The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent said in an interim report on Belgium that racial discrimination against Africans “is endemic” in Belgium’s institutions and the nation needs to make amends for the crimes committed in the Congo.
Mining could be an enormous source of income for African women as even in lesser positions it pays better than other available work. However, women are barred from access to mining work due to restrictive cultural norms, taboos and gender discriminatory ideologies.
French-Congolese choreographer and dancer Bolewa Sabourin is the force behind Re-Creation, a project that uses dance to provide therapeutic support to female victims of rape and sexual assault in the Kivu region of eastern DRC.
French President Emmanuel Macron says France will return 26 pieces of art to Benin, after receiving a report calling for African artefacts housed in French museums to be returned. The report recommends restitution of objects taken from Africa during “scientific expeditions” and “objects seized within the military contexts”. There are at least 90,000 objects originating from sub-Saharan Africa currently in French Public Collections.
It’s been an eventful year for the Democratic Republic of Congo as the country prepares for elections.
Even with the end of the war in central Africa, continuing instability in the region has triggered an epidemic of rape.
The Congolese physician has treated over 20,000 victims of traumatic rape in a conflict fueled in part by ‘conflict minerals’ used to make cellphones.
The prize recognises that violence against women has become a weapon of war.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Dr. Denis Mukwege has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018. Dr Mukwege was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Nadia Murad, a Yazidi-Kurdish human rights activist for “their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict”.
In most instances, Africa’s mineral wealth has been signed away to other countries by leaders who have signed terrible deals that enrich only themselves and not their country. However, the continent has some of the world’s biggest mineral reserves, and has a chance to be a major player in the value chains, but the risk of being exploited by industrialised countries remains.
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