The
photos showed blood-soaked concrete, a gashed open thigh, and an injured protester grimacing in pain on the ground. Taken by photojournalist Eti-Inyene Godwin Akpan on October 20, 2020, the images tell the story of Nigerian forces’ mass shooting of anti-police brutality protesters at Lagos’ Lekki Toll Gate, an
incident the government
continues to deny.
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe was not expecting security agents to appear at her home in a village outside Gaborone, Botswana’s capital, in July 2019, she told CPJ in a recent interview. But they didn’t come to arrest or charge her, she recalled – they came for her devices, hunting for the source for an article published by her employer,
Mmegi newspaper.
Oratile Dikologang was naked when police officers pulled black plastic over his head during his detention in April 2020. It was difficult to breathe, but the interrogation continued, he told CPJ in a recent phone interview.
Spyware’s repeated use to target journalists and those close to them poses an existential threat to the privacy required for press freedom to flourish. Without the ability to privately communicate with sources, conduct research, and compile information, journalists are hampered in their ability to keep the public informed and hold the powerful to account.
In May 2019, senior members of Ghana’s law enforcement posed for photos with the U.S. ambassador to their country at a
ceremony in the capital, Accra. Between them they held boxes and bags, gifts from the U.S. government to Ghana which, according to one of the recipients, contained Israeli phone hacking technology.
As reporters for Nigeria’s
Premium Times newspaper, Samuel Ogundipe and Azeezat Adedigba told CPJ they spoke often over the phone. They had no idea that their regular conversations about work and their personal lives were creating a record of their friendship.
Hamza Idris, an editor with the Nigerian Daily Trust, was at the newspaper’s central office on January 6 when the military arrived looking for him.
When Nigeria's incumbent president Muhammadu Buhari
won re-election this year, he campaigned (as he did
in 2015) on an image of good governance and anti-corruption. Billboards in the capital, Abuja, bore the smiling faces of the president--who first led Nigeria as military ruler from 1983-1985--and his vice-president Yemi Osinbajo, and called for voters to let them "continue" their work and take the country to the "Next Level."
Three bullets, fired at close range by two assassins on a black and blue Boxer motorbike on January 16, 2019, killed investigative journalist
Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela, according to Sammy Darko, a lawyer working on Divela's case.
When Uganda in April
ordered Internet service providers to shut down all news sites that had not been authorized by the
communications regulator (pdf), it was the latest attempt by President Yoweri Museveni’s government to
constrict the space for independent media.
A
ceasefire agreement signed on December 21 between the South Sudanese government and opposition forces has revived a
2015 peace process and brought hope that the conflict will not
persist into its fifth year.
On January 10, radio journalists
Darsema Sori and
Khalid Mohammed were released from prison after serving lengthy sentences related to their work at the Ethiopian faith-based station Radio Bilal. Despite their release and Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn's
promise earlier this month to free political prisoners, Ethiopia's use of imprisonment, harassment, and surveillance means that the country continues to be a hostile environment for journalists.
“The internet for journalism is now like the air you breathe,” said Befeqadu Hailu, an Ethiopian journalist and a member of the
Zone 9 blogger collective who was arrested in April 2014 and charged with terrorism. “Without the internet, modern journalism means nothing.” Yet, the internet is something that journalists in multiple African countries are often forced to do without.
As the world struggles to respond to conflicts and the people fleeing them, UN insiders are also struggling to advance a ‘shift in mindset’ to help prevent these crises from happening in the first place.
Nearly one month after UN Security Council members visited troubled South Sudan, disagreement reigns over even the limited outside measures proposed to try to bring the security situation in the world's newest country under control.
In a world where annual defence spending is over 1.6 trillion dollars and the UN Peacebuilding Fund receives less than 700 million dollars, it would seem that the military industrial complex is unwaveringly entrenched.
Ulziikhutag Jigjid, 49, is a member of a 10-person group in the Khan-Uul district on the outskirts of Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar, which is producing brooms, chairs, containers, and other handmade products from discarded soda and juice containers.
As the U.N. focuses on refining its Post-2015 Development Agenda, divisions surrounding issues of population and development continue to plague consensus on a universal way forward.
How will the U.N. prioritise the goals of its Post-2015 Development Agenda? Which goals deserve more funding? And which goals will help the most people? These are the questions that the Copenhagen Consensus Centre (CCC) seeks to answer.
It plays like a Hollywood movie. A former member of the Syrian military police, later codenamed “Caesar”, smuggles digital memory sticks containing photographs of corpses displaying signs of severe torture and starvation -- in his shoe. That was between September 2011 and August 2013. But now comes the question of accountability.
Youth represent 40 percent of the African continent’s population. This number is expected to rise over the next 20 years and represents the population bearing the brunt of African economies’ failure to create sufficient jobs and address poor economic management.