MS Risk Blog

Tensions Remain High in Uganda in Wake of Presidential Election

 On Saturday, long-time Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni was declared the winner of the country’s disputed presidential election, with his main rival rejecting the results, stating that they are fraudulent and calling for an independent audit of the country.

According to the final results, which were announced by the election commission, Museveni got more than 60 percent of the votes while his nearest rival Kizza Besigye received 35 percent. While Museveni was re-elected president, at least nineteen of his ministers lost their parliamentary seats. Amongst them was defense minister Crispus Kiyonga, who is spearheading regional efforts to end the political crisis in Burundi, and attorney general Fred Ruhindi. Some 9.7 million Ugandans voted, a turnout of around 63 percent, for president and members of parliament, with 290 assembly seats contested by candidates from 29 political parties. Furthermore, on Monday, election commission spokesman Jotham Taremwa disclosed that Saturday’s election results did not include tallies from at least 1,242 polling stations – effectively about 4 percent of all polling stations. While Taremwa has disclosed that the missing results cannot change the outcome, Besigye’s supporters have noted that they could bring down Museveni’s margin of victory. Museveni needed 50 percent plus one vote in order to avoid a runoff election.

Besigye was under house arrest as Museveni was declared the winner. On the ground sources have reported that heavily armed police were standing guard near his residence, which is located on the outskirts of the capital, Kampala. In a video, Besigye rejected the results, stating, “we knew right from the beginning the electoral commission that was organizing and managing these elections was a partisan, incompetent and discredited body as from the previous elections,” adding, “we knew that the military and security organizations were going to be engaged in a partisan and unfair way like they did in the past.” Besigye urged the international community to reject the official tally. The president’s ruling party, the National Resistance Movement, has urged “all candidates to respect the will of the people and the authority of the electoral commission and accept the result. We ask all Ugandans to remain calm and peaceful and not to engage in any public disruptions.”

While following the announcement of the results, the capital, which has been under a heavy security presence, was calm on Saturday, tensions increased on Monday when police arrested Besigye as he tried to leave his home where he had been confined under house arrest. On the ground sources reported seeing police push Besigye into the back of a blacked-out van and take him away to a police station in a rural area outside the capital. Besigye had been going to the election commission to get detailed copies of results from the presidential elections. Uchenna Emelonye of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights visited Besigye in the police station, telling reporters shortly after that he “has not been informed, formally or informally, why he is being detained. Polly Namaye, a police spokeswoman, has however disclosed that officers arrested Besigye in order to keep him from “storming the electoral commission with his supporters.”

Thursday’s voting was marred by lengthy delays in the delivery of polling materials. There were also some incidents of violence as well as a government shutdown of social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, which remained inaccessible on Saturday. The European Union (EU) observer mission has since reported that the election was marked by an “intimidating atmosphere, which was mainly created by state actors. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, EU mission leader Eduard Kukan stated that Uganda’s election commission lacks independence and transparency and does not have the trust of all the parties. According to the EU’s preliminary report, opposition supporters were harassed by law enforcement officials in more than twenty districts. Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the head of the Commonwealth observer mission, also reported that Uganda’s elections “fell short of meeting key democratic benchmarks,” while the US State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner disclosed that “the Ugandan people deserved better…We encourage those who wish to contest the election results to do so peacefully and in accordance with Uganda’s laws and judicial process, and urge the Ugandan government to respect the rights and freedoms of its people and refrain from interference in those processes.”

CAR Elects New President After More Than Two Years of Sectarian Fighting

On Sunday, the newly elected president of the Central African Republic (CAR) vowed to unite the country while thanking his opponent for conceding defeat in the runoff vote.

Faustin Archange Touadera, a former prime minister, was declared the winner of the 14 February runoff on Saturday night, having garnered 62.71 percent of the vote. While his rival, Anicet Georges Dologuele, who won 37.29 percent of the vote, expressed concern about irregularities, he did promptly acknowledge his defeat.

While many in CAR are hoping that the vote will strengthen the country’s tentative peace, after more than two years of sectarian fighting that has left thousands dead and force nearly 500,000 people to flee to neighbouring countries, Touadera does inherit the enormous task of trying to restore order in a country where heavily armed rebel groups continue to control large swathes of territory.

In his first remarks since the provisional results were announced, Touadera stated Sunday that he hoped to make the CAR “united, cohesive and prosperous” while creating jobs and reducing poverty. He further stated that “Central Africans from all regions and religions, we are going to transform our country into a vast worksite offering job opportunities to the youth, creating wealth that can be evenly distributed.” The constitutional court now has a week in order to validate the results.

WHO Declares Zika Virus a Global Health Emergency

The World Health Organization on February 1 declared the mosquito-borne Zika virus an international health emergency due to its links to thousands of birth defects. WHO Director Margaret Chan said that coordinated action was needed to improve detection and expedite work on a vaccine and better diagnostics for the disease. The UN agency is concerned about a surge in cases of microcephaly, a birth defect that causes babies to be born with small heads and underdeveloped brains. Chan said it was strongly suspected that Zika causes microcephaly.

This is the fourth time that the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency since such procedures were put in place in 2007. Emergency declarations are meant as international SOS and usually brings more money and action to address the outbreak, as well as prompting research into possible treatments and vaccines.

The United Nations health agency said the Zika infection was spreading rapidly and could infect as many as 4 million people in the Americas. According to the Pan American Health Organization, the virus has spread in 24 nations and regions in the Americas.

On January 15, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised pregnant woman to postpone travel to more than dozen countries in South America, Central America and the Caribbean to avoid infection with the virus. The agency raised the alert level for travellers to Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Venezuela.

Brazil is experiencing the largest known outbreak of Zika. On January 21, Brazilian health authorities said that the number of babies with microcephaly since October had reached nearly 4.000. The Health Ministry said that the surge was caused by the outbreak of Zika virus. On February 4, President Dilma Rousseff declared war on mosquitoes responsible for spreading the virus. Dilma announced that 220.000 members of the armed forces would go door to door to help to battle the mosquitoes.

Zika virus was first identified in monkeys in Uganda in 1947. The first human case was detected in Nigeria in 1954 and there have been further outbreaks in Africa, East Asia and the Pacific Islands. The most common symptoms of Zika virus are mild fever, conjunctivitis (red, sore eyes), headache, joint pain and rash. There is no vaccine or drug treatment so patients are advised to rest and drink plenty of fluids.

Civilians Killed/Wounded in Afghanistan Rises to Highest Record Since 2009

The United Nations reported that the number of civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan last year was the highest recorded since 2009, with children paying a particularly heavy price.

In its annual report on Afghan civilians in armed conflict, the UN disclosed that there were 11,002 civilian casualties in 2015, including 3,545 deaths. This is a four percent rise over the previous high in 2014. The report stated that fighting and attacks in populated areas and major cities were described as the main causes of civilian deaths in 2015, underscoring a push by Taliban militants into urban centres “with ah high likelihood of causing civilian harm.” The UN began compiling the annular report in 2009. Including Taliban-claimed attacks, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan assigned responsibility for 62 percent of total civilian casualties in 2015 to anti-government elements. However the report also noted that a 28 percent year-on-year surge in the number of causalities caused by pro-government forces, including the Afghan army and international troops. The report stated that seventeen percent of all casualties in 2015 were caused by such forces. It was not possible to say which side caused the remaining 21 percent of casualties. One in every four causalities in 2015 was a child, with the report documenting a 14 percent increase in child casualties over the year. While fighting and improvised explosive devices were the top two killers of children, unexploded ordnance picked up and played with by curious and unsuspecting youngers also claimed a heavy toll, killing 113 children – an average of two a week – an injuring 252 more in 2015. Women also paid a heavy price, with a 37 percent surge in female casualties. According to the report, one in every ten causalities recorded was a woman. The document also highlighted an increase in women being targeted for alleged moral crimes, calling the executions and lashings a “disturbing trend,” and adding that the UN plans to release a separate report on such incidents soon. Chillingly, the report documented a doubling of civilian causalities due to the deliberate targeting by militants of judges, prosecutors and juridical institutions. There were 188 such cases last year, of which 46 involved fatalities. The Taliban claimed 95 percent of such targeted attacks. While ground engagements were the largest cause of civilian causalities, improvised explosive devices came second, with the report adding that the use of such weaponry violated international law and could constitute war crimes. The report also criticized Afghan forces in particular for their reliance on explosives in populated areas.   The UN’s special representative for Afghanistan, Nicholay Haysom, has disclosed that “the harm done to civilians is totally unacceptable…We call on those inflicting this pain on the people of Afghanistan to take concrete action to protect civilians and put a stop to the killing and maiming.”

Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, Haysom stated that the statistics in the report do not “reflect the real horror,” adding that “the real cost…is measured in the maimed bodies of children, the communities who have to live with loss, the grief of colleagues and relatives, the families who make do without a breadwinner, the parents who grieved the lost children, the children who grieved the lost parents.” On 1 January 2015, US and other international troops moved from a combat to a training, advisory and assistance role in Afghanistan, effectively leaving Afghan forces to take the lead in fighting the resurgent militants as they targeted towns and cities.

Al-Shabaab Militants Kill Former Defense Minister in Capital City

On Monday, 15 February, officials reported that Islamist militant group al-Shabaab killed Somalia’s former defense minister with a car bomb in the capital city Mogadishu. The latest death of a Somali official comes just days after the militant group claimed responsibility for the 2 February bombing of a plane that had departed the airport in Mogadishu for neighboring Djibouti. It also comes as insecurity in the capital city and across the country has intensified in recent months, with the militant group launching a number of deadly attacks, particularly targeting troops with the AMISOM contingent.

Hours after Monday’s attack, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility, stating that it planted the car bomb that killed Muhayadin Mohamed, who was also an adviser to the speaker of Somalia’s parliament. Pictures taken by a photographer from the scene depicted the passenger seat took the brunt of the damage, with the passenger-side doors blown out. A police official confirmed that Mohamed was killed, adding that a second person in the car survived the blast without any serious injuries.

Mohamed was briefly defense minister in 2008, during Somalia’s transitional federal government, which was backed by the United Nations and had fought alongside African Union (AU) peacekeepers to push al-Shabaab out of Mogadishu and other major cities.

Meanwhile on Saturday, al-Shabaab insurgents claimed responsibility for a bomb attack, which ripped a hole in a passenger plane shortly after takeoff from the capital Mogadishu earlier this month. In a statement issued by the group, al-Shabaab stated on 2 February, Shebaab “mujahideen carried out an operation targeted dozens of Western intelligence officials and Turkish NATO forces aboard an airplane bound for Djibouti.” Al-Shabaab added that the bomb attack was “retribution for the crimes committed by the coalition of Western crusaders and their intelligence agencies against Muslims of Somalia.”

The blast left a metre-wide (three-foot)hole in the fuselage of the Daallo Airlines plane shortly after it took off from Somalia’s main airport, killing the suspected bomber and forcing an emergency landing. Two of the 74 passengers aboard were slightly injured. Investigators later reported that a passenger believed to be the bomber, identified as Abdulahi Abdisalam, was killed, probably after being propelled out of the aircraft in the explosion. The man had initially intended to board a Turkish Airlines flight however the Turkish plane did not turn up and Daallo Airlines agreed to fly the passengers onwards to Djibouti. Somali intelligence officials have released surveillance footage appearing to show a passenger being given a laptop in which the bomb was concealed.