Media Coverage

South Sudan is preparing to stage its first election as an independent country. What should have been a unifying coming-of-age moment for the embryonic state is fast becoming a source of mounting anxiety. The vote was conceived as the finale to a peace agreement signed five years ago to pull the...

Fighters from Sudan’s paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), rampaged through a central village, looting and burning and killing at least 85 people, including women and children, authorities and residents said on August 17, the latest atrocity in the country’s 18-month devastating...

Talks aimed at ending Sudan's shattering 16-month-old civil war began on August 14 in Switzerland although the absence of the military dampened hopes for imminent steps to alleviate the country's humanitarian crisis. U.N. officials have warned that Sudan is at "breaking point" and that there will be...

A Ugandan court on Tuesday found a former commander in the feared Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) guilty of multiple counts of crimes against humanity after the first such war crimes trial in the East African country. Thomas Kwoyelo, who was charged for crimes committed during a bloody two-decade LRA...

Senior United Nations officials appealed to the Security Council on August 6 for help in getting humanitarian aid access in Sudan "across borders, across battle lines, by air, by land" to fight famine that has taken hold in at least one site in North Darfur. The United States last month suggested...

Nigerian police have fired live bullets and tear gas to try and disperse thousands of protesters in the northern city of Kano rallying against the rising cost of living. Many businesses across the country have closed as demonstrators in major cities chant slogans such as: “We are hungry.” In Kano...

A court in Guinea has found the former dictator Moussa Dadis Camara and seven other military commanders guilty of crimes against humanity in a long-awaited verdict relating to a notorious massacre and mass rape that took place in 2009. In a ruling in the capital, Conakry, the initial charges...

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has said it is ready to participate after the United States invited the warring sides in Sudan to mediated ceasefire talks. RSF leader Mohammed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo said July 24 that the paramilitary group will participate. The U.S. invited the RSF and...

Ahead of presidential and legislative elections in Rwanda, tense relations with Rwanda’s bigger neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), remain a deepening challenge for both countries and the broader region, say analysts. Escalating tensions between the two, intensified by a United...

The U.S. and other western governments criticized a controversial security bill in South Sudan that would allow the government to detain people without warrants, saying it would undermine open political and civil space ahead of the country’s elections. The security bill, which passed parliament July...