Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is urging Congo’s government to lift a ban on public demonstrations “to ensure a level playing field for all political actors” in December’s presidential and legislative elections.

The U.N. chief said in a report to the Security Council circulated Monday that lifting the ban on protests would also “greatly contribute to the opening of political space” and allow the Congolese people “to freely exercise their political and civil rights.”

In the report covering electoral developments from March 21 to April 26, Guterres said that “deep-seated mistrust and suspicion” about the electoral process and the pace of progress in implementing confidence-building measures “continue to fuel political tensions.”

Congo has gone through decades of ethnic clashes, rebellions and violence carried out by armed groups and militias trying to control gold and other lucrative resources. The U.N. has had a peacekeeping force in the country since 1999.

Congo’s President Joseph Kabila has been in power since 2001, and the country has simmered with tensions over the long-delayed presidential election, with critics accusing him of trying to cling to power.

Kabila’s mandate ended in December 2016 and under an agreement that month he agreed to set an election by the end of 2017 and release all remaining political prisoners. But elections were delayed again and are now scheduled for Dec. 23.

Guterres said in the report that there had been “a relative decrease in the number of violations of civil and political rights and fundamental freedoms” during the reporting period. But he said at least 86 political prisoners remain in detention, including some named in the December 2016 agreement.

The secretary-general noted that the Independent National Electoral Commission published the final voter registry on April 6 after a review process that removed some 6 million duplicate registrations and individuals too young to vote. He said about 40.3 million people are eligible to vote, half of them women. 

But Guterres said the government has not yet published the list of political parties eligible to contest the elections.

Swift publication of the list and platforms “would help address existing suspicions and build trust between political actors and the commission,” he said. 

The secretary-general said discussions between the main opposition parties aimed at creating “new political alliances or platforms” are continuing, adding that two parties have called for the opposition to coalesce around a single candidate.
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A fund launched by the Red Cross aims to deliver life-saving humanitarian aid before rather than after floods, droughts and other natural hazards hit, so as to reduce damage and trauma in some of the world’s most disaster-prone areas.

The “Forecast-based Action Fund”, set up by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), uses weather predictions and historical data to trigger the distribution of money when a natural disaster looms.

The German government has committed 3.6 million Swiss francs ($3.6 million) to the new forecast-based fund. It will sit within another of the IFRC’s disaster relief funds that is worth 25 million-30 million Swiss francs annually, and can draw more from that pot of money.

“It means that life-saving action can now take place before anyone is in immediate danger, which will save lives and reduce the need for more costly emergency response and recovery efforts,” said Pascale Meige, the IFRC’s director of disaster and crisis prevention, response and recovery.

Fifteen Red Cross/Red Crescent societies in Africa, the Americas and Asia-Pacific are readying to tap into the fund over the next two years, if needed. Other branches may also use it. The model has been tested in communities in Peru, Togo, Uganda, Bangladesh, Mozambique and Mongolia since 2014.

“Waiting for disasters to happen should not be an option anymore,” Peter Felten, head of humanitarian assistance at the German Federal Foreign Office, said in a statement.

Funding is triggered by pre-set thresholds such as rainfall forecasts combined with rising river levels, Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “As soon as the forecast reaches that level of severity, the mechanism can release the funds for pre-specified early actions,” he said in emailed comments.

For example, in a community-based scheme in Bangladesh, predictions that the Brahmaputra river would overflow in 2017 sparked cash grants for local people who could then use the money to support their families during the emergency, he said.

The mechanism could change the way agencies tackle disasters, providing an incentive to act when the alarm bells start ringing, rather than once a disaster has struck, he noted. 

Governments and aid agencies have been calling for more investment in disaster prevention for years, to cut the rising bill for helping people hit by crises.

In 2016, former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on states to dedicate at least 1 percent of international development assistance by 2020 to reducing the risks of disasters and preparing for them.

This March, Zambian officials said the forecast-based financing model could be used as part of a national strategy for managing flood risk, and would strengthen preparedness.
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Technical talks between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over a disputed dam Ethiopia is building on the Nile river failed to make a breakthrough, Egypt’s foreign minister said on Monday, amid pressure for a deal before the project opens this year.

Egypt and Ethiopia are at loggerheads over the construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam, a $4 billion-hydroelectric project that Cairo fears will reduce waters that run to its fields and reservoirs from Ethiopia’s highlands and via Sudan.

Addis Ababa hopes the dam will make it a hub for the electricity-hungry region and denies it will undermine Egypt’s access to water.

No breakthrough

Sameh Shoukry said technical experts who met in Addis Ababa last week did not achieve a breakthrough.

“I have spoken to the minister of irrigation, who attended this meeting, and what has reached me is that the obstruction that has bogged down this path for more than a year has not been overcome,” Shoukry told reporters during a news conference in Cairo with his visiting Ugandan counterpart.

He said both Ethiopia and Sudan continued to have reservations about a technical report by a French firm commissioned to assess the dam’s environmental and economic impact.

More talks set for May 15

Ties between Egypt and Sudan were strained when Khartoum backed the dam because of its need for electricity. The three African neighbors are set to meet on May 15 for further talks, Shoukry said, adding Egypt had initially proposed several earlier dates for negotiations, but they were turned down by the two other countries.

Earlier this month, talks in Khartoum between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan also failed to reach agreement, but were described by Sudan’s foreign minister as “constructive.”
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Cameroon is cracking down on weapons proliferation as it battles two insurgencies and prepares to hold important nationwide elections this year. The military says it discovered a large cache of illegal weapons in a warehouse in Awae, near the capital.

Cameroon’s military raided the warehouse April 30 after locals reported suspicious movements to and from it. Adjutant Chef Major Patrice Bella is a military official who led the operation.

He says five gunmen working with the arm dealers fought back but were overpowered by the military. He says they will be investigating to find out the true owners of the weapons cache and what the weapons were to be used for.

Inside the warehouse, soldiers discovered 10,500 rounds of ammunition, as well as an undisclosed number of explosives, guns, cutlasses and knives. So far, all those arrested are Cameroonian nationals.

The location of the warehouse has sparked concern. Awae is 55 kilometers from the capital. The town hosts an international school for security forces called EIFORCES that trains African militaries on peacekeeping techniques.

Officials suspect the weapons came overland from neighboring countries, in particular Nigeria. However local residents wonder how they got past police and gendarme posts around Awae.

The discovery remains a hot topic of local conversation.

41-year-old road engineer Joseph Mbida says he is frightened because the discovery of ammunition and weapons amassed so close to Yaounde could mean people are planning to try to destabilize the country. He says he is counting on the military to track down those responsible.

Cameroon heads to presidential, parliamentary and local council elections starting in October.

Meanwhile the country is grappling with instability in the Far North, where troops continue to battle Boko Haram, and in the two English-speaking regions, the northwest and the southwest, where separatist rebels are demanding independence.

In April, the government banned even the legal sale of weapons to civilians.

Paul Atanga Nji, minister of territorial administration, addressing a security meeting in Yaounde, said there are as many as 30,000 war weapons and small arms in circulation in Cameroon.

He says the use of weapons is reaching alarming proportions in Cameroon, threatening the security of everyone. He says some criminals even rent weapons to kill, steal and create disorder and that armed gangs are now found in all major cities and towns. He says the government must control its borders and stop the sale of arms.

In Cameroon, a 2016 law made the unlawful possession of a firearm punishable by a prison term of five to ten days and a fine.

However, the use of illegal firearms and weapons is judged by a military tribunal, with a possibility of life in prison if the tribunal decides the offender meant to disturb public order and peace.
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They are producers, directors, editors, and actors. But what they share in common is their continent of birth – Africa. Once a month, they meet to share their experiences in Hollywood and work together to raise their profile in the competitive movie industry. VOA’s Arzouma Kompaore went to Hollywood and filed this report.
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At least 45 people died in an attack on a village in northern Nigeria, a police official told Reuters on Sunday, the latest in a string of incidents underscoring insecurity in parts of the country.

President Muhammadu Buhari won Nigeria’s 2015 elections partly on promises to bring security to Africa’s largest economy and most populous nation, but has struggled to fulfil those pledges. He is now seeking a second term in February 2019.

His critics and opponents question his track record tackling the multitude of conflicts that plague Nigeria, from Boko Haram and a thriving Islamic State West Africa insurgency in the northeast, to clashes between farmers and herders in the hinterlands that have left hundreds dead.

It was not immediately clear why the Gwaska village in the northern state of Kaduna was attacked on Saturday.

“Yesterday, we recovered 12 corpses and today we retrieved 33,” Austin Iwar, Kaduna’s commissioner of police, told Reuters by phone.

The village, in the Birnin-Gwari area of Kaduna, lies near an area known for banditry, where thick forests provide remote hideouts from law enforcement.

Those groups of bandits have for years frustrated authorities’ attempts to apprehend them, and in some cases have amassed thousands of stolen cattle and fought off security agent task forces sent to deal with them.
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