HARARE, ZIMBABWE — Ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, the U.N. has released a report saying that upholding human rights is essential for ending the AIDS pandemic.

The report says human rights violations, including discrimination against girls and women, and criminalization of LGBTQ+ people, obstruct efforts to end AIDS.

UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima released a report online called “Take the Rights Path to End AIDS.”

The report says the world can meet the goal of ending AIDS by 2030 if leaders protect the human rights of everyone living with and at risk of HIV.

She said advances in medicine are helping reduce new cases of HIV.

“But big gaps still remain in the protection of rights. When there is impunity for gender-based violence; when people can be arrested for who they are, or who they love; when a visit to health services is dangerous for people because of their gender — the result is that people are blocked from care, this drives the AIDS pandemic,” she said. “Only rights can fix these wrongs. There is an urgent need to enact laws that protect the human rights of everyone.”

Zimbabwe was one of the countries hit hardest by HIV/AIDS until it introduced an AIDS levy in 1999, a 3% tax on income and business profits which is managed by the National AIDS Council.

Dr. Bernard Madzima, the executive officer of the Zimbabwe National AIDS Council, said the country is aiming to end HIV as a public health threat by the end of the decade. He said the country enforces a policy of no discrimination against HIV patients.

“In Zimbabwe there is no one who has been stigmatized whether they are HIV positive or whether they are HIV negative, they will get access. Our approach in HIV intervention is based on it being a public health approach,” he said. “So our interventions are to make sure that HIV is no longer a public health threat by 2030.”

Madzima said the government is also attempting to reach marginalized groups like sex workers, prison inmates and informal miners with care. In the past, Zimbabwean authorities targeted sex workers and organizations such as Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe.

The UNAIDS report noted that police only stopped arresting sex workers for “loitering” in 2015, after Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights successfully argued in court that the police conduct was illegal. The report said the move has resulted in sex workers being able to seek health services.

The report commended Zimbabwe for stopping the criminalization of HIV transmission in 2022, adding that criminalization and stigmatization of marginalized communities obstruct access to life-saving HIV services.
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BLANTYRE, MALAWI — A report by the international NGO Equality Now says the definition of rape in 25 African countries has allowed many perpetrators to go unpunished. Such narrow definitions, it says, often allow charges against accused rapists to be reduced to lesser crimes with lower penalties.

The findings are part of a 46-page study uncovering gaps in legislation, implementation, and access to justice for rape victims in 47 African countries.

The report says globally, 35% of women have experienced either physical or sexual violence, and that about 33% of women in Africa have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime.

High rates of sexual violence have been documented during conflicts in Ethiopia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, says the report, which adds that in those countries, rape was used as a weapon of war to denigrate, disempower, and demoralize communities.

Sally Ncube is a regional representative for southern Africa at Equality Now.

She told VOA via a messaging app from Zimbabwe that narrow legal definitions of rape have long promoted impunity for perpetrators in many countries.

“For example, rape committed within an intimate partner relationship or relegate these violations to lesser offenses with lesser penalties which create a hierarchy of abuse and sending a confused signal about the absolute right of each individual to bodily autonomy,” Ncube said.

The report names 25 African countries where the legal definition of rape may be too narrow. They include Cameroon, South Sudan, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Mozambique and Malawi.

Zione Lapani coordinates the victim support unit at the Blantyre Police Station in Malawi.

She told VOA about a case in which a married woman complained to police after her husband sexually abused her.

Lapani said they did not open a case after a discussion with the couple that established that the man forced himself on his wife after being denied sex for so long because of some family matters.

“We said, ‘No, this is not very big because there was something inside both of you which you didn’t communicate.’ This no longer rape but just because the man was tired because the lady was giving punishment to the man,” said Lapani.

An Equality Now report about gaps in family laws released earlier this year found that Malawian customary law presumes perpetual consent to sex within marriage and that a wife can deny her husband sex only when she is sick or legally separated.

Ncube said African governments should ensure that the crime of rape meets international human rights law standards.

“By providing clear definitions based on consent rather than just force,” said Ncube. “That all forms of penetration that are sexual in nature are included no matter how slight they are, and that there is no form of hierarchy in punishment in form of rape of penetration.”

However, the report says Rwanda has taken significant steps to promote a victim-centered approach to investigating and prosecuting sexual violence cases.

It also says Senegal has taken a similar approach by establishing “law shops” offering judicial, legal and psycho-social services.

And in Malawi, the courts have started giving stiffer punishments to convicted rapists.

For example, in 2021, a high court in southern Malawi sentenced a 33-year-old man to 40 years in prison for raping a 9-year-old child.
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JOHANNESBURG — South African writer and poet Breyten Breytenbach, a staunch opponent of the former white-minority government’s apartheid policy of racial oppression, has died in Paris, his family announced on Sunday. He was 85. 

Breytenbach was a celebrated wordsmith, a leading voice in literature in Afrikaans — an offshoot of Dutch that was developed by white settlers — and a fierce critic of apartheid that was imposed against the country’s Black majority between 1948 and 1990. 

He moved to Paris but on a clandestine trip to his home country in 1975 he was arrested on allegations that he assisted Nelson Mandela’s then-outlawed African National Congress group in its sabotage campaign against the white-minority government. 

He was convicted of treason and served seven years in prison. French president Francois Mitterrand helped secure his release in 1982. 

Upon his release, Breytenbach based himself in Paris, becoming a French citizen, and continued his anti-apartheid activism.

Breytenbach is best known for “Confessions of an Albino Terrorist,” his account of his imprisonment and the events leading to it. 

His work addressed themes of exile, identity and justice, his family said in a statement on Sunday. 

“Known for his masterful poetry collections in Afrikaans, as well as autobiographical works such as ‘The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist’ and ‘A Season in Paradise,’ he fearlessly addressed themes of exile, identity and justice,” his family said in a statement. 

Breytenbach was a poet, novelist, painter and activist whose work touched on and influenced literature and the arts both domestically and abroad, his family added. 

He was born in the Western Cape province in 1939 but spent much of his life abroad. 

He joined Okhela, an ideological wing of South Africa’s African National Congress, in exile, but remained deeply connected to his South African roots. 

He is survived by his wife, Yolande, daughter Daphnée and two grandsons. 

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse. 
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ACCRA, Ghana — In a sprawling secondhand clothing market in Ghana’s capital, early morning shoppers jostle as they search through piles of garments, eager to pluck a bargain or a designer find from the stalls selling used and low-quality apparel imported from the West.

At the other end of the street, an upcycled fashion and thrifting festival unfolds with glamour and glitz. Models parade along a makeshift runway in outfits that designers created out of discarded materials from the Kantamanto market, ranging from floral blouses and denim jeans to leather bags, caps and socks.

The festival is called Obroni Wawu October, using a phrase that in the local Akan language means “dead white man’s clothes.” Organizers see the event as a small way to disrupt a destructive cycle that has made Western overconsumption into an environmental problem in Africa, where some of the worn-out clothes end up in waterways and garbage dumps.

“Instead of allowing (textile waste) to choke our gutters or beaches or landfills, I decided to use it to create something … for us to use again,” said Richard Asante Palmer, one of the designers at the annual festival organized by the Or Foundation, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of environmental justice and fashion development.

Ghana is one of Africa’s leading importers of used clothing. It also ships some of what it gets from the United Kingdom, Canada, China and elsewhere to other West African nations, the United States and the U.K., according to the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers Association.

Some of the imported clothes arrive in such poor shape, however, that vendors dispose of them to make room for the next shipments. On average, 40% of the millions of garments exported weekly to Ghana end up as waste, according to Neesha-Ann Longdon, the business manager for the Or Foundation’s executive director.

The clothing dealers association, in a report published earlier this year on the socioeconomic and environmental impact of the nation’s secondhand clothing trade said only 5% of the items that reach Ghana in bulk are immediately thrown out because they cannot be sold or reused.

In many African countries, citizens typically buy preowned clothes — as well as used cars, phones and other necessities — because they cost less than new ones. Secondhand shopping also gives them a chance to score designer goods that most people in the region can only dream of.

But neither Ghana’s fast-growing population of 34 million people nor its overtaxed infrastructure is equipped to absorb the amount of cast-off attire entering the country. Mounds of textile waste litter beaches across the capital, Accra, and the lagoon which serves as the main outlet through which the city’s major drainage channels empty into the Gulf of Guinea.

“Fast fashion has taken over as the dominant mode of production, which is characterized here as higher volumes of lower-quality goods,” Longdon said.

Jonathan Abbey, a fisherman in the area, said his nets often capture textile waste from the sea. Unsold used clothes “aren’t even burned but are thrown into the Korle Lagoon, which then goes into the sea,” Abbey said.

The ease of online shopping has sped up this waste cycle, according to Andrew Brooks, a King’s College London researcher and the author of Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes.

In countries like the U.K., unwanted purchases often end up as charity donations, but clothes are sometimes stolen from street donation bins and exported to places where the consumer demand is perceived to be higher, Brooks said. Authorities rarely investigate such theft because the clothes are “seen as low-value items,” he said.

Donors, meanwhile, think their castoffs are “going to be recycled rather than reused, or given away rather than sold, or sold in the U.K. rather than exported overseas,” Brooks said.

The volume of secondhand clothing sent to Africa has led to complaints of the continent being used as a dumping ground. In 2018, Rwanda raised tariffs on such imports in defiance of U.S. pressure, citing concerns the West’s refuse undermined efforts to strengthen the domestic textile industry. Last year, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he would ban imports of clothing “from dead people.”

Trade restrictions might not go far in either reducing textile pollution or encouraging clothing production in Africa, where profits are low and incentives for designers are few, experts say.

In the absence of adequate measures to stop the pollution, organizations like the Or Foundation are trying to make a difference by rallying young people and fashion creators to find a good use for scrapped materials.

Ghana’s beaches had hardly any discarded clothes on them before the country’s waste management problems worsened in recent years, foundation co-founder Liz Ricketts said.

“Fast forward to today, 2024, there are mountains of textile waste on the beaches,” she said.
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FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Rice borders on the sacred in Sierra Leone. Unless a meal includes rice, people say, you haven’t eaten at all.

But as prices soar, consumers in the West African nation are giving up other food to buy it. That’s a major reason why 83% of the population is food insecure, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program.

In the capital, Freetown, 28-year-old nail technician Anima Mangola dug into rice with stewed cassava leaves. “I’d eat rice five times a day if I had me the money,” she said — even as its price has more than doubled this year.

Not everyone can keep up, and “people are suffering,” she said.

Experts blame soaring prices on a heavy reliance on imports, which supply 35% of Sierra Leone’s rice and eat up $200 million annually in foreign currency.

Even though West Africa has a long tradition of growing rice and often excellent places to do it, experts said the import dependency is due to a lack of investment in agriculture, booming population growth and cheap rice imports from Asia.

Sierra Leone’s agriculture minister, Henry Kpaka Musa, accused the International Monetary Fund of pressuring Sierra Leone in the 1980s to stop investing in agriculture and open its markets to imports as a condition for receiving loans.

“We used to export rice,” Kpaka said in an interview.

Now he and President Julius Bio plan to do it again. The government has raised over $620 million from global development banks this year to work towards food self-sufficiency, notably in rice, although Kpaka estimated the plan will cost $1.8 billion in all. Experts from the Ivory Coast-based research center Africa Rice have commended the plan as “ambitious and forward-looking.”

But NGOs and academics warn it will favor international agribusiness and large-scale farms, to the detriment of the nation’s 5 million smallholder farms. They point to similar, failed attempts at food self-sufficiency in places such as Burkina Faso and Ghana.

Self-sufficiency challenges and potential

West Africa has an ancient rice tradition dating back an estimated 3,500 years. Historian Judith Carney said its farmers were taken as slaves to work plantations in the U.S. South, giving birth to a booming rice economy.

Sierra Leone has the region’s best climate and land for growing rice, with abundant annual rainfall in coastal regions.

But Kpaka, the minister, highlighted obstacles to rice self-sufficiency: poor roads to connect rice-growing areas with markets, unreliable electricity for processing, climate change and poor access to finance.

With the financial backing from development banks, he has approved plans to improve roads to the country’s three main “rice bowls,” create large areas of irrigated land and provide fertilizers, seeds and pesticides to smallholder farms.

“The plan starts with the infrastructure to attract the private sector to come,” he said. He has promoted the plan to unspecified international investors, offering them thousands of hectares of irrigated land.

But some believe smallholders, who make up 70% of the country’s population of 8 million, will be an afterthought.

The view from the field

Aboubacar Kowa, a farming leader in Bo district, gathered others to discuss their rice challenges, which also included access to land and a lack of storage, training and processing capacity.

They were united in their lack of optimism about government help. They’ve heard these ambitious plans before.

“We don’t get support from the government,” said one smallholder and village chief, Eric Amara Manyeh.

The most common concern was the lack of labor to create irrigated fields. Eliminating vegetation and digging channels is laborious, and an exodus of young people to urban areas means farmers have to employ laborers — a cost out of reach for many.

Although unemployment is high in towns, Manyeh said young people prefer easier jobs such as driving motorbike taxis.

Some farmers have formed collectives to share labor, but poor tools slow progress. In one government-backed project in Bo, digging 60 hectares of channels took three months by 82 people.

A cautionary tale

Sierra Leone’s goal to get chemical fertilizer, seeds and pesticides into the hands of smallholders is meant to replicate the Green Revolution in Asia, which increased rice production by over 100% in two decades.

But Klara Fischer, a rural development professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences specializing in sub-Saharan Africa, warned that the approach exposes farmers to agribusiness giants such as Bayer Crop Science and Syngenta.

An initiative called A Green Revolution for Africa. backed by the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and others, has spent over $1 billion since 2006 to increase access to fertilizers and seeds for smallholders, but its own evaluation in 2022 said it hasn’t increased food security. The initiative is supporting Sierra Leone’s efforts.

One recent assessment by the German development ministry in Ghana and Burkina Faso found no evidence that providing fertilizer and seeds increased yield or profit for smallholders and found that 41% of rice farmers struggled to pay off their debts.

“These fertilizer and seed packages are entangled with private interests,” Fischer said. She also highlighted differences between Asia in the 1970s and the current situation in Africa. One is the cheap and available family labor in Asia compared to the rural exodus in Sierra Leone.

Kpaka, a former employee in the Gates Foundation’s agricultural department, acknowledged concerns but was convinced his plan has the missing ingredient to unlock growth: the critical infrastructure to help farmers process and sell their rice, incentivizing them to grow more.

“If we don’t make the road, (farmers) will forever remain subsistence,” he said.

A different way

Others believe that Sierra Leone should spend its funding on measures that empower smallholder farms rather than big business.

Joseph Randall, director of an environmental NGO in Sierra Leone, Green Scenery, said the government should support sustainable practices such as organic compost instead of becoming dependent on imported chemical fertilizer, usually from Europe or North America, which contributes heavily to global warming.

Randall opposes the distribution of modern seeds, even though they are higher yielding. The hybrid varieties of rice can’t be saved and replanted each year because they are bred by agribusinesses and have patents.

Meanwhile, in Manyeh’s village, thunder echoed through the chief’s rice fields. He pointed to a swamp that might be cultivated as part of the self-sufficiency goal.

“The willingness is there, the potential is there,” he said. But he knows it takes more than potential to feed a nation. 
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MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE — Mozambique’s presidential election runner-up, Venâncio Mondlane, has placed conditions on his participation in a meeting with the country’s president to end weeks of political unrest over disputed elections. Mondlane delivered his proposal along with a proposed agenda and wants to meet Tuesday with President Filipe Nyusi and the three other presidential candidates.

Among his demands, Mondlane requests that the legal proceedings against him be dropped and that his participation be virtual. He also wants the release of all those arrested as part of the violent protests that he had called for and “guarantees of political and legal security for the actors and players in the dialogue.”

Among the items on the agenda, Mondlane proposed 20 points, including “re-establishment of the electoral truth” and criminal and civil liability for what he says are those involved in falsifying the electoral process.

The document was delivered by Diniz Tivane, a representative of the Podemos party, which backed Mondlane in the presidential race.

Tivane revealed some of the contents of the letter, saying that the electoral truth was exactly what Venancio himself said. Votes are not negotiated, they are counted.

Mondlane also demanded that certain institutions and individuals participate in the talks.

Political analyst Dercio Alfazema said Mondlane accepted Nyusi’s invitation, but the conditions showed otherwise.

He said that if it were up to Mondlane, he would not participate in this meeting. And depending on that, the meeting could be held with other candidates or not take place at all. And it will be very difficult for all who are worried and want a solution to this problem. And, Alfazema added, we all believe that the best way out of this problem is dialogue.

Preliminary results showed the Frelimo candidate, Daniel Chapo, won the presidential with 71%, and Mondlane, who ran as an independent, came in second with 20%.

A political and social crisis marked by fraud allegations and disputed results has engulfed Mozambique since the October 9 elections.

Mozambique immediately fell into a climate of uncertainty that has affected daily life and the economy.

At least 60 people have died in protests, and several regions of Mozambique have seen blockades, looting, riots and violence, with emphasis on border areas and economic centers.
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ABUJA, NIGERIA — Nigerian military authorities are praising the arrest of separatist leader Simon Ekpa in Finland on Thursday. Ekpa was arrested along with four others for alleged terror-related activities, including incitement to violence and terrorism financing in Nigeria.

In two separate statements late Thursday, Nigerian defense authorities lauded Ekpa’s arrest as a step toward his extradition to Nigeria and a validation of Nigeria’s bilateral relations with the international community.

Police in Finland arrested Ekpa along with four others on Thursday for suspected terrorism financing and inciting deadly violence in Nigeria’s southeast region using social media.

Finnish police are seeking a court order to extend their detention.

The arrest comes eight months after Nigerian authorities declared Ekpa a wanted man, and three months after they appealed to a visiting European Union delegation to extradite him.

Beacon Security and Intelligence analyst Kabiru Adamu said the authorities’ negotiations paid off.

“When such a bilateral conversation is held at that level, then you would’ve done the documentation that in most times would give you a good result,” Adamu said.

Ekpa was a leader of the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra, or IPOB, a group that advocates the southeast region’s split from the rest of Nigeria but has long since politically fragmented.

He rose to prominence following the arrest and incarceration of fellow IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, by Nigerian authorities in June 2021.

Using social media posts and broadcasts, Ekpa has been calling for a “no work day” in Biafra every Monday to demand Kanu’s release — a measure that some factions of IPOB have criticized.

Following Ekpa’s arrest, Kanu’s supporters within IPOB released a statement disassociating themselves from the Ekpa.

Security analyst Ebenezer Oyetakin said Ekpa’s extradition can’t come soon enough.

“One would’ve expected that when the sovereignty of a nation is being threatened by individuals or a group of individuals, that should be a wake-up call to that country’s leadership, particularly the security leadership,” Oyetakin said. “But we did not pursue this in a constructive and strategic diplomatic approach that it should be. But it is better late than never.”

The secessionist campaign in Nigeria’s southeast led to a civil war in 1967 that killed an estimated 1 million people, mostly from starvation.

In recent years, hundreds of people including security operatives have been killed there in renewed separatist agitation.

Adamu said it won’t be easy for Finnish authorities to extradite Ekpa to Nigeria.

“I doubt if we have an extradition agreement between Nigeria and Finland,” Adamu said. “And the fact that he has dual citizenship — in my understanding of international relations, it will be next to impossible for Finland to extradite him knowing that he’s likely to be tried for treason and terrorism. These are offenses that could even fetch a death penalty.”

Finland had previously investigated Ekpa for alleged financial crimes, including receiving money through questionable means.

It’s unclear if his arrest will spark more tensions in the region, but analysts say authorities must be on the lookout for a possible new Biafra separatist leader.
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JUBA, SOUTH SUDAN — The international community warns that as many as 2 million children and 1 million pregnant or lactating mothers in South Sudan are facing acute malnutrition. Poor access to safe drinking water, sanitation and the spread of disease continue to fuel the crisis.

The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report shows that nearly 8 million of South Sudan’s 12 million people will face acute food insecurity during the 2025 lean season, which begins in April.

The country is still reeling from decades of war and intercommunal violence, UNICEF says, and the world needs to come together to save more than 2 million children and more than 1 million pregnant or lactating mothers from malnutrition.

“The number of children and pregnant and breastfeeding women in need of urgent assistance has actually increased as expected. This is not only due to the current situation but a persistent issue of malnutrition affecting many counties,” said Hamida Lasseko, UNICEF representative in South Sudan.

An influx of 800,000 refugees and returnees fleeing conflict in neighboring Sudan is further straining South Sudan’s food security, stretching already limited resources.

In Bor, 70 kilometers north of Juba, Nyantuor Adoor Riak, a pregnant mother of five, has returned home to rebuild her life.

She said when they left during the conflict in 2013, her children were malnourished.

Riak hopes her unborn child will have a healthier future. A small kitchen garden, fenced with old bamboo near her compound, offers a glimmer of hope.

Riak says with the Right to Grow project, her children are now not malnourished. She has learned to plant ground nuts, which, she says, are like the palm nuts given to children in nutrition centers for malnourished children.

For another mother, Anyieth Anyang Deng, insecurity and flooding have turned survival into a daily struggle.

She says at home, insecurity has taken everything, even her cows. When she goes to the forest to farm, it’s not safe. Insecurity is everywhere, she says. She and others used to dig and grow food, but now, that’s no longer possible.

Bor County Health Officer Jacob Ajak sees the effects of malnutrition firsthand.

Ajak says the challenge is the lack of food in the community. Even if a child is treated and recovers, there may not be food back home.

He says there are health centers, but drugs are lacking. The little they have comes from partners such as UNICEF. He says when a child gets sick, families can’t afford private clinics.

Save the Children is setting up centers to provide food supplements for malnourished children. But UNICEF says more is needed to prevent and treat malnutrition.

“By 2025, over half a million children will face severe malnutrition, with a high risk of death, if critical services aren’t provided. Another 1.4 million will be moderately malnourished,” said Lasseko. UNICEF representative in South Sudan.

The U.K. government, through its Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, has challenged South Sudan and the international community to find long-term solutions. Peggitty Pollard-Davey represents the office.

“This IPC analysis is invaluable in ensuring aid reaches those who need it most. But we must also help people support themselves and move away from reliance on humanitarian aid,” she said.

Pollard Davey also emphasized the need for collaboration.

“International assistance can save lives, but this level of food insecurity and malnutrition is not inevitable. We must address the root causes to reduce reliance on aid,” she added.

South Sudan’s malnutrition crisis stems from multiple factors, including poverty, food insecurity, and poor hygiene. Diseases like cholera make the situation worse. Addressing these root causes is crucial to preventing malnutrition and saving lives.
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DAKAR, Senegal — Senegal’s ruling party, PASTEF, secured a resounding victory in the country’s legislative elections, winning 130 of 165 seats, according to provisional results announced Thursday by the national vote counting commission. 

The win grants newly elected President Bassirou Diomaye Faye a clear mandate to carry out ambitious reforms promised during the campaign, which include fighting corruption, revamping the fishing industry and maximizing the country’s natural resource benefits. 

The main opposition coalition led by former President Macky Sall won 16 seats. Sall congratulated PASTEF in a post on X on election day, and two other major opposition leaders conceded defeat hours after the polls closed on Sunday. 

The results will now have to be confirmed by the constitutional council, which is expected to do so in the coming week. 

Before Sunday’s legislative election, PASTEF held 56 seats in the National Assembly while Sall’s coalition had a slim majority of 83 seats. 

Faye, who was elected in March on an anti-establishment platform, said the lack of a majority had prevented him from executing reforms he pledged during his presidential campaign. 

In September, he dissolved the opposition-led parliament, paving the way for an early legislative election. 

Voting in the West African nation known for its stability was calm and peaceful despite an electoral campaign that was marked by sporadic clashes between rival groups of supporters. Observers from the international community, including the African Union and ECOWAS, praised the smooth voting process and the maturity of Senegalese democracy. 

Faye, 44, became Africa’s youngest elected leader in March, less than two weeks after he was released from prison. The former tax inspector’s rise has reflected widespread frustration among Senegal’s youth with the country’s direction — a common sentiment across Africa, which has the world’s youngest population and a number of leaders accused of clinging to power for decades. 
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Abidjan, Ivory Coast — Military-led Burkina Faso has frozen the “assets and resources” of more than 100 people, including ex-president Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, and two jihadist groups over the “financing of terrorism,” according to a decree sent to AFP Thursday. 

The decision affects 113 individuals and two “terrorist organisations” — the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) — according to the document, dated Tuesday and signed by Finance Minister Aboubacar Nacanabo. 

Former president Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba, who is currently in exile in Togo, was among the individuals cited. 

Damiba was ousted after seizing power in a January 2022 coup against elected president Roch Marc Christian Kabore. 

Little more than eight months later, Damiba himself was overthrown by 34-year-old Captain Ibrahim Traore, who now heads the Sahel nation’s regime. 

Damiba was expelled from the military at the end of October along with around 15 officers, for alleged acts of disclosing “intelligence with a foreign power” and “terrorist groups aimed at destabilising Burkina Faso.” 

The regime also froze the assets of the late former Burkinabe special forces commander Ahmed Kinda, whom the authorities previously described as the “head” of “destabilisation operations” allegedly involving expelled officers. 

Former intelligence services second-in-command Commander Sekou Ouedraogo, as well as exiled former ministers General Djibril Bassole, and Alpha Barry, who founded the press group Omega Media, were also named in the ministerial order. 

Dozens of others — all Burkinabe nationals — including some currently serving prison sentences also had their finances seized over accusations of “terrorist criminal conspiracy,” “terrorist murders” and “illegal possession of firearms.” 

Burkina Faso also banned the 113 individuals from traveling while their assets and economic resources remain frozen, the minister wrote. 

Since 2015, violence attributed to armed groups affiliated with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group has claimed more than 26,000 lives in Burkina Faso, including more than 13,500 since the September 2022 coup. 

More than two million people have also been forced to flee their homes inside the country.
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Journalist Betlehem Isaak, the daughter of journalist Dawit Isaak — a dual Eritrean-Swedish citizen imprisoned without trial in Eritrea since 2001— accepted the 2024 Edelstam Prize on her father’s behalf Tuesday during a ceremony at the House of Nobility in Stockholm.    

The prize honors Dawit for his “outstanding courage” in championing freedom of expression. The judges noted his commitment to advocating for democracy in Eritrea despite harassment, threats and repeated interrogations.  

“His punishment, his perpetual unlawful detention, never charged with a crime, defenseless and deprived of his basic rights without a trial, his de facto status of civil death, is untenable,” said Caroline Edelstam, chair of the Edelstam Prize jury and co-founder of the Edelstam Foundation.

The loss of her father not only has brought pain but has also taught her resilience, Betlehem said. Speaking to VOA from Gothenburg, Sweden, ahead of the award ceremony, she said continuing her father’s legacy is both a painful burden and a source of inspiration.  

“Losing a parent as a 7-year-old little girl is, of course, very traumatic,” Betlehem said. “But it’s also the strength I get from it today, and I really value it, even though I don’t wish this on my worst enemies.”  

Arrested during 2001 crackdown

Dawit was arrested during a government crackdown on independent media in Eritrea in September 2001. 

Eritrea ranks among the most tightly controlled countries in the world. A country with no independent media, Eritrea subjects all citizens to indefinite national service and has never held national elections. Twenty-one journalists and politicians from the 2001 roundup remain in detention, according to Amnesty International.  

Betlehem said although her father’s disappearance left a void in the family, she chose to follow in his footsteps and advocate for justice and freedom of expression.  

“Freedom, in general, is actually something that we have to fight for almost every day,” she said.  

This personal battle has informed Betlehem’s perspective as a journalist. In her work, she highlights the stories of those who face oppression. 

She said that her father’s plight should not be taken “for granted, especially when it comes to freedom.”  

‘I continue the work’  

In more than 23 years, Dawit’s imprisonment has prompted international campaigns and requests from the Swedish government for his release. 

“My father is actually a symbol,” Betlehem said, adding that his story and “his colleagues with him” are “a symbol of what’s really happening and has happened in Eritrea for the last 25 years.”  

For her, continuing his legacy is both a privilege and a responsibility. Though she was just a little girl when he was taken away, she follows his principles. 

“I continue the work that my father and his colleagues started,” she said. The Eritrean government “will never silence their voice, because I am my father’s voice, and I am also the voice of every Eritrean.”  

Several attempts by VOA to reach out to the government on Dawit’s status went unanswered.  

Daughter calls for father’s release

Betlehem’s advocacy extends beyond journalism. She frequently engages in campaigns calling for her father’s release and raises awareness about press freedom.    

Despite challenges, Betlehem remains hopeful. Without going into details, she said, she has proof of life to keep her going.  

“We know that my father is alive, and we know that that’s the truth,” she said. “We have sources that say that, and we believe those sources.”  

Freedom isn’t just about writing or speaking as a journalist where there’s censorship, she said.  

“You cannot even exist as a free human being,” she said. “You cannot even think.”  

This story originated in VOA’s Africa Division.  
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In Niger, where press freedom faces challenges, journalist Samira Sabou has become a symbol of resilience. The investigative journalist and activist is being recognized with an International Press Freedom Award. Reporter Abdoul-Razak Idrissa met Sabou in the capital, Niamey. VOA’s Salem Solomon has this story.
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