torture. The governmenthas increased the military presence in the areafollowing attacks by militants. It argues that themilitary action is targeted at the rebels – but Anuakleaders claim that civilians are also being targeted. InApril 2006, there were reports that the Ethiopian armywas cooperating with the Sudan People’s LiberationArmy to disarm Anuak along the border. AmnestyInternational reported in May 2006 that, in theprevious two and a half years, the Ethiopiangovernment had detained 900 Anuak oppositionmembers without trial, though it had released 15former senior officials in December 2005. Tensionsrose again in June 2006 when attackers thought by aidworkers to be Anuak militia members ambushed a bustravelling from Addis Ababa to Gambella, killing anestimated 14–30 civilians. In the immediate aftermath,water and power were cut to Gambella town, andEthiopian troops and highlander militias enforced acurfew. In September 2006 a Dutch humanitarianNGO reported that more than 44,600 internallydisplaced persons – Anuak, Nuer and Highlander alike– were living in camps and in dire need of assistance.

Oil is another factor in this dispute. Although inMay 2006 the Malaysian oil company Petronasannounced that its first test well in the area hadproved barren, land use rights in Gambella remaincontentious, and efforts to discover oil could yetintensify the struggle for control of the region.

Horn of Africa: Pastoralist peoplesAcross the Horn of Africa, traditionally nomadicherders are suffering from competition for land


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worsened by drought and regional conflict. Inturn, their dire situation is increasingly drivingthem into conflict with each other, as well as non-pastoralist peoples.

Traditionally pastoral peoples of Kenya, includingBorana, Gabra, Maasai, Pokot, Samburu, Somalis andTurkana, have long seen the land available for theirherds diminish. Under British colonialism, whitescarved out large estates in fertile areas that had earlierbeen used as communal grazing lands. Atindependence in 1963 much of this land made its wayinto the hands of Kenyan elites. The establishment ofnational parks and game reserves also pushed nomadicherders out of their traditional lands. For example, theEndorois community has been evicted from the Lake

Bogoria area in the Rift Valley, and the Monchongoiforest on the Laikipia Plains, to make way for a gamereserve and ruby mining. The community has notreceived adequate compensation for their eviction, norhas it benefited from the tourism in the reserve.

In recent years, the area of pasture lands availableto pastoralists has been further reduced through afailure of multiple rainy seasons widely attributed toglobal warming. As pastures and water have becomescarcer, pastoralist peoples of Kenya andneighbouring states have come into conflict overwhat little remains.

A March 2006 cattle raid launched by the Pokotpeople of north-western Kenya into Uganda sparkeda response from the Ugandan army, and at least fourcivilians were killed. A UN official in Ugandaobserved that, ‘the first aim is normally not to stealanimals, but to monopolize the water source’. ByMay, in response to the killing of at least 19 peoplein cattle raids over the course of the year, the Kenyangovernment had launched an operation aimed atcollecting up to 30,000 illegally held weapons in


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Below: The outline of a body in the village ofJowara, which was attacked by Janjaweed militiaduring a series of raids in April 2006. Over 109people from this and other villages betweenD’jmenez and Jowara were massacred over a periodof two days. Tim A. Hetherington/Panos Pictures

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western Kenya. Local Pokot and Samburu peopleclaimed that the operation was undertaken withoutadequate consultation and had sparked the flight ofthousands of pastoralists across the border.

Pokot cattle raids continued in 2006, drivingthousands of Samburu into camps, and have beenmarked by widespread murder and rape. In October,Samburu pastoralists pressed claims to ancestralrights to graze their cattle on private farms inLaikipia and government forces moved in to forciblyevict the herders. Similarly, Maasai herdsmen drovecattle into the Masai Mara game reserve to protestwhat they claimed was a corrupt allocation of 4,000acres of park land to an elite Maasai developer.

In October, MRG and the Centre for MinorityRights Development brought together women fromvarious pastoral communities in Kenya to discusscommon problems. The participants underscored thelack of women’s representation within theircommunities, and the lack of adequate representationof pastoral peoples in the Kenyan government.

In south-western Tanzania, in May 2006, thegovernment began the eviction of hundreds ofpastoralists from riverbeds in Mbeya in order toprevent further environmental degradation caused bytheir cattle. Likewise, following poor March–Mayrains across the region, competition for land insouthern Ethiopia has led to conflict. In June,Oxfam reported that clashes between Guji andBorena peoples over pasture land had resulted in atleast 100 killings and the displacement of thousands.

MRG is supporting an initiative to establish aregional council of traditional pastoralist eldersfrom Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. It ishoped that, as water and available pasture landbecome scarcer, elders can work together to resolveconflicts and determine equitable sharing of whatresources there are.

Somalia According to MRG’s People under Threatcalculation (Table 1, Reference section, pp.118–23), Somalia is the most dangerous place inthe world for minorities. Throughout 2006,tensions between Ethiopia – the main backer of theweak transitional federal government (TFG) – andan alliance of Islamist parties escalated. The US-backed Ethiopian military offensive broke the gripof the Islamist alliance, but ushered in the prospectof further instability and conflict, in a country

which has been without a central government since1991. Ominously, foreign actors – in the MiddleEast, and the Horn of Africa region, as well as theUS – have become increasingly involved in thisround of the fighting. However, the roots of theconflict are to be found in inter-clan rivalries.According to the International Crisis Group, theUnion of Islamic Courts became a platform forpowerful Hawiye clan, after many sections of thisinfluential grouping felt excluded from the TFG.The TFG’s head President Yusuf is from the largeDarod clan – as are many in the higher ranks of theTFG. After December's crisis, the president facesfaces calls from the international community toform a more inclusive government. As the fightingspread, many Somalis fled. Pastoralist peoplesalready suffering hardship from the twin disasters ofdrought and heavy flooding in 2006 – have beenespecially vulnerable. By October 2006, UNofficials estimated that 1000 refugees a day werearriving in North-Western Kenya. In early 2007,the Kenyan government shut its border withSomalia, drawing strong criticism from the UnitedNations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Humanitarianagencies continue to warn that lack of access torefugees is exacerbating an already dire situation.

Sudan: Darfur Despite a peace deal hailed in May 2006 and asubsequent UN Security Council resolution thatcalled for the deployment of a robust peacekeepingforce, the latter part of the year saw an intensificationof fighting, mass killings and displacements in theDarfur region of Sudan. The year 2006 also witnessedthe continued unwillingness of the internationalcommunity to intervene on behalf of targeted blackcivilians, whom many observers regard as victims ofan active genocide.

In Arabic, Darfur means ‘home of the Fur’, whoare black Nilo Saharan sedentary farmers. Thewestern region is also home to other black tribes,notably the Masalit and the Zaghawa, who are semi-nomadic pastoralists, as well as various Arab camel-and cattle-herding peoples. Worsening drought overthe past 25 years created tension between pastoralistsand agriculturalists in competition for land and wasintentionally exacerbated by the Sudanesegovernment. Its divide-and-rule tactics injectedmounting frictions with racism, and spurrednomadic Arabs to band together to form Janjaweed


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militias that targeted black Africans. In response,beginning in the 1980s, the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa,and other, smaller ethnic groups began forming theirown militias. Whereas the North–South war inSudan that lasted from 1983 to 2005 pitted ArabMuslims in the North against black Christians andanimists in the South, all groups involved in theDarfur conflict are predominantly Muslim.

In early 2003, Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa militiasengaged in skirmishes with government forces.Following initial setbacks for the Sudanese army, thenstill preoccupied with fighting in southern Sudan, thegovernment turned to the Janjaweed. Heavily armedby Khartoum and backed by the Sudanese air force,the Janjaweed launched devastating assaults againstthe opposing militias over the course of 2003 and2004. It also targeted Fur, Masalit and Zaghawavillages, killing thousands and displacing tens ofthousands within Darfur and across the Sudaneseborder to Chad. In February 2004, the InternationalAssociation of Genocide Scholars labelled theatrocities in Darfur ‘genocide’, followed unanimouslyin July 2004 by the United States Congress.

Although the UN and many governments soughtto avoid this term – and the associated obligation tointervene in accordance with the 1948 GenocideConvention – those who did adopt the finding,including US President Bush in September 2004,proved equally unwilling to take effective action.Instead, the international community vested itshopes in a small, under-funded and under-equippedAfrican Union (AU) peacekeeping force that firstdeployed in August 2004. By September 2005, theAU force had increased to 7,000 soldiers but,despite its best efforts, was still ill-trained, ill-equipped and incapable of protecting Darfuricivilians under attack in an area the size of France.

A January 2005 peace agreement betweenKhartoum and south Sudanese rebels envisionedpower-sharing and broad autonomy for the South,but excluded Sudan’s other disgruntled regions,including Darfur. As the death toll in Darfur roseinto the hundreds of thousands, and atrocities suchas the systematic rape of black Darfuri women byJanjaweed forces became well established, theInternational Criminal Court announced in June2005 that it was launching an investigation intoalleged violations of international humanitarian law.

The international community touted as a majorbreakthrough an AU-brokered peace agreement for

Darfur signed in Abuja, Nigeria, in May 2006. Yetonly one of the three main Darfuri rebel factions –that most closely aligned with the Zaghawa people –signed the agreement with Khartoum. Absent theagreement of the other two main factions, for themost part closely aligned with Fur and Masalittribes, violence intensified in the weeks followingthe agreement.

With increased violence came new calls for theUN to take over peacekeeping responsibilities inDarfur, notably by AU heads of state meeting in July2006. Sudan’s leader, Omar Bashir, rejected the ideaout of hand, and that same month the Sudanese airforce resumed attacks on Darfuri villages for the firsttime since the May peace agreement.

At the end of July, UN Secretary-General KofiAnnan proposed deployment of a UN force of24,000 and, on 31 August, the Security Councilapproved a smaller but robust force of 17,000.However, at the insistence of China and Russia – tiedto Khartoum through oil development and weaponstrafficking – deployment of the force hinged onSudan’s invitation. By November 2006, PresidentBashir had repeatedly made it clear that no suchinvitation would be forthcoming. Instead the AUagreed to extend its force through the end of the year.

In October a former Janjaweed fighter confirmedto the BBC that the militias were under directcontrol of the Khartoum government, which haddirectly ordered the killing and raping of civilians.He alleged that Sudanese Interior Minister AbdulRahim Muhammad Hussein frequently conveyedsuch instructions personally to Janjaweed fighters.

Minority Rights Group International (MRG)released a report in October 2006, which found thatthe catastrophe in Darfur could have been preventedif early warning signals had been recognized andacted on. The report said that instead the UN andits member states had repeated in Darfur many ofthe same failings as in their response to the 1994Rwandan genocide. In particular, policy-makers hadfailed to take account of Khartoum’s long-standingefforts to foment ethnic division in the region.

Southern AfricaZimbabwe and South Africa Zimbabwe’s economy continued its implosion during2006, and the Ndebele people, prominent among theopposition Movement for Democratic Change(MDC) and distrusted by the government of


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President Robert Mugabe, continued to bear thebrunt of his regime. The Ndebele make up around16 per cent of the country’s population. Shortly afterhis 1980 election, following the ouster of whitesupremacist Ian Smith’s regime, Mugabe summonednationalism among the Shona people – comprisingabout 70 per cent of the population – to consolidatehis power and sideline his greatest liberation rival, theNdebele tribesman Joshua Nkomo. It is estimatedthat Mugabe’s ‘Gukurahundi’ pogrom in the Ndebeleheartlands of Matabeleland and the Midlands from1983 to 1987 resulted in 10,000–20,000 killings. Inrecent years, Mugabe has discriminated againstopposition supporters, and thus many Ndebele, indistribution of food aid necessitated by his economicpolicies. In October 2006, Mugabe’s party spokesmanresurrected bitterness over Gukurahundi, saying hehad no regrets about the atrocities.

In 2006, it was estimated that 85 per cent ofZimbabweans lived in poverty and in 2007 thecountry’s inflation rate has reached 1,600 per cent.An estimated 3–5 million impoverishedZimbabweans have fled the former breadbasket ofsouthern Africa to South Africa, where they havebecome targets of resentment and face the prospectof grim migrant holding camps.

South African whites have expressed nervousnessthat Jacob Zuma, a leading candidate to succeedcurrent President Thabo Mbeki, has not sufficientlydistanced himself from Mugabe’s policies of landredistribution, which, beginning in 2000, strippedsome 4,000 white Zimbabweans of their farms andprecipitated Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown. Manyamong South Africa’s black majority are impatientwith the pace of economic improvement afterApartheid, and the continued white ownership ofmost fertile land. They clamour for landredistribution, although in Zimbabwe mostconfiscated land ended up in the hands of elites orunskilled and largely unsuccessful subsistencefarmers, all regime supporters

Botswana In December 2006, the Basarwa – also known asthe Khoesan or San – in Botswana won a historiclegal victory when the country’s High Court ruledthat the Basarwa had been illegally forced out oftheir ancestral home in the Central Kalahari gamereserve. The panel of three judges ruled 2–1 infavour of the Basarwa. Judge Mpaphi Phumaphi

said the treatment of the remaining Basarwa in thegame reserve amounted to ‘death by starvation’, asthey were prohibited from hunting, or receivingfood rations. Judge Unity Dow ruled that thegovernment had ‘failed to take account of theknowledge and culture’ of the Basarwa when itexpelled them. However, the verdict also said thegovernment was not obliged to provide basicservices to anyone wishing to return to the reserve,nor had it acted illegally by terminating essentialservices in the game reserve.

The Basarwa are believed to have lived in areacovered by the Central Kalahari game reserve for20,000 years, but their hunter-gatherer lifestyle andunique traditions have come under intense pressurein modern Botswana. The government claims thatthe Basarwa have voluntarily moved from theKalahari into resettlement camps, where theauthorities are better able to provide education andhealth services. But campaigners maintain they havebeen forcibly resettled. Before the court case,hunting in the game reserve was prohibited andBasarwa caught breaking the law were arrested. Butthe High Court ruled that it was illegal to refuse toissue the Basarwa with special game licences. It alsofound that the refusal to allow the Basarwa into theCentral Kalahari game reserve was unlawful andunconstitutional. There are persistent allegations ofharassment and ill-treatment of the Basarwa at thehands of the police and wildlife officers. Critics alsosay the resettlement camps have exposed theBasarwa to HIV/Aids – Botswana has one of thehighest rates of infection in the world.

Concerns about the Basarwa’s treatment were alsohighlighted by the UN Committee tasked withmonitoring the implementation of the InternationalConvention on the Elimination of RacialDiscrimination, which Botswana ratified in 1974. Inits 2006 response to a country report submitted byBotswana, the Committee recommended that thegovernment resume negotiations with the residentsof the reserve with a view to finding a ‘solutionacceptable to all’. The Committee also noted thedifficulties experienced by poor people – many ofwhom belonged to the Basarwa – accessing lawcourts, because of high court fees, and the problemsfacing children who did not belong to the majorityTswana tribe, because education was not sufficientlytailored to minority linguistic and cultural needs. p


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