Togo

Journalists, human rights activists and opposition leaders took to the streets of the Togolese capital, Lome, on Wednesday to protest the recent beating of an editor of an opposition newspaper. “The government must open a serious investigation into this attack, to identify, try and punish those responsible,” Carlos Ketohou, president of Togo’s Journalists for Human Rights, said during the demonstration.

According to news reports, some 40,000 Togolese refugees have so far fled into neighbouring Benin and Ghana since clashes broke out around the 24 April presidential polls. Over 60 per cent of the refugees are women, young people and children under five. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that about 200 refugees are currently being registered each week. To meet the continuing maternal health needs of the refugee population, the United Nations Popula...read more

The African Union has finally confirmed the ratification of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) on the Rights of Women in Africa by Cape-Verde. There are now twelve instruments of ratification deposited out of the fifteen that are needed for it to enter into force. The Council of Ministers of Togo adopted at its meeting of July 27th 2005 in Lomé a bill authorizing the ratification.

People are still fleeing Togo more than three months after disputed presidential polls and the refugees, who now number 40,000, are showing no sign of wanting to go home, the UN refugee agency said as it repeated an appeal to donors for money. "The story we hear relentlessly repeated is that while by day the situation is calm, it is at night that things happen," said one aid worker in Benin, who asked not to be named.

The human rights group Amnesty International has issued a report alleging serious human rights violations in Togo during the West African country's recent elections. The document, entitled 'Togo: Will History Repeat Itself?', was released Wednesday. It accuses the Togolese security forces and pro-government militants of targeting suspected opponents and other citizens in a campaign of extrajudicial executions, torture, rape, kidnappings and arbitrary arrests.

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