Thirteen dead, dozens missing in Nigeria boat accident
Twenty-six people, mostly women and children, were rescued from the wooden boat, said Yusuf Lemu, an official of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency.
Local official Isiyaku Akilu said the boat driver, who was among those rescued, could not confirm the number of passengers on the boat. "The exact cause of the accident is yet to be determined, but from all indications, it appears to be due to overloading," said Akilu.
Adamu Ahmad, a member of the boat drivers' union, confirmed that the boat was overloaded. He said it was a large wooden boat and efforts are being made to recover more bodies.
Niger State is also home to Nigeria's three major hydroelectric dams, and boat accidents have become a frequent occurrence. Saturday's accident happened nine months after a boat carrying mostly women and children returning from a religious festival capsized and killed at least 60 people.
Rescue efforts were momentarily paused on Sunday to allow the custodian of the river to perform rituals that would ensure a "hitch-free rescue mission", said Akilu.
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The Independent
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Singapore migrant workers hailed as heroes for saving woman from sinkhole
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The Guardian
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‘The matter is in his hands alone': president of Sierra Leone urged to ban FGM as court rules it tantamount to torture
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Nine years later, Allieu's experience has led to a ruling against Sierra Leone by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) court of justice, which described FGM as 'one of the worst forms of violence against women' which 'meets the threshold for torture'. The case, filed by Forum Against Harmful Practices (FAHP), We Are Purposeful, and Allieu, held the government liable for human rights violations due to its failure to criminalise FGM. The court ordered Sierra Leone 'to enact and implement legislation criminalising female genital mutilation and to take appropriate measures toprohibit its occurrence and protect victims'. Though the UN passed a resolution to ban FGM in 2012, it is still practised in about 30 countries. In Sierra Leone, a national survey in 2019 found that 83% of women had undergone FGM, with 71% of them subjected to the practice before the age of 15. There is no law explicitly criminalising the procedure, part of a traditional initiation ritual that marks a girl's entry into womanhood, carried out by senior members of Bondo societies. Every year, women and children are left with health complications, and some die, as a result of such rituals. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is the removal of part or all of the external genitalia for nonmedical reasons, as defined by the World Health Organization. There are different types of cutting: removal of the clitoris and/or its hood; removing the clitoris and the inner fold of the vulva (labia minora); and the narrowing of the vaginal opening by cutting and repositioning the labia minora through stitching. Also known as infibulation, this has the worst health consequences. The fourth type of cutting includes other forms of injury to the genitalia such as incising, scraping or cauterising. 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The directive by Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), said US officials may deport migrants to countries other than their own with as little as six hours' notice, even if those third party nations have not made assurances about their safety. Legal experts have objected. 'We are going to continue to fight the policy that conflicts with the statute, the regulations and with the constitution,' said Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, an organization leading a class-action lawsuit against Ice. The UN human rights office denounced the action and urged the US to halt deportations to third-party countries. More than 250 Venezuelans have just been repatriated after being deported by the US without due process to a brutal anti-terrorism prison in El Salvador. Previously a multinational group of migrants was sent to Panama from the US and ended up trapped in a hotel then caged in a jungle setting, while more recently another group was deported to the tiny African kingdom of Eswatini, which critics there described as 'human trafficking' and lamented the prospect of more to follow. 'International law is clear that no one shall be sent anywhere where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to serious human rights violations such as torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life,' the UN said in a statement. Nilakout was 17 when he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his murderous attack on Birte Pfleger's parents. In 2012, the US supreme court ruled that life without parole was unconstitutional for minors. After nearly 30 years behind bars, Nilakout became eligible for parole in 2022, despite a challenge from Pfleger, and was released from a California state prison the following year. He was picked up in Trump's mass deportation dragnet after the Republican president returned to the White House in January. Pfleger, now a history professor at Cal State University in Los Angeles, said she felt conflicted when she found out that Nilokaut had been deported to South Sudan. 'The moral dilemma here is that he should have never been let out of prison. But once he was released from prison, Ice should have been able to deport him, or he should have self-deported to Laos. But of course, what happened is he was put on a Gulfstream jet headed for South Sudan that violated a federal judge's orders to give notice. He and the others were denied due process,' she said. Pfleger continued: 'I am not involved in victims' rights organizations or anything like that. I have not gone to law school, but I have read the constitution and the history of it. And I think that due process rights are fundamental. And when they're no longer fundamental, we all have a problem.' The pain for Pfleger and her sister of losing their mother and their father being wounded having watched his wife get shot and being unable to help her persists, and the family had not expected Nilakout to be freed, she said, adding that her father, Klaus, is 93 and frail. My mom was everything to him,' she said. In a statement, the government of South Sudan cited 'the longstanding support extended by the United States' during its fight for independence and its post-independence development, for the latest cooperation. Between 2013 and 2016, a civil war killed 400,000 people in South Sudan. Earlier this year, the threat of a new war breaking out pushed the US embassy to issue a level 4 warning to Americans not to go to South Sudan because of crime, kidnapping and armed conflict there. The German government recently warned, via the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, posting on social media that: 'After years of fragile peace, South Sudan is again on the brink of civil war.' The UN commission on human rights in South Sudan warned 'We are witnessing an alarming regression that could erase years of hard-won public progress.' The UN added that a humanitarian crisis was looming with half the country already suffering food insecurity and two million internally displaced, with a further two million having fled the violence to seek sanctuary in neighboring countries.
