Human Rights in Niger - Conflict in The North

Conflict in The North

Since late 2007, press and international aid agencies have complained that they have been prevented from monitoring the situation or delivering aid, but both sides in the fighting report that the conflict continues to escalate. Humanitarian agencies in Niamey estimated in early December 2007 that there were around 11,000 people displaced by the fighting, in addition to the 9,000 Nigeriens who lost their homes in heavy flooding. Doctors Without Borders claimed at the time that no aid is being delivered by the government in the north, while 2,500 to 4,000 displaced people are estimated to have come to Agadez from the mostly Tuareg town of Iferouane, with the entire civilian population apparently fleeing after the army and rebels started fighting in the area in mid 2007. Humanitarian sources are quoted saying that the Army is operating with little control, and adding to, rather than suppressing banditry, drug-trafficking and lawlessness in the north. Amnesty international and Human Rights Watch have both accused the government of carrying out widespread human rights abuses in the north of the country, claiming that there has been a pattern of extrajudicial killings and deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on civilians, especially in Tuareg communities.

During the First Tuareg Rebellion of the 1990s, the security forces carried out a massacre of over 100 civilians in the north of the country. No legal action was ever taken against the perpetrators. Similar massacres of ethnic Toubou communities in Bosso, came to light in 2001, some six years after the killings took place. Despite calls from domestic and international human rights groups, the government did not initiate an independent investigation into the mass grave at Bosso. In 1999 a mass grave containing 149 bodies alleged to be those of missing Toubou former rebels was discovered; the Toubous were last seen in the custody of the armed forces. The Government acknowledged the existence of the mass grave.