Africa

A court annuls initial agreement reached with Russia, the US and South Korea to build nuclear plants.

The draw for the expanded group stage of Confederation Cup is completed in Cairo with three former winners included.

South Africa's Mamelodi Sundowns are handed a tricky group as they bid to defend their African Champions League title.

Prominent South African cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro defends his controversial sketch of President Jacob Zuma and a businessman raping 'Lady South Africa'.

The United Nations has appealed for $64.5 million to respond to the urgent needs of 731,000 people over the next six months in the Kasaï region, the latest &#8220humanitarian hotspot&#8221 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

South Africa is in for a rough ride as the ruling ANC prepares to choose President Jacob Zuma's successor.

The political process in South Sudan is not dead but requires significant resuscitation, the head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the crisis-torn country told the Security Council today.

The United Nations health agency’s regional office for Africa has announced that Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi will take part in a breakthrough pilot programme to make the world’s first malaria vaccine available in selected areas, beginning in 2018.

Almost 30,000 young Somali children, many of them displaced by a searing drought, are being vaccinated against measles this week in a United Nations-backed emergency campaign in one of the country’s hardest-hit towns.

Park ranger Rodrigue Mugaruka Katembo, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, explains how he lives in constant fear of attack for protecting wildlife in Virunga National Park.

Ilhan Omar explains how she made history to become the first Somali-American legislator in the US.

Sudan is a the northern white rhino, and the last chance for the survival of his species.

Documenting the workplaces of a generation of Ghanaians.

In our series of letters from African journalists, writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani looks at the discovery of mystery cash piles in Nigeria.

Mass graves, child soldiers and police decapitations are all features of a little known Congolese conflict, as the BBC's Catherine Byaruhanga reports.

Many different countries are trying to get a toehold in Somalia as it slowly emerges from chaos.

April 21, 2017 (JUBA)-The armed opposition Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM-IO) Friday has confirmed that some senior commanders have surrendered to the Ugandan army deployed in the northern part of the east African country.

Last week, several media outlets in Uganda reported the two senior SPLM-IO officers Identified as Maj. Gen Benjamin Luboi and Brigadier Gen. Taban surrendered to Ugandan army in Padibe Sub-county, Uganda's northern Lamwo district near the South Sudan's Eastern Equatoria province.

Initially, the armed opposition group had denied the report, saying only civilians have fled to northern Uganda.

However, the newly appointed deputy SPLM-IO spokesperson, Lam Paul Gabriel confirmed the report and said they welcome the decision by Ugandan authorities and the UNHCR.

“We would like to thank the staffs of the Ugandan prime minister's office and the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees for helping Benjamin and his friends get registered as refugees,” he added.

Gabriel dismissed that any of the two rebel officers was the commander of the rebel forces in Pajok, Eastern Equatoria.

“The sector command base is not in Pajok but between Imotong and Namurunyang/ Kapoeta state,” he added.

Earlier this month of April, the UNHCR reported that over 6000 refugees have crossed into northern Uganda district of Lamwo.

The influx of refugees was triggered by a military operation carried out by the government forces in Pajok, a town of more than 10,000 people 15 km (10 miles) north of the Ugandan border, to flush out rebel guerrillas in the area.

(ST)

April 21, 2017 (JUBA)- A peace and security forum drawing participation of governors from at least 14 states in South Sudan is underway in Kuacjok town, the administrative headquarters of Gogrial state

Women from a cattle camp walk near Gogrial (Photo Tim Freccia/Enough Project)

Gogrial governor Gregory Deng Kuac Aduol said on Friday the conference brings participants from states in the Upper Nile region together with those from neighbouring states in Bahr el Ghazal region.

The two-day conference commenced on Friday 21st April 2017 and is expected to end on 22nd April 2017.

This security and development meeting draws 14 governors and over 500 government officials including Abyei administrative area, northern Liech and Ruweng states among others.

“It will focus on how to curve communal conflicts, cattle thefts and border security control in their respective administrative areas and will reduce insecurity along our borders and provide everlasting peace and stability between our civil populations,” said Governor Gregory.

The forum will also discuss ways of opening interstates trade to boost economic stability in the country, he added.

He pointed that lack of security hampers the ongoing efforts to remove the spectre of famine which is the main challenge facing the South Sudan, adding the growing insecurity now prevent the circulation of local product and merchandises from a state to another.

"I call our citizens to support this conference so that its bear fruits," Aduol said.

The forum will also tackle issues of interstates feeder roads and development of state infrastructure.

This conference is the first ever since the appointment of the governor of Gogrial state in January 2017.

(ST)

April 21, 2017 (KHARTOUM) - The Sudanese government has deposited with the United Nations (UN) the coordinates of the baselines from which its maritime areas are measured, including the disputed Halayeb triangle with Egypt.

The Halayeb triangle, which is a 20,580 km area on the Red Sea, has been a contentious issue between Egypt and Sudan since 1958, shortly after Sudan gained its independence from the British-Egyptian rule in January 1956.

The area has been under Cairo's full military control since the mid-1990's following a Sudanese-backed attempt to kill the former Egyptian President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak.

On 2 March, President Omer al-Bashir issued a decree including the baselines from which the maritime areas of the Republic of Sudan are measured.

By virtue of its membership in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, Sudan is required to notify the UN Secretary-General of any development affecting the geography of its maritime boundary.

In conjunction with the notification, the Sudanese foreign ministry deposited with the UN its reservation on a similar decree issued by former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1990, in which he laid the baselines for the Egyptian maritime areas.

“The Republic of the Sudan declares its rejection and refusal to recognize the provisions of the declaration issued by the Arab Republic of Egypt on 9 January 1990, entitled Presidential Decree No. 27, which touches on the Sudanese maritime border, North of Line 22, which was included within the maritime coordinates announced by Egypt within its maritime borders on the Red Sea in paragraphs 56-60,” read Sudan's declaration seen by Sudan Tribune.

“The above points (in Mubarak's decree of 1990) are located within the maritime boundaries of Sudan's Halayeb triangle which falls under Egyptian military occupation since1995 to date, and thus are part of the Sudanese maritime border on the Red Sea” added the declaration.

The foreign ministry stressed that the Halayeb triangle is a Sudanese territory located within the political and geographic borders of the Sudan, saying these borders have been recognised internationally during the various historical periods, including the period of the British-Egyptian condominium colonisation.

It underscored that Sudan inherited these borders since its independence was declared in 1956, saying this fact is supported by the UN records and maps and wasn't disputed by any party.

The foreign ministry pointed out that Sudan has been notifying the UN Security Council on this issue annually since 1958 until 5 January 2017 “in order to renew its rejection of the Egyptian military occupation of Sudan's Halayeb triangle and maritime borders”.

“As well as to renew its non-recognition of all sovereign actions by the Egyptian government in the Halayeb triangle and maritime borders on the basis of the current situation,” it added.

Last April, Cairo refused a demand by the Sudanese government to hold direct talks on Halayeb and Shalateen or to accept the referral of the dispute to the International Court of Arbitration.

Egypt has used to reject Sudan's repeated calls for referring the dispute to international arbitration.

The international law provides that the agreement of the two parties is needed to arbitrate a dispute by the tribunal.

(ST)

April 21, 2017 (KHARTOUM) - The state security prosecution office in Khartoum Thursday has summoned the former chairman of the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD) and accused him of harming the health security by forming an illegal body.

CCSD is an independent doctors association that was formed during the doctors' strike in October 2016 as a parallel body to the pro-government Sudanese Doctors Union (SDU).

In a statement extended to Sudan Tribune on Thursday night, the CCSD said the General Union of Medical and Health Professions and the SDU have filed charges against its former chairman Hassan Karar Mamoun.

“In an unsurprising move on Thursday morning, the former head of the CCSD was summoned by the state security prosecution and taken from doctors' residence in Khartoum to the state security prosecution's department of crimes against the state” read the statement.

The statement pointed that a large number of lawyers has volunteered to defend Mamoun and prove, saying the government has acknowledged the legality of the CCSD since the federal and state health ministries and the Vice President sat to with the committee to negotiate to end the doctors' strike last year.

It added the doctors during their strike aimed to achieve professional demands that don't pose any threat to the state security, pointing to the increased targeting of doctors through criminal charges recently.

The statement further accused the said the General Union of Medical and Health Professions and the SDU of seeking to criminalise the same people who they claim to be representing, describing the latter's move as “disgrace”.

It is noteworthy that the Sudanese doctors in October 2016 went on a two-month intermittent strike and refused non-emergency treatments to patients to protest the poor working conditions, lack of medicines and lack of doctors protection after increasing attacks by frustrated patients and their families.

(ST)