Somalia’s president is forming a committee to investigate the case of a missing spy, declared dead by the country’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), though the time and circumstances of her demise remain unknown.
 
President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo’s security agency said earlier this month that intelligence agent Ikran Tahlil Farah, who went missing in June, was abducted and killed by al-Shabab militants.
 
However, al-Shabab has denied responsibility for Farah’s fate, while Farah’s mother blames NISA for her daughter’s reported death.
 
The mother, Qali Mohamud Guhad, rejected the president’s committee, which will include a representative from the intelligence agency.
 
“It’s nonsense, it’s obsolete,” Guhad told VOA Somali on Tuesday. “This is something he has not said a word about for the three months, I have been weeping. … It’s not something I accept.”
 
Guhad said she put her confidence in a military court investigating Farah’s disappearance.
 
Political analyst Abdimalik Abdullahi said only the military can handle such a case, arguing that other Somali courts cannot be neutral and will not deliver justice.
 
“It is only the military court that can handle mysterious and high-profile cases such as the one of Tahlil, who herself was a senior government official,” he told VOA.
 
The president, however, is pressing ahead with his committee. The head of state directed the five-member team to present a report after the investigation to ensure what he called the delivery of justice.
 
The press director for the president’s office, Abdirashid Hashi, said the commission of inquiry will be chaired by the attorney general, deputized by the chief military courts prosecutor, and will include representatives from the army, NISA and the police.   
 Harun Maruf of VOA’s Somali Service contributed to this report.
 
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Witnesses in the northwest Cameroon town of Kumbo have accused the military of killing several civilians during retaliatory raids Monday on separatists.  Cameroon’s military denies any civilians were killed.  The clashes followed the deaths of seven troops when their armored vehicle hit an improvised explosive device. Cameroon’s Presbyterian Church is calling for an independent investigation into reports of civilian deaths.Cameroon’s military said Monday that seven of its troops perished when their armored vehicle hit an improvised explosive device in the western village of Kikaikelahki.The troops were part of a military convoy dispatched to fight separatists around the town of Kumbo.The military says other troops have been deployed to find and kill the separatists who planted the explosive device.Deben Tchoffo is governor of Cameroon’s northwest region where Kumbo is found. He says the troops also were ordered to search and seize weapons used illegally by separatists.”The circulation of those arms were banned by the government, and we instructed administrative authorities and security forces to recuperate all those guns and ammunition that are circulating in the region. Many guns have been taken and are now kept at the level of administrative and security services. The process is ongoing.”Cameroon military says in a reprisal after the seven troops were killed, government troops killed 13 fighters.Philip Ndongwe is a teacher in Kumbo. He says one of the people killed is a popular motorcycle taxi driver. He says men who attacked the house they ran to for safety were dressed in Cameroon military uniforms.”They actually jumped into the campus, shot in the air, and you could see panic and there was nothing I could do other than struggling to also save myself. I first hid myself under the table. It was so traumatizing.”The Catholic Church in Kumbo on Monday condemned what it calls the killing of civilians and blamed both fighters and government troops for the violence.Fonki Samuel Forba, moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Cameroon, says independent investigations should be carried out to find out if those killing civilians are fighters or government troops.”There should be a cease-fire in this country. The barrel of the gun will not solve this problem. Until we sit down as a family and talk out our problems, we will not solve these problems. We are all waiting. We can only get a true story when a credible organization has done investigations of the situation. The culprits will be brought to book.”The military has denied any involvement in the killing of civilians and insists that all those killed are fighters. The military says its troops are professional.Violence erupted in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions in 2016, when teachers and lawyers protested alleged discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority.The government responded with a crackdown that sparked an armed movement for an independent, English-speaking state. 
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The junta that overthrew Guinea’s government more than a week ago began four days of meetings Tuesday that it says will result in the formation of a transitional government.  
 
The junta that ousted President Alpha Conde said it would consult in the capital, Conakry, with political, business and religious leaders as it charts a new course for the West African country. 
 
The junta hopes that during the talks, leaders will agree on who will lead the transition, a time frame to complete it, and the political and institutional reforms needed before the election. 
 
The Economic Community of West African States, which has suspended Guinea’s decision-making authority, has appealed for a brief civilian-led transition. 
 
Last week, Guinea’s special forces overthrew the government under the leadership of Mamady Doumbouya, a former French Foreign Legionnaire. 
 
The coup was preceded by violent street demonstrations last year in opposition to Conde’s quest for a third term in office. 
 
The coup has been welcomed by Conde’s longtime opponents, including  
Cellou Dalein Diallo, the former prime minister who lost to Conde in the last three presidential elections. 
 
Leaders of the country’s mining industry also participated in the coup after  
Doumbouya tried to reassure them he would work to prevent the destabilization of its critical bauxite and gold exports. 
 Some information in this report was provided by the Associated Press and Reuters.
 
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U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet warns the increasingly brutal conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region threatens to spill over to the whole Horn of Africa.Preliminary findings of a joint investigation by the U.N. Human Rights Office and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission into alleged violations in Tigray have been submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council.   Since her last update in June, fighting has continued unabated in Tigray and has expanded into neighboring Afar and Amhara regions. U.N. rights chief Bachelet said mass detentions, killings, systematic looting, and sexual violence have displaced nearly two million people in this region and created an atmosphere of fear. She said civilian suffering is widespread and impunity is pervasive.   U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet attends a session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Sept. 13, 2021.Bachelet said investigators have documented multiple allegations of human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and enforced disappearances.  She says sexual and gender-based violence, including gang rapes, have been characterized by a pattern of extreme brutality and ethnically targeted. “From my last update to the Council to date, allegations of human rights violations have continued to implicate government forces and its allies,” Bachelet said. “We have received disturbing reports that local fishermen found dozens of bodies floating along the river crossing between Western Tigray and Sudan in July. Some allegedly had gunshot wounds and bound hands, indications that they might have been detained and tortured before being killed.”   The Ethiopian government declared a unilateral ceasefire in Tigray at the end of June, nearly eight months after it began its military offensive in the region. Shortly after, Tigrayan rebels retook the capital Mekelle.   Bachelet reports Tigrayan forces have perpetrated many human rights abuses since gaining control of parts of Tigray and expanding to neighboring regions, “During the period under review, the Tigrayan forces have allegedly been responsible for attacks on civilians, including indiscriminate killings resulting in nearly 76,500 people displaced in Afar and an estimated 200,000 in Amhara,” Bachelet said. “More than 200 individuals have reportedly been killed in the most recent clashes in these regions, and 88 individuals, including children, have been injured.”  Bachelet said accountability for human rights abuses and a national reconciliation process are the only solution to the conflict in Tigray and to achieving a sustainable peace. The chief of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, Daniel Bekele, said all parties to the conflict have committed violence against civilians, including sexual violence and use of child soldiers.  But he notes the situation in Tigray is complex.  He said the Commission is still analyzing the information and evidence gathered and is not ready to share any findings and conclusions at this stage.  He said the commission’s findings, conclusions and recommendations will be contained in the final report of the joint investigation, to be published November 1.  
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International aid groups are calling on Burkina Faso’s government to let them help register the country’s internally displaced people. The Norwegian Refugee Council says the government is taking weeks to register IDPs for food and other aid, forcing some back into dangerous areas. Henry Wilkins reports from Ouahigouya, Burkina Faso.  Camera: Henry Wilkins
 
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Benin set up a service early in the COVID-19 pandemic to allow people to register their business online, and now the West African country is the world’s fastest place to start a business, according to a U.N. agency. Sandra Idossou, owner of a store selling art in Cotonou, Benin, submitted her business application online and received approval and legal documents within three hours.  She said if the e-registration system did not exist and she instead had to go stand in line to start a business, she never would have done it. To create her business, Idossou went online to monentreprise.bj, a platform in Benin to create and formally start a business. The site was launched in February 2020 by the country’s Investment and Export Promotion Agency, which did not want people to come into their offices during the pandemic.  Applicants fill out the required information, download the required documents and make a payment online. The documents arrive at the agency’s headquarters, where staff verify the information and mail business certificates to those who are approved.  Laurent Gangbes, general manager of the Investment and Export Promotion Agency, said in 2019 the agency was at 28,000 businesses created. In 2020, the figure went to over 41,000. He said the agency now processes an application in about three hours. The online service helped make Benin the fastest place in the world to start a company, according to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.  The businesses must be located in Benin; however, people abroad can use the service if they are in the process of setting up a business inside the country.  Economists like Albert Honlonkou see big benefits for entrepreneurs.  He said the online service reduces costs, reduces delays and avoids corruption. It also avoids carrying papers around and, in the COVID period, it avoids contacts.  The Investment and Export Promotion Agency said it will continue to review the procedures and work with the private sector to further improve the process.  
 
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Nearly 70 students kidnapped in northern Nigeria two weeks ago are free, authorities said Monday.  Zamfara state Governor Bello Matawalle said security forces freed the students from the Government Day Secondary School. He said no ransom was paid. Heavily armed gunmen kidnapped them on September 1, continuing a wave of similar attacks in Zamfara that prompted the state government to shut all schools. UNICEF said there have been 10 similar attacks in Nigeria over the past year, leading to 1,436 kidnappings and 16 deaths. In this incident, 73 students were initially taken, but five were rescued the day after the attack. “Using some of the bandits that repented, we were able to know where they were keeping these children. We worked closely with them for about 10 days, and yesterday at about 2 a.m., the commissioner of police, alongside others, took off to the location where these children were rescued,” Matawalle said. Authorities blame the abductions on bandits seeking ransom, but some are fearful the bandits are linked to the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press.   
 
 
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The U.N. Human Rights Council has begun its annual session in Geneva, and in an opening address Monday, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet warned that climate change and pollution pose grave threats to human rights and humanity itself.The U.N. rights chief says human inaction in the face of planetary disasters is having a severe impact on a broad range of rights, including the rights to adequate food, water, education, health and even life itself.Michele Bachelet says extreme and murderous climate events have been unleashed on people in every region in recent months.“Monumental fires in Siberia and California; huge sudden floods in China, Germany and Turkey; Arctic heatwaves leading to unprecedented methane emissions; and the persistence of interminable drought, from Morocco and Senegal to Siberia, potentially forcing millions of people into misery, hunger, and displacement,” Bachelet said.Bachelet warns intensifying environmental threats constitute the single greatest challenge to human rights. She says environmental disasters amplify conflicts, tensions, increase vulnerabilities, and structural inequalities around the world.For example, she notes the humanitarian emergency in Africa’s Sahel countries is being fueled by climate change. She says long droughts followed by flash floods, unequal access to natural resources, and high rates of youth unemployment are plaguing the region.“These trends compel people into displacement, aggravate conflicts and political instability, and fuel recruitment by violent extremist groups,” Bachelet said. “In such a situation it should be clear that there can be no purely military solution to the conflicts in the region. To date, four million people across the Sahel have been displaced, according to UNHCR estimates.”Bachelet says similar trends and challenges exist in different forms and to varying degrees in all regions of the world. For example, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa are gripped by water shortages causing tensions to rise over this scarce resource.She reports climate change is having a striking impact on poverty, displacement and fundamental human rights in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. She says environmental and human rights defenders are being threatened, harassed, and even killed, often with complete impunity, in Latin America, South-East Asia and other regions.The U.N. rights chief says a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is the foundation of human life. She adds the future of humanity depends on governments acting to preserve the world’s precious resources.
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Increasing numbers of children are being killed or targeted for recruitment by armed groups in conflicts raging at Niger’s borders with Mali and Burkina Faso, Amnesty International said in a report published Monday. “In Niger’s Tillaberi region, an entire generation is growing up surrounded by death and destruction,” said Matt Wells, Amnesty’s deputy director for crisis response. “Armed groups have repeatedly attacked schools and reserves, and are targeting children for recruitment,” he added in a statement.  Amnesty blamed the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) and the al-Qaida-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), for causing the “devastating impact on children” in the region. The rights group released a 57-page report documenting the impact on children of the conflict in Niger’s western Tillaberi, an area of 100,000 square kilometers (38,000 square miles) on the borders of Mali and Burkina Faso that is home to different ethnic groups such as Djerma, Fulani, Tuareg and Hausa. According to conflict tracking organization ACLED, cited by Amnesty, violence against civilians has led to 544 conflict-related deaths from January to July 23 this year, already exceeding the 397 people killed in the whole of 2020. “Armed groups have killed more than 60 children in Niger’s tri-border area in 2021,” the report said, adding that the ISGS, which operates primarily on the border with Mali, appears responsible for most of the large-scale killing. During the research for the report, Amnesty spoke to 16 boys who had narrowly survived ISGS attacks on their villages.  “We all are used to hearing gunshots and to seeing [dead] people layered on top of [dead] people,” one boy, age 13 or 14, said. Another boy, who witnessed the killing of his 12-year-old friend Wahab in March, told the researchers: “I think of Wahab and how he was killed. “Sometimes I have nightmares of being chased by people on motorbikes or seeing Wahab pleading with the [attackers] again,” he said. According to Amnesty, both “ISGS and JNIM have committed war crimes and other abuses in the conflict, including the murder of civilians and targeting of schools. “Many children are experiencing trauma after witnessing deadly attacks on their villages. In some areas, women and girls have been barred from activities outside the home, and risk abduction or forced marriage to fighters,” the report said. Witnesses said JNIM has picked out males ages 15 to 17, and possibly younger, as recruits, offering bribes of food, money and clothes. “The Nigerien government and its international partners must urgently take action to monitor and prevent further abuses and protect the basic rights of all those affected by this deadly conflict — especially children,” Wells said. Amnesty International said it had interviewed 119 people, including 22 children, three young adults between 18 and 20, and 36 parents for the study. Others interviewed included staff from NGOs and humanitarian agencies, United Nations officials and government officials. 
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The woman who broke barriers as the first female foreign minister and deputy prime minister in culturally conservative Somalia now aims for the country’s top office as the Horn of Africa nation moves toward a long-delayed presidential election.Parliament member Fawzia Yusuf H. Adam is well aware of the challenges in winning votes in a nation where women often remain marginalized. In an interview with The Associated Press, she described the struggle of leading a foreign ministry staff that was overwhelmingly male.”They were very reluctant to collaborate with me just because I am a female,” she said.Even as more educated women return to Somalia from the large diaspora to help rebuild the country after three decades of conflict, attitudes toward Adam’s run for office are mostly skeptical, if sympathetic. Even friends and colleagues see her chances as next to impossible because of her gender.”She’s good, but unfortunately she’s a woman,” said Abdiwahid Mohamed Adam, a doctor at Mogadishu Memorial Hospital. Complicating her bid, he said, is the fact that Adam comes from the breakaway region of Somaliland, a comparatively stable area in the north that has sought international recognition as an independent country for years.But the soft-spoken Adam, a widow and mother of three, said she believes her run for the presidency is worthwhile, not futile, on several levels, while the timing of the election has been pushed back once again amid political tensions from mid-October toward the end of the year.”I want to break this barrier against women, so that in the near future many others will have the courage to run and even win,” she said, adding that it’s time to fight for the rights of women.Somalia’s years of insecurity marked by devastating attacks by the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group also have driven Adam to run. “There was mayhem in this country for the past 30 years,” she said. “Young people are dying like flies, killing each other, exploding themselves, killing other people.”Like others across Somalia, she has watched as the insecurity weakened the country’s foundation. High unemployment, poor education and one of the world’s least-equipped health systems are all a result. Corruption and political squabbling haven’t helped.”I thought a woman may be what this country needs, the leadership of a woman, to bring peace and stability,” Adam said.Her presidential campaign has been relatively low-profile because of the insecurity and the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of holding large public rallies, Adam prefers smaller indoor gatherings. “This could be less expensive but less effective as well,” said Liban Abdullahi Farah, a political analyst in the capital, Mogadishu.Unlike many other candidates and every day people in Somalia, where face masks are hardly seen despite having one of the highest COVID-19 fatality rates in Africa, Adam says she takes the pandemic seriously and speaks bluntly about its dangers after seeing several friends die.”I keep giving advice on this pandemic, particularly how badly it impacts women and the poorest of them,” she said. “We don’t have a good health system to deal with this phenomenon.”Women in Somalia have been especially hard hit by the coronavirus, Adam said, both physically and economically.”I personally took my two vaccinations, many people did, but many poor people in the camps, the internally displaced people, the very poor, vulnerable people do not have that chance,” she said. “What I am hoping is to win this election. (The pandemic) will be one of my priorities, because we don’t want to lose more people.”Apart from some awareness messaging, Somalia’s federal government does little to enforce basic virus prevention measures of social distancing, hand-washing and mask-wearing.At the country’s coronavirus treatment center in the capital, deputy director Abdirahim Omar Amin told the AP that “very many women have been infected” by COVID-19. Health ministry data, however, show that men represent more than 70% of confirmed cases in Somalia.”The people themselves do not have the awareness, or they are in a state of denial, calling it ‘just heartburn’ and stay at home, and the person is brought here when it is too late,” he said.Among the women Adam hopes to help if elected president is Fatuma Mohamed, one of the hundreds of thousands of people living in camps in Mogadishu after being displaced by insecurity or climate shocks like drought.Mohamed said her husband died of COVID-19, while she survived. Now she struggles to raise two young children, earning money by doing laundry when she can.”This disease has devastated us, it killed my mother and my husband,” she said. “I have not seen anyone offering me a helping hand. I struggle all alone.”Adam’s path in life has been far different. Married to a general, she first entered politics in her hometown of Hargeisa in Somaliland years ago but fled to Mogadishu, saying local politicians saw her as a threat. She later started a political party, the National Democratic Party, and rose to some of the country’s highest offices.Now, in pursuit of the presidency, Adam has Somaliland in mind as part of her ambitions.”If I am elected, I am sure I could reunite my country as I belong to both sides, the north and south,” she said, “and I believe that I am the only person who’s capable of doing that as I already made a plan for the unification.”If her candidacy fails, she said, she aims to become prime minister, adding, “I would always advise whomever wins the presidency.”
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Several hundred people line up every morning, starting before dawn, on a grassy area outside Nairobi’s largest hospital hoping to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Sometimes the line moves smoothly, while on other days, the staff tells them there’s nothing available and they should come back tomorrow.Halfway around the world, at a church in Atlanta in the U.S. state of Georgia, two workers with plenty of vaccine doses waited hours Wednesday for anyone to show up, whiling away the time by listening to music from a laptop. In six hours, one person came through the door.The dramatic contrast highlights the vast disparity around the world. In richer countries, people can often pick and choose from multiple available vaccines, walk into a site near their homes and get a shot in minutes. Pop-up clinics, such as the one in Atlanta, bring vaccines into rural areas and urban neighborhoods, but it is common for them to get very few takers.In the developing world, supply is limited and uncertain. Just more than 3% of people across Africa have been fully vaccinated, and health officials and citizens often have little idea what will be available from one day to the next. More vaccines have been flowing in recent weeks, but the World Health Organization’s director in Africa said Thursday that the continent will get 25% fewer doses than anticipated by the end of the year, in part because of the rollout of booster shots in wealthier counties such as the United States.Bidian Okoth said he spent more than three hours in line at a Nairobi hospital, only to be told to go home because there weren’t enough doses. But a friend who traveled to the U.S. got a shot almost immediately after his arrival there with a vaccine of his choice, “like candy,” he said.”We’re struggling with what time in the morning we need to wake up to get the first shot. Then you hear people choosing their vaccines. That’s super, super excessive,” he said.Okoth said his uncle died from COVID-19 in June and had given up twice on getting vaccinated because of the length of the lines, even though he was eligible because of his age. The death jolted Okoth, a health advocate, into seeking a dose for himself.He stopped at one hospital so often on his way to work that a doctor “got tired of seeing me” and told Okoth he would call him when doses were available. Late last month, after a new donation of vaccines arrived from Britain, he got his shot.The disparity comes as the U.S. is moving closer to offering booster shots to large segments of the population even as it struggles to persuade Americans to get vaccinated in the first place. President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered sweeping new federal vaccine requirements for as many as 100 million Americans, including private-sector employees, as the country faces the surging COVID-19 delta variant.Riley Erickson poses for a photo at Springfield Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta on Sept. 8, 2021, where the disaster relief group CORE was offering COVID-19 vaccinations. The one person who showed up was a college student.About 53% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and the country is averaging about 145,000 new cases of COVID-19 a day, along with about 1,600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Africa has had more than 7.9 million confirmed cases, including more than 200,000 deaths, and the highly infectious delta variant recently drove a surge in new cases as well.John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters Thursday that “we have not seen enough science” to drive decisions on when to administer booster shots.”Without that, we are gambling,” he said, and urged countries to send doses to countries facing “vaccine famine” instead.In the U.S., vaccines are easy to find, but some people are hesitant to get them.At the church in northwest Atlanta, a nonprofit group offered the Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccines for free without an appointment from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. But site manager Riley Erickson spent much of the day waiting in an air-conditioned room full of empty chairs, though the group had reached out to neighbors and the church had advertised the location to its large congregation.Erickson, with the disaster relief organization CORE, said the vaccination rate in the area was low and he wasn’t surprised by the small turnout. The one person who showed up was a college student.FILE – In this Aug. 20, 2021, photo, medical workers prepare to remove the body of a coronavirus victim in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Machakos, Kenya.”When you put the effort into going into areas where there’s less interest, that’s kind of the result,” he said. His takeaway, however, was that CORE needed to spend more time in the community.Margaret Herro, CORE’s Georgia director, said the group has seen an uptick in vaccinations at its pop-up sites in recent weeks amid a COVID-19 surge fueled by the delta variant and the FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine. It also has gone to meatpacking plants and other work locations, where turnout is better, and it plans to focus more on those places, Herro said.In Nairobi, Okoth believes there should be a global commitment to equity in the administration of vaccines so everyone has a basic level of immunity as quickly as possible.”If everyone at least gets a first shot, I don’t think anyone will care if others get even six booster shots,” he said.
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A Tunisian man died in a hospital Saturday after setting himself on fire, witnesses and medics said, days after another burned himself alive to protest living conditions.Both acts recall the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, the street seller whose suicide by fire on Dec. 17, 2010, launched Tunisia’s revolution that in turn sparked the Arab Spring that toppled several autocratic leaders in the region.On Saturday, a 35-year-old man “set himself on fire on Habib Bourguiba Avenue” in the center of Tunis, the civil defense told AFP.The man, whose motives are still unknown, “suffered third-degree burns and was rushed to hospital,” a civil defense spokesperson added.Local media including state television later reported that he had died of his injuries.A witness, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the man had arrived at the iconic avenue in central Tunis accompanied by a younger man and tried to attract the attention of some journalists who were present there.The man then doused himself with flammable material that he set on fire with a lighter, the witness said.Police set up barricades in the area, and an AFP reporter saw a pair of burned shoes behind them shortly after the incident.Last week a young man wounded in the 2011 revolution burned himself alive after the government failed to provide compensation, his family said.Neji Hefiane, 26, died in a hospital on the southern outskirts of Tunis on Sept. 4 after having set himself alight in front of his family, his father said.Hefiane suffered gunshot wounds to the head during anti-regime protests in the early days of the revolution, according to his family, and although he was on an official list of people entitled to government aid, he received no compensation.”It was the injustice and marginalization he suffered that pushed my son to kill himself,” his father, Bechir Hefiane, said on Monday.He said he wrote to President Kais Saied explaining his son’s case and asking him to intervene on behalf of the struggling family that lives in a working-class Tunis district.”We’ve got no reply, even after my son’s death,” he added. 
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The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR says Cameroon continues to be one of the world’s most neglected displacement crises, with refugee needs increasing far more quickly than are available resources. The central African country is home to about 500,000 refugees, most of them having fled the troubled Central African Republic and Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria.
 
Raouf Mazou, the UNHCR’s assistant high commissioner for operations, says that this week he met with humanitarian agencies and Cameroonian government officials, including Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute, to look for ways to reinforce humanitarian actions to help displaced persons and refugees.  
 
In August, countries surrounding Lake Chad reported an increase in the number of people displaced in Chad, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Nigeria, and Niger.  
 
Cameroon said at least 1,500 former Boko Haram militants have arrived on its northern border with Nigeria since May, when the Islamist group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, was declared killed.
 
Cameroon also reported that more than 40 villages were razed and 10,000 citizens fled northern Cameroon to Chad after a violent conflict between herders and fishers in August.
 
Mazou visited Cameroon’s Far North region on the border with Nigeria and Chad, where he met with representatives of some 4,000 displaced people in the northern border village of Zamai. Mazou said they desperately need civil registration documents so they can integrate into their new communities.
 
“If there is one thing that is essential, it is the issue of civil registration. They kept on repeating the same thing, they kept on saying our children are here, they cannot go to school. When we asked, ‘Why can’t they go to school?’ one of the key reasons why [is that] we [displaced persons] don’t have documents for them [displaced children]. Of course, there is also the issue of the cost. Even if primary education is free, people do have to pay an amount of money, but the issue of documentation for them is absolutely crucial,” Mazou said.
 
Speaking to local media, including Cameroon state broadcaster CRTV, Mazou said there are more than a million displaced Cameroonians in the country.
 
The UNHCR says Cameroon, with a population of 26 million, is also home to about 500,000 refugees and asylum-seekers.
 
Among the refugees, 120,000 are Nigerian citizens fleeing Boko Haram terrorism, and 321,000 are fleeing violence caused by the political tensions in the Central African Republic. Cameroon says other refugees are from Chad, Senegal, Mali and Niger.
 
Xavier Bourgois, the UNHCR’s spokesperson in Cameroon, says the agency has limited means to help people seeking refuge.
 
He said the UNHCR has only 44% of the $100 million it needs to provide emergency humanitarian services for refugees and displaced Cameroonians and to assist host communities that share their already stretched resources with displaced people.
 
In February, Cameroon said 5,000 of the 120,000 Nigerians, mostly women and children, who fled across the border fleeing from Boko Haram terrorists have agreed to voluntarily return to Nigeria. The UNHCR says about 4,500 Nigerians have returned. Those remaining are still worried about their security should they return to Nigeria.
 
Several thousand Central African Republic refugees have also returned to their home country. Cameroon says a majority are still scared of insecurity and violence after the December general elections there.  
 
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At a taxi stand by a bustling market in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, traders simply cross a road or two, get a shot in the arm and rush back to their work.Until this week, vaccination centers were based mostly in hospitals in this East African country that faced a brutal COVID-19 surge earlier this year.Now, more than a dozen tented sites have been set up in busy areas to make it easier to get inoculated in Kampala as health authorities team up with the Red Cross to administer more than 120,000 doses that will expire at the end of September.“All of this we could have done earlier, but we were not assured of availability of vaccines,” said Dr. Misaki Wayengera, who leads a team of scientists advising authorities on the pandemic response, speaking of vaccination spots in downtown areas. “Right now, we are receiving more vaccines and we have to deploy them as much as possible.”In addition to the 128,000 AstraZeneca doses donated by Norway at the end of August, the United Kingdom last month donated nearly 300,000 doses. China recently donated 300,000 doses of its Sinovac vaccine, and on Monday a batch of 647,000 Moderna doses donated by the United States arrived in Uganda.Suddenly Uganda must accelerate its vaccination drive. The country has sometimes struggled with hesitancy as some question the safety of the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which is no longer in use in Norway because of concerns over unusual blood clots in a small number of people who received it.Africa has fully vaccinated just 3.1% of its 1.3 billion people, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public health officials across Africa have complained loudly of vaccine inequality and what they see as hoarding in some rich countries. Soon hundreds of millions of vaccine doses will be delivered to Africa through donations of excess doses by wealthy nations or purchases by the African Union.Africa is aiming to vaccinate 60% of the continent’s population by the end of 2022, a steep target given the global demand for doses. The African Union, representing the continent’s 54 countries, has ordered 400 million Johnson & Johnson doses, but the distribution of those doses will be spread out over 12 months because there simply isn’t enough supply.A nurse administers a coronavirus vaccination at Kisenyi Health Center in downtown Kampala, Uganda, Sept. 8, 2021.COVAX, the U.N.-backed program which aims to get vaccines to the neediest people in the world, said this week that its efforts continue “to be hampered by export bans, the prioritization of bilateral deals by manufacturers and countries, ongoing challenges in scaling up production by some key producers, and delays in filing for regulatory approval.”Uganda, a country of more than 44 million people, has recorded more than 120,000 cases of COVID-19, including just over 3,000 deaths, according to official figures. The country has given 1.65 million shots, but only about 400,000 people have received two doses, according to Wayengera. Uganda’s target is to fully vaccinate up to 5 million of the most vulnerable, including nurses and teachers, as soon as possible.At the Red Cross tent in downtown Kampala, demand for the jabs was high. By late afternoon only 30 of 150 doses remained, and some who arrived later were told to come back the next day.“I came here on a sure deal, but it hasn’t happened,” said trader Sulaiman Mivule after a nurse told him he was too late for a shot that day. “I will come back tomorrow. It’s easy for me here because I work in this area.”Asked why he was so eager to get his first shot, he said, “They are telling us that there could be a third wave. If it comes when we are very vaccinated, maybe it will not hurt us so much. Prevention is better than cure.”Mivule and others who spoke to the AP said they didn’t want to go to vaccination sites at hospitals because of they expected to find crowds there.Bernard Ssembatya said he had been driving by when he spotted the Red Cross’s white tent and went in for a jab on the spur of the moment. Afterward, he texted his friends about the opportunity.“I was getting demoralized by going to health centers,” he said. “You see a lot of people there and you don’t even want to try to enter.”Yet, despite enthusiasm among many, some still walked away without getting a shot when they were told their preferred vaccine was not yet available.The one-shot J&J vaccine, still unavailable in Uganda, is frequently asked for, said Jacinta Twinomujuni, a nurse with the Kampala Capital City Authority who monitored the scene.“I tell them, of course, that we don’t have it,” she said. “And they say, ‘OK, let’s wait for it.’” 
 
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The U.N. refugee agency is calling for more effective measures to protect millions of civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo subjected to killings, kidnappings and savage abuse by armed groups.  Dozens of armed groups have been committing violence against civilians in eastern DRC for more than two decades, but the U.N. refugee agency says the viciousness and magnitude of the attacks have reached a level not seen before. The UNHCR and its partners have recorded more than 1,200 civilian deaths and 1,100 rapes in 2021 in the two most affected provinces of North Kivu and Ituri. The agency says ferocious attacks have driven more than one million Congolese in the eastern part of the country from their homes this year alone. FILE – Victims of ethnic violence are seen at a makeshift camp for the internally displaced people in Bunia, Ituri province, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, June 25, 2019.UNHCR spokesman Boris Cheshirkov says most assaults have been perpetrated by the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebel group with Ugandan roots operating in eastern DRC. He says the group’s attacks have been increasing in brutality and frequency since late 2020. “These reports are coming in again and again. Twenty-five-thousand human rights violations for this year, including extortion, including looting, certainly sexual violence. Horrific reports that our staff and our partners are receiving and the extreme violence against civilians. So, our call is very clear. This is a call that we are constantly making. We need more measures to protect civilians,” Cheshirkov said. Violence and abuse have displaced more than five million people inside the DRC, the second highest number of internally displaced after Syria. Cheshirkov says repeated displacement is putting enormous financial pressure on impoverished host communities, and risking wearing out those communities’ welcome mat. “Harsh living conditions and a lack of food often trigger premature return by displaced people to their place of origin, further exposing them to abuse and violence,” Cheshirkov said. “In fact, returnees account for 65 percent of the serious human rights abuses that we and our partners have recorded.” Cheshirkov notes that the lifesaving needs of this ever-growing displaced population are increasing. But his agency, he says, can only respond to a fraction of them because it is out of money. With less than four months left in 2021, he says the UNHCR has received only 51 percent of the $205 million required to carry out humanitarian operations in the DRC this year. 
 
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A special court on Friday accused the former leader of a key militia in the Central African Republic of crimes against humanity at the height of the civil war. 
 
Former captain Eugene Barret Ngaikosset, arrested nearly a week ago, was once a commander of the guard of President Francois Bozize, who was toppled in 2013 by the Seleka, a coalition of largely Muslim armed groups. 
 
He then became an important leader of the largely Christian and animist anti-Balaka militias, which Bozize founded to fight the Seleka. 
 
The two groups plunged the country into a bloody civil war, with the United Nations accusing them in 2015 of having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2014 and 2015. 
 
Ngaikosset, arrested September 4 just outside the capital, Bangui, “was accused of crimes against humanity” by two judges of the Special Criminal Court (CPS), the tribunal said in a statement. 
 
Made up of Central African and international magistrates, the court has been tasked with judging serious human rights violations since 2003 in this country that has been locked in civil war since 2013. 
 
CPS prosecutors must decide if Ngaikosset will be placed in custody while awaiting a possible trial, the statement said. 
 
The International Criminal Court in The Hague also could be tasked with handling the former captain’s case. 
 ‘Butcher’Central African media have dubbed Ngaikosset “the butcher of Paoua,” referring to massacres committed by the army in the northwest city of the same name from 2005 to 2007, when he was a commander of Bozize’s dreaded presidential guard. 
 
In a 2009 report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said diplomats had at the time asked Bozize to take legal action Ngaikosset, who it said was implicated in various atrocities in the northwest. 
 
The ex-captain had set up a faction of the anti-Balaka, which means anti-machete, after Bozize’s fall in 2013.  
 
And a report from the U.N., which froze his assets abroad and issued a travel ban, accused him in 2015 of carrying out or supporting actions contrary to international human rights law. 
 
The civil war has dropped in intensity since 2018 but armed groups, some with past links to the Seleka or anti-Balaka, occupied late last year more than two-thirds of the country. 
 
Some elements launched a rebellion at the end of 2020 against the administration of President Faustin-Archange Touadera, who was re-elected on December 27. 
 
His army, with the support of hundreds of Russian paramilitaries and Rwandan soldiers, have today largely reconquered lost territory. 
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Malawi’s high court has found a businessman guilty of attempting to bribe Constitutional Court judges who were ruling on the disputed 2019 presidential election. Thomson Mpinganjira, who owns a commercial bank in Malawi, was arrested in January 2020 by the Anti-Corruption Bureau, or ACB, after the High Court’s chief justice, Andrew Nyirenda, reported he had attempted to bribe the judges. Mpinganjira was accused of offering judges an unspecified amount of money so that a court case over the disputed 2019 presidential election would end in favor of then-president Peter Mutharika. Mpinganjira had pleaded not guilty to six bribery-related charges. But High Court Judge Dorothy DeGabriele, in her judgment Friday, said the court proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mpinganjira wanted to bribe the five judges.  “The court found the accused person under count 1 and 2 for offering an advantage to Justice [Healey] Potani and Justice [Michael] Tembo who were public officers and for the benefit of that advantage to be shared amongst the judges, to induce the judges to make a decision in favor of the respondent. The accused person is hereby convicted accordingly,” DeGabriele said.   Mpinganjira’s lawyer, Tamando Chokotho, asked the court to consider giving his client noncustodial punishment, saying his client is a first offender and a responsible man. Reyneck Matemba, Malawi’s solicitor general, dismissed calls for the noncustodial sentence, saying the convict needs a maximum prison term to serve as a lesson to potential offenders. “What the convict wanted to do, the offense which he has committed, is a very serious offense,” Matemba said. “He wanted to defeat the course of justice in one of the most high-profile cases in this country, ever.” Following the conviction, DeGabriele revoked Mpinganjira’s bail and remanded him to Chichiri Prison in Blantyre, where he will await his sentencing. 
 
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The African Union said on Friday it was suspending Guinea after a coup in the West African country that saw its president Alpha Conde arrested.The pan-African body said on Twitter that it “decides to suspend the Republic of Guinea from all AU activities and decision-making bodies”.The move came after Guinean special forces seized power on Sunday and arrested Conde, who had come under increasing fire for perceived authoritarianism.The AU had on Sunday condemned the military takeover and called for the release of Conde, who became the country’s first democratically elected president in 2010.Its move came a day after the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) also suspended Guinea and said it was sending a mission to the country to evaluate the situation there. The AU’s Political Affairs, Peace and Security Council said it called on AU Commission chief Moussa Faki to “engage with stakeholders in the region” on the crisis.
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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told AFP on Thursday that he feared the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan would encourage influential jihadist armed groups in the Sahel, as he called for a strengthening of “security mechanisms” in that region.”I fear the psychological and real impact of what happened in Afghanistan” in the Sahel, Guterres said in an interview. “There is a real danger. These terrorist groups may feel enthusiastic about what happened and have ambitions beyond what they thought a few months ago.”Guterres said it is “essential to reinforce security mechanisms in the Sahel,” because it “is the most important weak point, which must be treated.””It is not only Mali, Burkina or Niger. Now we have infiltrations in Ivory Coast, in Ghana,” he added.He noted that France will reduce its presence in the region and cited news reports that Chad wants to withdraw some troops from border areas around Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali.”This is the reason why I am fighting for there to be an African counterterrorism force with a mandate under Chapter 7 [which provides for the use of force] of the Security Council and with dedicated funds, which can guarantee a response to the threat level,” he added.Insufficient capacity to respond”I fear today that the response capacity of the international community and the countries of the region are not sufficient in the face of the threat,” he said.The U.N. chief has been trying for several years to give the G5 Sahel force – Chad, Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso – a U.N. mandate accompanied by collective funding from the world body.France supports Guterres, but the U.N.’s leading financial contributor, the United States, has rejected the move.”This blocking must be ended. It is absolutely essential,” said the secretary-general.He said he was worried about fanatical groups where death “is desirable,” with armies “disintegrating in front of” these types of fighters.”We saw this in Mosul in Iraq, in Mali during the first push towards Bamako, we saw it in Mozambique,” he said. “This danger is real, and we must seriously think about its implications for the terrorist threat and the way in which the international community must organize itself in the face of this threat.”
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Africa is slated to receive 25% fewer COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year than it was expecting, the director of the World Health Organization’s regional office for Africa said Thursday.The African continent, already struggling with a thin supply of vaccines while many wealthy nations initiate booster shot programs, has fully vaccinated just more than 3% of its residents.The global vaccine sharing initiative COVAX announced Wednesday that it expects to receive about 1.4 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year, as opposed to the projection of 1.9 billion doses it received in June.”Yesterday, #COVAX shipment forecasts for the rest of the year were revised downwards by 25%, in part because of the prioritization of bilateral deals over international solidarity.” – Dr @MoetiTshidi— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) September 9, 2021Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa director, said during a press conference Thursday that the United States has thrown away three times as many vaccine doses as COVAX has delivered to African countries since March.COVAX delivered more than 5 million doses to Africa in the past week, but the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention said that as of September 1, U.S. pharmacies have thrown away more than 15 million doses since March.The United States and other wealthy nations have been under increasing pressure to donate their surplus of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries as the pandemic wreaks havoc across the globe with the emergence of new and more contagious variants of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, on Wednesday implored wealthy nations to forgo COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for the rest of the year to ensure that poorer countries have more access to the vaccine. Tedros had previously asked rich countries not to provide boosters until September.Also on Thursday, Turkey’s health minister said the country is soon likely to approve a locally made vaccine, which began late-stage trials in June, for emergency use. Ankara expects it will start mass producing “Turkovac” this October.Italy sent teams to the island of Lampedusa to inoculate newly arrived immigrants. Lampedusa is one of the main arrival points for African migrants from Libya and Tunisia. Roughly 40,000 migrants from North Africa have arrived in Italy so far this year, twice as many as in 2020.In Los AngelesMeanwhile, the Los Angeles Board of Education approved a measure Thursday that would mandate vaccinations against COVID-19 for all students 12 years and older. Students would be required to receive their first dose by November 21 followed by a second dose by December 19 in order to be fully vaccinated by the next semester.The measure also requires students participating in in-person extracurricular activities to receive both shots by the end of October. The district will allow medical or religious exemptions.Los Angeles is the largest school district in the U.S. to impose a mandatory vaccination policy. The district is the nation’s second-largest, with just more than 600,000 students.In JapanSeparately, Japan announced Thursday that it would extend its current coronavirus state of emergency for Tokyo and 18 other areas until Sept. 30. Two prefectures will be shifted from full emergency status to more targeted restrictions.The state of emergency was first imposed for the city and a handful of other prefectures just weeks before the start of the Tokyo Olympics as Japan struggled under the surge of new infections sparked by the delta variant and a sluggish vaccination campaign.Japan currently has more than 1.6 million confirmed infections, including 16,600 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, with nearly 50% of its population fully vaccinated.Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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Leaders of the BRICS nations discussed Afghanistan at a virtual summit Thursday, with participants underscoring the importance of preventing terrorists from using Afghan soil to stage attacks on other countries.  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted the five-nation group that comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The talks come weeks after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan led to a geopolitical shift in Asia. Russian President Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro joined Modi for the online summit. Speaking at the opening of the summit, Putin said the withdrawal of the United States and its allies from Afghanistan “has led to a new crisis” and the “entire international community will have to clear up the mess as a result.” He said the situation stemmed from “irresponsible attempts to impose alien values from outside and this intention to build so-called democracy” without taking into account historical features and traditions resulting in “destabilization and chaos.” In wrapping up the summit, the BRICS nations called for “refraining from violence and settling the situation by peaceful means to ensure stability in the country.”  Afghanistan is of major concern to three of the five countries in the group – Russia, India and China. Putin said the country should not become a threat to its neighbors or a source of terrorism and drug trafficking.  In late August, the U.S. completed a withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan to end a 20-year war.  Observers say China and Russia will use the opportunity to step into the void left by the U.S., although Moscow is wary of the Islamist ideology of the Taliban and the threat posed by foreign militant groups to Central Asia.India’s concern   New Delhi, meanwhile, finds itself isolated with the takeover by the Taliban, which has long been an anti-India group. New Delhi has emphasized that its main concern is about Afghan territory being used by terror groups that target India such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.   The group adopted what it called a Counter Terrorism Action Plan and said in its declaration, “We stress the need to contribute to fostering an inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue so as to ensure stability, civil peace, law and order in the country.” The statement also emphasized the need to address the humanitarian situation and to uphold human rights, including those of children, women and minorities.  The summit, held for a second year in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, expressed “regret” at the glaring inequity in access to vaccines, especially for the most vulnerable populations, and highlighted the need for access to affordable shots for the world’s poorest. The declaration also said cooperation on the study of the origins of the coronavirus is an important aspect of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus causes COVID-19. The BRICS group was formed to enhance cooperation among the world’s major emerging economies, which account for 40% of the global population and 25% of global gross domestic product. Their first summit was held in 2009.  
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The World Health Organization says genomic sequencing capability is being improved in Africa to better detect, monitor and respond to COVID-19 mutations. Several variants of the coronavirus are circulating in African countries. The Delta variant is, by far, the most contagious and virulent. The variants have sparked flare-ups of this deadly disease. However, the Delta variant is most responsible for prolonging Africa’s third pandemic wave. The World Health Organization says Africa’s COVID-19 third wave is now tapering off after a two-month surge, with the number of new cases decreasing by 23% last week. The World Health Organization says the case load remains extremely high, though, with more than 165,000 new weekly cases reported. WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti says the WHO is supporting countries in scaling up pathogen surveillance through genome sequencing. She says together with the South African National Bioinformatics Institute, the WHO is launching a new Regional Center of Excellence for Genomic Surveillance in Cape Town. “Knowing which variants are circulating and where is critical for informing effective response operations … The continent lags far behind the rest of the world when it comes to sequencing, accounting for only 1% of over 3 million COVID-19 sequences conducted worldwide. So, this ground-breaking initiative aims to initially support 14 Southern African countries to scale up their genomic sequencing by 15-fold each month,” she said. Moeti says analysis will shed light on the pathways COVID-19 is using to spread into communities. On the vaccine front, she notes Africa still lags far behind the world’s richer nations in inoculating its inhabitants. FILE – In this Aug. 6. 2021 file photo, a Kenyan soldier guards a consignment of 182,000 AstraZeneca vaccines from the Greek Government via the COVAX facility, at Kenya Jomo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi.“In the past week, the COVAX Facility has delivered over 5 million doses to African countries. I was saddened to read that three times as many doses have been thrown away in the United States alone — 15 million doses since March 2021. This is enough vaccines to cover everyone over 18 years in Liberia, Mauritania, and the Gambia, for example,” she said.Moeti says high-income countries have not kept their pledges to share 1 billion doses globally. So far, she says only 120 million doses have been released. She notes only 3% of the continent’s 1.2 billion people are fully vaccinated. She says Africa has passed the sad milestone of 200,000 lives lost to the coronavirus, lives that could have been saved had they received a dose of the vaccine.
 
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The World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa said Thursday the number of new COVID-19 cases on the continent fell by 23 percent last week, the steepest drop in eight weeks since a peak in July.
 
During her weekly COVID-19 briefing, though, WHO Africa chief Matshidiso Moeti said that while those figures are good news and an indication the third wave of infections is on a “downward slide,” variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, particularly the Delta variant, have sparked flare-ups, prolonging the “acute phase” of the third wave for longer than expected.
 
At the same time, she said, Africa has passed the sad milestone of 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.  
 
Moeti said scientists also are tracking a new variant, C.1.2, a variant found in 130 cases in 10 countries globally, including five African countries with over 90 percent of the cases. But she said so far there is no evidence that C.1.2 is more transmissible or that that it affects the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.
 
On the subject of vaccines, Moeti said shipments to the continent continue to grow, with about 5.5 million doses received through the WHO-managed vaccine cooperative COVAX in the first week of September.  
 
However, Africa’s Center for Disease Control says just over 3 percent of the continent’s population is fully vaccinated. And Moeti said COVAX Wednesday revised downward its vaccine shipment forecast for the rest of the year, for a number of reasons, which means the continent can expect 25 percent fewer vaccine doses.
 
She blamed the reduced shipments, at least partly on “the prioritization of bilateral deals” between wealthy nations and pharmaceutical companies “over international solidarity.”   
 
Moeti said that high-income nations have pledged to share 1 billion doses globally, but so far, only 120 million have been released. She said, “Every dose is precious. If companies and countries prioritize vaccine equity, this pandemic would be over quickly.”
 
She said to ultimately tip the scales against the pandemic, efforts to reduce transmission through public health measures like mask-wearing must be accompanied by a significant increase in vaccine supplies and vaccinations.
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Authorities in Cameroon say they are attempting to remove thousands of children working in gold mines along the country’s eastern border.  Some of the children were displaced from the Central African Republic because of violence there and dropped out of school to mine gold for survival.The 2021-2022 school year in Cameroon started Monday, and Cameroon’s Ministry of Basic Education says thousands of children have not returned to class in areas along the border with the Central African Republic.The government says many of the children prefer working in gold mines.Auberlin d’Abou Mbelessa is mayor of Batouri, a town on the border.Mbelessa said his district wants all children to immediately leave gold mining sites and go to schools. He said village chiefs and religious leaders in Batouri have been asked to visit all houses, markets, farms, churches, mosques and mining sites to tell everyone that without education the future of children looks barren.Mbelessa said at least 300 of the children and teenagers are Central African Republic citizens displaced by violence and insecurity following the C.A.R.’s December 2020 general election.Among the kids who have refused to leave mining sites is 15-year-old Joseph Goumba. Goumba said he fled from the C.A.R. in January when rebels attacked the town of Bossangoa to protest the reelection of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra.He said he relies solely on gold mining for a living.Goumba says education is the best thing a child can be given but his preoccupation is to raise money and send it to his poor mother whose old age could not permit her to escape from the C.A.R. He said his father, who escaped with him, died in a gold mine in July and he has no one to count on for food and school needs.Goumba said he earns $4 after 24 hours of work. Cameroon says there are over 400 mining sites on its eastern border, a majority of them illegal.Corine Mvondo is a government labor official in Batouri. She said Cameroon will punish people who stop children from going to school.She said Cameroon is a signatory to the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention which was adopted by the International Labor Organization on June 17, 1999. She said a 2011 Cameroonian law states that people involved in child labor are liable to prison time of 15 to 20 years and fines of up to $20,000.Life in the gold mines is dangerous. The government says 27 miners died in May due to landslides.Cameroon has promised to offer free primary education to children who leave the mines. But some of the children say they lack food and books. The government has not said if it will provide those things if the children return to school. 
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