African Media Coverage

August 16-31, 2008

UGANDA: Daily Monitor
"Bashir's victory lap to south Sudan"
Published: August 31, 2008

His journey was billed as a routine visit, but with the International Criminal Court (ICC) likely indictments hanging over his head, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir’s trip to Southern Sudan was always going to be nebulous.

As he often does on such visits – four of them since the peace agreement – Bashir came bearing goodies – power dams for southern Sudan – and addressed the Legislative Assembly.

But coming just over a month following ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s request to the judges in the Hague that he be indicted. Bashir’s journey would always have commentators read it in the context of his government’s diplomatic offensive against the ICC. If he came with heightened security, perhaps higher than the last time he was here, then he was scared of the wide reach of the arm of the ICC. If he came with only a sprinkling of soldiers, as he did, and moved around with a lot more ease than last time, then he was confident in a territory that has shown little love for him.

Read the full article here.

UGANDA: Daily Monitor
“How AU fails the continent’s IDPs”
Published: August 27, 2008

The May xenophobic violence in South Africa, which left over 30,000 people displaced, posed a new challenge for the Africa Union (AU) in its quest to tackle the problem of refugees and Internally Displaced People in the continent. The carnage took place when the AU was revising the Organisation of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of refugee Problems in Africa (1969) and drafting an Internally Displaced Persons Convention.
- page 2 -

The five-year conflict in Darfur, Sudan, has forced over two million people to seek refuge in camps within Darfur, while a further quarter of a million has fled to Chad.

The huge internal refugee camps in Darfur are increasingly overcrowded and insecure, and humanitarian access remains severely limited. In other cases, internal refugees and refugees were forced to flee the camps and on several occasions forcibly relocated by government forces.

Read the full article here.