Regional: June 17 marked the Day of the African Child and the 25th Anniversary of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC). Children all over Africa locked in prisons or detainment camps because they do not have the required identification documents.
This year, the IDC’s Global Campaign to End Immigration Detention of Children are calling for the Africa Union Treaty body who monitors the African Children’s Charter to provide their own regional recommendation: that all children deserve their right to liberty.
Tiny Gambia has a big export: migrants desperate to reach Europe. The Washington Post reports on the increasing number of Sub-Saharan Africans choosing to migrate North in search of an alleviation to crippling poverty.
The influx into Tanzania of 70, 000 Burundian refugees fleeing a “climate of menace” maintained by the militia group Imbonerakure, allied to Nkurunziza’s ruling CNDD-FDD party, has placed extreme pressure on the Tanzanian Government’s and humanitarian organisations’ refugee infrastructure.
An outbreak of cholera and severe diarrhea in the makeshift UNHCR holding camp set up in the small fishing village of Kagunga, on the edge of Lake Tanganyika which provides the route of transit from Burundi to Tanzania, have overwhelmed the health and sanitation facilities in the area.
In late 2014, the Tanzanian government approved a plan to offer citizenship to the 200,000 former Burundian refugees living in the country since the 1972 civil war. This bold and generous offer of naturalisation will be put to to the test with the current eruption of political violence in Burundi, and UNHCR expectations that the number of Burundi arrivals in Tanzania will continue to escalate.