Conflict must end in Africa's Great Lakes area for human rights to improve - UN

A United Nations-sponsored conference on peace, security and stability in Africa's Great Lakes region is an initiative towards improving human rights observance, but the continued clashes are obstacles to that end, a report to a UN General Assembly committee says.

"A ceasefire and cessation of hostilities must be quickly established, first of all because the complete implementation of the peace agreements depend on them and also so that war can no longer be used to justify gross human rights violations," says the interim report prepared by the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Burundi, Marie-Thérèse Kéita-Bocoum.

She has called on the international community to support the Great Lakes conference "for its success will undeniably have a positive impact on the human rights situation in Burundi and Central Africa."

Ms. Kéita-Bocoum's seventh report to the Assembly's Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee on human rights in strife-torn Burundi covers March to August 2003. She notes, however, "There were more or less continual clashes between the principal combatants until the end of August," when fighting broke out even within one of the fighting forces.

"The Special Rapporteur has not noted any improvement in the situation of economic, social and cultural rights in the period concerned," she adds.

She urges the international community to encourage humanitarian organizations to support the protection and promotion of human rights, especially those of women and the Batwa people. The Batwa, popularly known as "Pygmies," are believed to have been the first inhabitants of Burundi and surrounding countries. They are now widely discriminated against in the region.

"The Special Rapporteur requests the international community to encourage those involved in humanitarian action to devise projects targeted at the Batwa and to support the action undertaken by the Burundian authorities in that regard," she says.

On physical assaults on women, she says, "The magnitude of the crime gives reason to believe that rape is being used as a weapon of war."

"It is essential that the totally unacceptable sexual violence committed by the belligerents should cease immediately, since it involves war crimes whose perpetrators will sooner or later be held accountable for them," she adds.

The Special Rapporteur has asked the Government to take all necessary steps to end sexual violence, punish the perpetrators and ensure that the victims receive moral, material and psychological support.

Though mass rapes by armed groups have recently increased and have targeted women and girls without regard to age, the victims now also include young boys, "a new phenomenon." Ms. Kéita-Bocoum says.

She implored the fighting forces not to recruit children as soldiers or auxiliaries and not to involve them in the armed conflict in any way.