2024 was a year of conflict. We must do better in 2025
Writer: Tigere Chagutah. PHOTO/COURTESY
What you need to know:
- Instead, the world has done little or nothing to ensure protection of civilians, while some countries have actively emboldened belligerents by blocking UN resolutions and sending weapons. Not even accounts of horrific sexual violence have pricked the world’s conscience enough to end the atrocities.
Conflicts inflicted massive civilian suffering across East and Southern Africa in 2024, with almost no accountability for perpetrators. Perhaps most infuriating, in many of these conflicts, civilians feel ignored by the world, including by African institutions meant to protect them.
Nowhere is that more obvious than Sudan. Fighting since April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces and their respective allies has killed tens of thousands of people, often in massacres, executions or indiscriminate bombings.
The conflict has forced 11 million people from their homes, making Sudan the world's largest internal displacement crisis. Half of Sudan’s population faces acute hunger, but humanitarian assistance has been slow to reach those in need. Even slower to arrive is a serious international response to stop the ongoing human rights abuses or hold perpetrators to account.
Instead, the world has done little or nothing to ensure protection of civilians, while some countries have actively emboldened belligerents by blocking UN resolutions and sending weapons. Not even accounts of horrific sexual violence have pricked the world’s conscience enough to end the atrocities.
The conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo also worsened in 2024. Despite promises, president Felix Tshisekedi failed to bring an end to human rights violations by both security officers and armed groups. The Tshisekedi administration continues to militarize everyday life, including through a prolonged “stage of siege” in war-torn North Kivu and Ituri.
Perpetrators of heinous crimes enjoy high ranks in the army. Hundreds are on death row as Tshisekedi’s government reinstated executions. In Ethiopia, security forces killed civilians and arbitrarily arrested thousands in Amhara, while rights abuses continued in Oromia. These violations followed the mass atrocities of the war in Tigray, deemed “one of the deadliest of the 21st century,” with victims denied justice.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government used a so-called “transitional justice process,” endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council and key Western nations, as a ploy to evade African Commission and UN investigations. This impunity rewards perpetrators and sends a dangerous message to a conflict-ridden region: atrocities come without consequences.
Ethiopia, with deep-rooted grievances and ethnic polarization, stands at a perilous crossroads. Sadly, we saw rampant human rights violations elsewhere in East and Southern Africa, too, in the burning conflicts in Somalia and South Sudan, Kenya’s deadly repression of Gen-Z protests, Uganda’s take on LGBTI rights and attack on the opposition, Angola’s arbitrary detention and torture of government critics, Zimbabwe’s crackdown on peaceful dissent and Mozambique’s assault on the right to protest.
What ties all these crises together? Simply put, a failure by the African Union (AU) and multilateral bodies to effectively act to protect human rights and hold perpetrators accountable. Still, I firmly believe 2025 can be better, in part because there are glimmers of progress, including at the AU.
In October, the AU human rights body extended the mandate of a Fact-Finding Mission to Sudan, a critical tool to investigate human rights violations and preserve evidence for future prosecutions of perpetrators. Still, the AU must do so much more in Sudan, DRC, Ethiopia and elsewhere.
In 2024 we also celebrated the release of journalists or government critics in Burundi, DRC, Ethiopia and South Sudan, plus the decriminalization of consensual same-sex sexual relations in Namibia and an agreement by all Southern African countries to protect the rights of people with albinism. These victories are proof that continuously advocating for human rights can achieve positive change. But solving conflict-related human rights violations requires concerted action from the top. In February 2025, the AU Commission will elect its senior leadership.
The new office holders must prioritize human rights and work to end the culture of impunity driving these conflicts. Only then will 2025 be a better year for human rights than 2024.
Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa
