By Felix Dela Klutse
Africa is the world’s second largest and second-most populous continent with a population of over 1.2 billion. Despite its rich natural resources, the continent has historically been a region with widespread human rights violations which have manifested in several forms including conflicts, slavery, neo- colonialism, apartheid, and extreme poverty. The sad thing is that civilians continued to pay the price of protracted armed conflicts in Africa.
Between January 2021 and March 2022, human rights violations were recorded in countries such as Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Sudan. Other countries include Ghana, Angola, Burundi, Eswatini, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. United Nations investigators in November 2021 denounced a raft of gross human rights violations being perpetrated in Africa, where over the past year, incidents of rape have surged and abductions, sexual slavery and brutal killings have become commonplace.
To describe 2021 as a most unusual year would be an understatement. The global Covid-19 pandemic, which introduced us to a “new normal”, was soon followed by waves of almost worldwide protests on racial injustice and police brutality that resonated loudly in Africa. The continent held more than a dozen general elections, many of them marred by violence. Authorities responded to popular protests and critical political commentary with violent repression, including arrests, detention, torture and in some cases killing of protesters, dissenters, and journalists.
A three-month investigation carried out by this reporter in some African countries revealed that parties to the conflicts committed war crimes and other serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. In certain cases, the pursuit of justice for victims proved largely to be elusive.
The conflicts displaced millions of people, yet the humanitarian and security situations in refugee and internally displaced people camps remained precarious. Gender discrimination and other forms of inequality remained entrenched in African countries. Major concerns included unlawful attacks, displacement, killings, spikes in gender-based violence, limited access to health services, rape, early and forced marriages, and drop out from schools, among others.
Unlawful attacks, Displacement, and killings
During investigations, it was revealed that human rights situation in Mozambique for instance worsened in 2021, where an insurgency has been dragging for nearly five years in the northern gas-rich Cabo Delgado province.
This insurrection by an Islamist-linked armed group calling itself Ansar al-Sunna (‘supporters of the tradition’) has resulted in the displacement of nearly 800,000 people as of June last year, as the armed group continued to attack villages, kill civilians, kidnap women and children and use boys as soldiers in its fight against government forces.
“State security forces were implicated in human rights abuses, including intimidation, sexual exploitation of displaced women, and the unlawful use of force against civilians,” Eric Hugo, a Human Right Lawyer with 15 years’ experience, has revealed in an interview.
Contributing, a human rights researcher at a Mozambican civic society organisation, Piere Johnson, told Business Day Media that while both sides have been committing human rights violations, some of the root causes of this insurgency itself can be traced to a history of human rights abuses by the Maputo administration.
“The situation is very bad, and it is sadly getting worse,” the researcher told Business Day, lamenting that, journalists, researchers, human rights defenders, academics and even the clergy have been targeted for attack in Mozambique for speaking against evil in society.
In Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado conflict, the Dyck Advisory Group, a private military company hired by the government as a quick reaction force, fired machine guns and dropped explosives indiscriminately from their helicopters.
Similarly, the insurgency in the North East Nigeria by the militant terrorist groups Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa continued. The terrorist groups conducted numerous attacks on government and civilian targets, resulting in thousands of deaths and injuries, numerous human rights abuses, widespread destruction, the internal displacement of more than three million persons, and the external displacement of more than an estimated 327, 000 Nigerian refugees to neighbouring countries as of December 2021.
On August 20, 2021, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stated that more than 24,000 persons were registered as missing in the country, with the majority from the conflict area in the North East. According to Amnesty International, the whereabouts of at least 50 suspected supporters of the Indigenous People of Biafra group arrested in Rivers State between October and November 2021 remained unknown at year’s end.
In March 2021, the Kaduna State government in Nigeria released its inaugural security report, which confirmed the killing of 937 residents and the abduction of 1,972 persons by local criminals. Kaduna State had the greatest number of kidnapping victims nationwide, according to several independent observers.
On April 20, gunmen attacked the Greenfield University in Kasamari Village in the Chikun (local government) Council of Kaduna State, abducted 20 students and two staff, and demanded a ransom of approximately $2 million. Three of the students were killed on April 23, 2021, while the remaining were released on May 29 after parents of the victims reportedly paid a ransom of $370,000.
On May 30, kidnappers abducted more than 100 students from an Islamic school in Tegina, Niger State. Six students died in captivity. On July 5, 2021, kidnappers abducted approximately 121 students from Bethel Baptist High School in Kaduna State. While most children were released following ransom payments, as of October 31, four students remained missing.
Our investigation also revealed that maritime kidnappings remained common as militants in the Niger Delta, Nigeria engaged in piracy and related crimes. In February 2021, Human Right Watch reported that a fishing trawler was hijacked off the coast of Gabon. The crew was brought to Nigeria and freed after a reported ransom payment of $300,000. In a related development, inter-communal violence between herders and farming communities in Niger Delta, as well as attacks by bandits, resulted in more than 3,494 deaths, Human Right Watch 2021 Report has stated.
In Cameroon’s Far North region, Boko Haram, and the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP) had killed at least 70 civilians in around 51 attacks by October 24, 2021. The fighting in Cameroon, according to Amnesty International, had displaced over 340,000 people within the country by August 2021. Responding to the armed conflict, Business Day investigation shows that government forces have also been responsible for violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws, including unlawful killings and arbitrary arrests.
In Somalia, the UN documented 241 civilian deaths and 295 injuries between February and July 2021. The armed group, Al-Shabaab, caused 68% of the casualties during indiscriminate attacks; the rest were attributed to state security forces, clan militias, and international and regional forces including the African Union Mission in Somalia.
In Central African Republic, national forces and their allies targeted a mosque in February 2022, killing 14 people. The UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) reported that 228 civilians were killed between June and October 2021 because of the conflict.
One of the saddest and commonest incidences that run through the continent in 2021 was the indiscriminate attacks that killed and injured civilians. In CAR, improvised explosive devices killed at least 15 people in the first half of 2021.
Similarly, an artillery attack, allegedly by TPLF forces, killed six people in August 2021 in a residential area in Debre Tabor town in Amhara region. In Niger, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) attacked villagers and traders in the Tillabéri and Tahoua regions. Three such attacks between January and March 2021 resulted in at least 298 civilian deaths, according to the Amnesty International Report.
Rights of refugees, migrants and internally displaced people
Conflicts that raged across the region continued to displace millions from their homes, including 1.5 million people in DRC during 2021, bringing the total number of internally displaced people in the country to five million.
In Somalia, several media reports stated that where more than 2.6 million people were internally displaced in previous years, about 573,000 people fled their homes between January and April 2022. Most of the region’s refugees were hosted by a handful of countries, including Cameroon, Chad, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger, Rwanda and Sudan while Uganda had the largest refugee population in Africa with over 1.5 million. Paradoxically, some host countries, such as DRC and Ethiopia, also produced large numbers of refugees.
The humanitarian and security situations in nearly all the region’s refugee and internally displaced people camps remained precarious. Lack of adequate access to food, water, education, health and housing, sometimes because of blockades and restrictions of humanitarian access, was common.
In March 2022, the Kenyan government gave UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, a 14-day ultimatum to close the Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps. The threat was later retracted, and the closure of the camps postponed to April 2022.
In Niger, ISGS attacked settlements inhabited by Malian refugees in Intikane, Tahoua region, killing dozens of people. In Tanzania, the police and intelligence services, in cooperation with the Burundian intelligence services, continued to use violence, arbitrary arrests, strict encampment policies and threats of deportation to pressure Burundian refugees to leave the country.
Sexual Harassment
Our investigation further shows that almost all actors involved in Africa’s armed conflicts deployed sexual violence as a war tactic. According to UNICEF, 25 per cent of those targeted by sexual violence are children, including girls as young as seven. Elderly and pregnant women have also been raped, and sexual violence against men and boys remains underreported as the stigma attached to it is higher than that of raping and killing the young and the elderly.
“There is a confirmed pattern of how combatants attack villages, plunder homes, take women as sexual slaves and then set homes alight – often with people in them,” Yasmin Sooka, Chair of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan has stated.
In CAR, the reporter chanced on a report where MINUSCA documented 131 such cases, including 115 rapes, between January and June 2021. In DRC, conflict-related sexual violence remained widespread – at least 1,100 women were raped in North Kivu and Ituri alone between January and September 2021, according to the 2021 UN Report on Human Rights Violations.
“Rapes, gang rapes, sexual mutilation, abductions and sexual slavery, as well as killings, have become commonplace in South Sudan,” she continued. “There is no doubt that these crimes are persistent because impunity is so entrenched that every kind of norm is broken,” the report stated.
In Ethiopia, parties to the conflict committed widespread rape against women and girls in Tigray and Amhara. In South Sudan, the UN estimated that state security forces and non-state armed actors committed at least 63 incidents of conflict-related sexual violence, including rape, gang rape and forced nudity.
In Niger, members of the Chadian contingent of the G5 Sahel raped two women and an 11-year-old girl in April in Tera, Tillabéri region. In Nigeria, media reports say female inmates in some cases faced the threat of rape, either from prison authorities or male prisoners in facilities that did not segregate by gender.
Blockades and Restrictions
Blockades and restrictions on humanitarian access were also used as a war tactic in some conflicts. In Burkina Faso, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM) blockaded Mansila town, Yagha province, causing food insecurity among the population. In Mali, GSIM blockaded many villages and communities, restricting villagers’ free movement and access to farmland and water, to force them to cease collaboration with the army.
Denial of, and restrictions to, humanitarian access by armed groups and vigilante groups or governments continued in Cameroon, DRC, Ethiopia and South Sudan. This contributed to leaving over five million people in Ethiopia, 19.6 million in DRC, and 8.3 million in South Sudan in dire need of humanitarian assistance according to UN estimates, particularly food and medicine.
Impunity
In many countries, our investigation shows that perpetrators of crimes under international law, and other serious human rights violations and abuses, enjoyed impunity. In Burkina Faso, two members of armed group Ansaroul Islam were convicted on terrorism-related charges, but no significant progress was made in the investigation into the unlawful killing in 2019 of 50 people and the enforced disappearance of 66 others, allegedly by the armed group Koglweogo in Yirgou village, Sanmatenga province.
In CAR, the Special Criminal Court announced that it had issued 25 arrest warrants, but none of them have been successfully implemented by the time of filing this story. While the government established a Commission of Inquiry to investigate violations committed by all parties since the beginning of the offensive by armed group Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC), it did not make its report or next steps public up to date.
“Despite a lull in abuses against opposition members after the May 2020 elections, killings, disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention and harassment of those perceived to oppose the government continued throughout 2021,” the Jerry Tom, a Civil Right Activists told this reporter.
In DRC, at least 80 army and police officers were prosecuted in North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri, Tanganyika and Kasaï provinces for serious crimes including sexual violence. Former Congolese warlord, Roger Lumbala, was arrested by French authorities over war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, many other perpetrators of crimes under international law in DRC continued to enjoy impunity.
In Mali, trials on terrorism charges took place but there were concerns about whether they met international fair trial standards. Meanwhile, there was little progress in the investigation of crimes under international law committed by armed groups and the military.
In Sudan, the year 2021 ended without anyone being held accountable for the killing of at least 100 protesters on June 3, 2019. Authorities also continued to fail in their obligation to transfer Omar al Bashir and two other suspects to the court to answer charges of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes in Darfur.
Right to health Care
The Covid-19 pandemic continued to tear through Africa with a devastating impact on human rights. Nearly nine million cases and more than 220,000 deaths were recorded by January 2022, according to Global Statistics on Covid -19. South Africa remained the epicentre of the pandemic, in terms of reported cases and deaths. Governments’ efforts to stem the tide of Covid-19 were hindered by inequality in the global distribution of the vaccine, created by pharmaceutical companies and wealthy nations.
Several media reports indicated that many pharmaceutical companies prioritized delivering vaccines to high-income countries, who in turn stockpiled more doses than they could use. Rich countries also blocked attempts to increase supplies to low and middle-income countries by supporting the temporary waiver of intellectual property rights and increased sharing of technology and know-how.
Covid-19 vaccines were mainly supplied to African countries through the COVAX facility, the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Trust, and bilateral donations. Too often, supplies were insufficient, or their arrival times unpredictable, making it hard for governments to build trust among their populations and structure effective roll out campaigns.
In countries like DRC, Malawi and South Sudan vaccine deliveries arrived with short expiry dates forcing authorities to destroy supplies or return the bulk for reallocation to other countries. Supply problems made it more difficult to ensure vaccines reached vulnerable groups, including older people and those with chronic conditions.
Internal factors impeding effective vaccination programmes in Africa included inequality, vaccine hesitancy and national insecurity. According to World Health Organisation (WHO), less than 8% of Africa’s 1.2 billion people were fully vaccinated by the end of 2021, the lowest rate in the world and a far cry from the WHO’s 40% vaccination target.
The Covid-19 pandemic continued to highlight the region’s chronic lack of investment in health sectors over many decades. The already inadequate healthcare systems in most countries were severely strained, especially during the pandemic’s third wave.
In Somalia, only one hospital in Mogadishu, the capital, handled all Covid-19-related cases across south central regions for much of the year.
With about 91% of their beds occupied during July 2021, private and public hospitals in the Gauteng province of South Africa struggled to cope. In Congo, DRC, Nigeria and Togo, health workers went on strike or organized sit-ins to denounce dysfunctional health systems or to demand months of unpaid salaries. Allegations of corruption, including in relation to Covid-19 funds, further undermined health sectors in many countries, including Cameroon and South Africa.
Right to education
School closures and other disruptions to learning due to the pandemic remained a major concern. In Chad, girls’ enrolment in secondary schools fell from 31% in 2017 to 12% in 2021 due to school closures and high rates of early and forced marriage, according to UNICEF.
In South Africa, UNICEF disclosed that approximately 750,000 children had dropped out of school by May 2021, over three times the pre-pandemic number of 230,000. In Uganda, schools began a phased re-opening in February 2021 but closed again in June, the National Planning Authority disclosed in its report, adding that, more than 30% of learners did not return to school. Children in conflict-affected countries experienced unique and profound difficulties in accessing education.
In Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Niger, Boko Haram, GSIM, ISGS and other armed groups continued to prohibit “western education” and committed war crimes by attacking schools, destroying school buildings, and killing many students.
Meanwhile, threats and violence continued to deter teachers from going to work. In Burkina Faso, UNICEF reported that 2,682 schools remained closed in 2021, affecting 304,564 students and 12,480 teachers. In CAR, the CPC attacked or occupied at least 37 schools between January and June 2021. In Niger, 377 schools in the Tillabéri region had closed by June 2021, by which time over 50% of seven-to-16-year-olds nationwide were not enrolled in schools, according to UNICEF.
Right to housing
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, forced evictions were recorded in several countries, leaving tens of thousands homeless. In Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria, forced evictions were mainly carried out in urban centres, involving the demolition of hundreds of homes built on what the respective governments called illegal settlements.
Other forced evictions in the region were driven by economic interests. In Uganda’s Kiryandongo district, more than 35,000 people were forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for industrial farming projects. In Zimbabwe, the media reported that thousands of villagers were driven from their land in Chisumbanje to allow a fuel company to expand its sugarcane fields.
On a positive note, courts in Kenya and Uganda affirmed the right to housing and condemned forced evictions. The Supreme Court of Kenya ruled that the 2013 eviction of residents of City Carton, an informal settlement in Nairobi, the capital, violated their right to housing. The Constitutional Court of Uganda found out that the Wildlife Authority had illegally evicted the Batwa Indigenous people from their ancestral land in the Mgahinga forest in the south-west.
Protests and the use of excessive force
Measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 provided a pretext for the repression of peaceful dissent and other rights which continued unabated across the region. The first instinct of many governments was to ban peaceful protests, citing health and safety concerns, including in Cameroon, Chad and Côte d’Ivoire.
Meanwhile, in countries like Eswatini and South Sudan, organizers were arrested beforehand, and the internet disrupted in what may have amounted to efforts to derail planned protests. Security forces used excessive force to break up peaceful protests of hundreds or thousands of people who defied bans.
In over 12 countries, including Angola, Benin, Chad, Eswatini, Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Sudan, many people died when security forces fired live ammunition in 2021. In Eswatini, the violent dispersal of pro-democracy protests that began in May resulted in 80 deaths and more than 200 injuries by October, according to 2021 Human Right Watch Report. In Sudan, the Report say at least 53 people died when security forces used live ammunition to disperse protests against the October military coup.
Peaceful protesters in Ghana also faced arbitrary arrest and prosecution. In Chad, at least 700 people protesting the electoral process and later against the establishment of the transitional government were arrested. In DRC, three activists arrested in North Kivu for organizing a peaceful sit-in to protest mismanagement in a local healthcare administration remained in detention. In Eswatini, at least 1,000 pro-democracy protesters, including 38 children, were arbitrarily arrested.
Human rights defenders and freedom of association
The defence of human rights remained an act of courage in Africa. Authorities sought to silence human rights defenders or to criminalize them. Along with opposition activists, they were arrested and judicially harassed in many countries, including Benin, Congo, DRC, Eswatini, Kenya, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In DRC, our investigation show, that two whistle-blowers were sentenced to death in their absence after they revealed financial transactions made for the benefit of individuals and entities under international sanctions. In Rwanda, Yvonne Idamange, a YouTuber, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for criticizing government policy. Authorities in Congo, Niger, Zambia and elsewhere used criminal defamation laws to intimidate and muzzle critics. Trumped-up charges were brought against critics under Eswatini’s terrorism and sedition laws.
Some human rights defenders paid the ultimate price. Joannah Stutchbury, an environmental activist in Kenya, was shot dead at her home in July after receiving death threats. Two journalists were also killed in Somalia.
Laws and policies to restrict the space for NGOs were introduced or implemented in several countries. In Togo for instance, the government suspended the granting and renewal of NGO licences. The Ugandan government ordered the immediate suspension of 54 organizations for allegedly failing to comply with NGO legislation in 2021.
In Zimbabwe, NGOs were directed to submit work plans to authorities before carrying out activities in Harare, the capital. The High Court ruled that the directive was unconstitutional. Subsequently an amendment to the Private Voluntary Organizations Act regulations, allowing for the closure of organizations suspected of funding, or campaigning for, politicians during elections was gazetted.
Media freedom curtailed
In 2021, a total of 45 journalists were killed in connection with their work in Sub-Saharan Africa, most of whom were in the Democratic Republic of Congo, followed by Burkina Faso and Somalia, International Press Institute (IPI) research has revealed. Of these 45 journalists, 40 were male and five were female, it said. A total of 28 journalists, according to IPI, were targeted due to their work, while three were killed while covering conflicts, two lost their lives covering civil unrest, and one journalist was killed while on assignment.
Governments continued to curtail media freedom in the African continent. In Angola, Burkina Faso, DRC, Madagascar, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo and elsewhere newspapers and radio and TV stations were suspended. In some countries, such as Ghana and Zambia, authorities stormed media houses disrupting live programmes and destroying property.
In Zambia, for example, unidentified people set fire to Kalungwishi radio station in Chiengi district in June. In Nigeria, media organizations staged a campaign tagged “Information Blackout” to protest two bills which threatened to tighten media regulation and undermine access to information.
Internet disruptions and shutdowns and suspension of social media were recorded, including in Eswatini, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda and Zambia. In June 2021, Nigerian authorities suspended Twitter after the site deleted a controversial tweet from President Buhari for violating its community rule.
Women’s and girls’ rights
Gender discrimination and inequality remained entrenched in African countries. Major concerns documented in the region included spikes in gender-based violence, limited access to sexual and reproductive health services and information, the persistence of early and forced marriage, and the exclusion of pregnant girls from schools.
Restrictive lockdown measures enforced by governments to curb the spread of Covid-19 contributed to soaring rates of sexual and gender-based violence across the region. Gender-based violence reached crisis levels in South Africa where official crime statistics showed a 74.1% increase in all sexual offences. There were also at least 117 cases of femicide in the first half of 2021.
Specific cases of gender-based violence in the region triggered public outrage and calls for action. Women in Chad protested in the streets against sexual violence and a culture of impunity for perpetrators after the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl was filmed and shared on social media.
In South Africa, the killing of Nosicelo Mtebeni, a 23-year-old law student, by her boyfriend led to a public outcry. Her body was dismembered and placed in a suitcase and in plastic bags.
While gender-based violence spiked, access to protection and support services for survivors, as well as to sexual and reproductive health services and information, remained limited across the region. Early and forced marriages persisted in many countries. In Namibia, it emerged that a four-year-old’s parents had married her to a 25-year-old man when she was two. In Equatorial Guinea, a ban on pregnant girls attending school continued. In Tanzania the Ministry of Education announced in November 2021 that it would lift a similar ban.
Legislative proposals to address specific forms of gender discrimination were introduced in Côte d’Ivoire and Madagascar. In Sudan, the cabinet approved the country’s ratification of the Maputo Protocol and CEDAW. Other positive reports included a judgment in favour of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Nigeria and the presidential pardon of 10 girls and women who were released from prison for abortion-related offences in Rwanda.
Prison and detention
Prison and detention centre conditions remained harsh and life threatening in the continent. Prisoners and detainees reportedly were subjected to gross overcrowding, inadequate medical care, food and water shortages, and other abuses. Some of these conditions resulted in deaths. The government sometimes detained suspected militants outside the formal prison system.
Overcrowding was a significant problem. Although the total designed capacity of the Nigeria’s prisons was 50,153 inmates, as of July 2021, the prison facilities held 68,556 prisoners. According to the government, approximately 74 percent of inmates were in pretrial detention. As of July 2021, there were 1,301 female inmates. Authorities sometimes held female and male prisoners together, especially in rural areas.
Prison authorities sometimes held juvenile suspects with adults. Many of the 240 prisons were 70 to 80 years old and lacked basic facilities. Guards and prison employees reportedly extorted inmates, including for sex (which could be interpreted as rape under the law), or levied fees on them to pay for food, prison maintenance, transport to routine court appointments, and release from prison. During our investigation, it was revealed that some prisons had no facilities to care for pregnant women or nursing inmates. Although the law prohibits the imprisonment of children, minors – some of whom were born in prison – lived in the prisons.
Persons with albinism
In Eastern and Southern Africa, persons with albinism and their families continued to live in fear for their lives. Violent attacks against persons with albinism were recorded in Malawi where a man was killed in February and the body of another was found in August 2021. In Zambia, two children, aged two and nine, were mutilated in separate attacks in June and July 2021.
Access to mental health care
Health experts have estimated that a fourth of the Kenyan population of 44 million suffers from a range of mental diseases, including schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, bipolar disorder, depression, and severe anxiety.
Kenya has only about 80 psychiatrists and 30 clinical psychologists, fewer than its 500 psychiatric nurses, of which only 250 staff work in mental health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the country spends only about 0.05% of its health budget on mental health. About 70% of mental health facilities in the country are in the capital, Nairobi.
The mental health sector is only marginally better in more prosperous South Africa, which boasts 22 psychiatric hospitals and 36 psychiatric wards in general hospitals. Inequality, however, skews these facilities in favour of only about 14% of the population of 53 million, of which one-third are afflicted with mental diseases, according to experts.
About 75% of mentally ill South Africans have no access to psychiatric or therapeutic care, experts say. The National Health Insurance programme, which could boost access to mental health care, will not be fully implemented until 2025, perhaps later.
Both South Africa and Kenya have more psychiatrists per capita, as well as more psychiatric beds per capita. The WHO estimates that fewer than 10% of mentally ill Nigerians have access to a psychiatrist or health worker, because there are only 130 psychiatrists in the country of 200 million people. WHO estimates that the number of mentally ill Nigerians ranges from 40 million to 60 million. Disorders like depression, anxiety and schizophrenia are common in Nigeria, as in other countries in Africa.
In 2012, Ghana took a significant step forward in addressing the nation’s mental health when it passed Act 846, also known as the Mental Health Act, becoming one of the few countries in Africa to set out a mental illness policy. Early that year a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), a non-governmental organization, estimated that 2.8 million Ghanaians (out of a population of 25.9 million) had mental illness.
Ghana has three psychiatric hospitals and about 20 psychiatrists currently. The HRW report cited the then-director of Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Akwasi Osei, as saying that drug-related psychosis affected 8–10% of all mental patients, while 20–30% of patients were diagnosed with schizophrenia, 20% with bipolar disorder, and 15–20% with major depression. Sadly, 97 out of 100 mental patients who need health care have no access to these services.
The WHO estimated early this year that 450,000 people in Sierra Leone—which has a population of just over seven million—suffer from depression every year, and that 75,000 suffer from schizophrenia. There are only 250 hospital beds for psychiatric patients in the country.
Sierra Leone emerged from a brutal civil war 14 years ago. A 2020 report by Dr. Soeren Buus Jensen for the WHO estimated that 400,000 of the country’s citizens suffered from mental health disorders like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder—partly the result of their exposure to “severe potentially traumatic events” during the war.
Sierra Leone’s best treatment institution for mental illness is the privately owned City of Rest, which has 70 rooms, and began as a Christian charity.
The mental health picture in Liberia, which similarly suffered a prolonged civil war, may be worse. Dr. Bernice Dahn, Liberia’s minister of health, stated in October 2015 that 400,000 Liberians (out of a population of about 4 million) suffer from various kinds of mental illnesses. About 43% of 1,600 households surveyed in 2008 met the diagnostic criteria for serious depressive illness, major depressive disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Liberia has only one psychiatric hospital, E. S. Grant Mental Health Hospital, now part of the government-owned John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia. It has 80 beds and housed 68 patients (48 males) in October 2015. In September 2015 the United Nations General Assembly included mental health and substance abuse in the global Sustainable Development Goals, marking the first-time world leaders recognized mental health as a global priority.
“Currently, African countries dedicate on average less than 1% of their health budgets to mental health, compared with 6–12% in Europe and North America,” Mr. Grant disclosed.
Rights to Food Security
Several countries in Africa were particularly impacted by drought aggravated by climate change. In Angola, low rainfall caused the worst drought in 40 years. Malnutrition peaked due to lack of food, safe water and adequate sanitation, with women, children and older people disproportionately affected.
Southern Madagascar was affected by severe drought impacting those reliant on subsistence agriculture, livestock and fishing as their main sources of livelihood. In South Africa, a drought disaster was declared in the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape and Western Cape provinces in July 2021.
Concerns relating to environmental degradation emerged in several countries, including Botswana, Congo, DRC, Ghana, Namibia and South Africa. In Botswana and Namibia, oil exploration licences continued to be granted in environmentally sensitive areas in the Okavango River basin to Canadian-based mining company ReconAfrica, despite their adverse impact on climate change and on the rights of residents, including Indigenous peoples, a point also made by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.
Extensive pollution was caused to the Tshikapa and Kasaï rivers and their tributaries in southern DRC. The government said the pollution was caused by a spillage upstream from a diamond mining and processing company based in northern Angola. The disaster led to at least 40 deaths, hundreds of cases of severe diarrhoea, and wiped-out aquatic life.
The Way Forward
“Despite some positive developments, 2021 and early 2022 was a difficult year for human rights in Africa. African governments and relevant non-state actors must take bold actions to address the many concerns that arose,” Mr. Israel Elorm, a legal practitioner, and Human Right advocate in Ghana, has stated in an interview.
He said governments must bolster efforts to fight impunity by undertaking thorough, independent, impartial, effective, and transparent investigations into crimes under international law and by bringing suspected perpetrators to justice.
In the absence of adequate Covid-19 vaccine supplies, Mr Elorm said governments should continue to prioritize the vaccination of groups at most risk, as well as those in hard-to-reach areas.
“They must cooperate at regional and international levels to strengthen their national healthcare systems and provide transparent information about health budgets,” he stated.
Contributing, Mr. Tola Imori, a development consultant in Nigeria said the governments in Africa must immediately take action to protect women’s and girls’ rights to equality, health, information, education, and to allow them to live free from gender-based violence and discrimination.
“Governments must end the harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders and respect media freedom, including by ensuring that media outlets can operate independently,” he added.
