Recommendations of the Civil Society Meeting on African Union mechanisms and the Protection of Refugee, IDP and Citizenship Rights
African civil society organizations and experts met in Kampala, Uganda, from 19-20 October 2009 on the margins of the AU Special Summit on Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced persons.
Issues discussed included statelessness and nationality rights, which have been both a cause and
consequence of forced displacement and discrimination in Africa.
The session recognised that effective citizenship is a doorway to accessing other rights, including for
refugees and the displaced. In this context, it was noted that the right to nationality needed to be
promoted as a mechanism both to prevent and to respond to displacement on the continent.
Read the report here.
Read the communique here.
En francais.
Help RFK Laureate Aminatou Haidar return to Western Sahara
Aminatou Haidar, the RFK Center's 2008 Human Rights Laureate, has begun a hunger strike following her forced removal from her homeland of Western Sahara.
Upon her arrival at the Laayoune airport in Western Sahara, she declared Western Sahara -- not Morocco -- as her homeland on her immigration entry form. Moroccan authorities then confiscated her passport, interrogated her overnight, declared that she had renounced her citizenship, and put her on a plane to the Canary Islands.
Join us today and call on United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay to immediately conduct an investigation into the circumstances of Aminatou's forced removal from Western Sahara and to establish a mechanism for the protection of human rights of the Saharawi people.
Read the letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and sign the petition here.
FG fires Security Chief over el-Rufai, Ribadu
The Director-General of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA), Mr. Emmanuel Enarune Imohe, has been sacked by the Federal Government over the Nasir el-Rufai and Nuhu Ribadu passport saga.
He was said to have issued an instruction to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ask Nigerian missions abroad to deny el-Rufai and Ribadu consular services.
Read media coverage here.
Nigerian government denies consular services
The Nigerian Federal Government on 17 September issued
instructions requiring all foreign missions to deny Consular services to Nuhu Ribadu (former Anti-Corruption Chief) and Nasir El-Rufai, former Minister in the Obasanjo regime, in effect rendering the two men stateless.
A copy of the instructions are available here.