Africa Archive

Last November, the governments of France and Comoros agreed to resolve a months-long diplomatic spat over migration that had severely strained their relationship. Azali Assoumani, the president of Comoros, sparked the standoff last April when his government stopped accepting its deported citizens from Mayotte, a nearby French overseas territory that is also claimed by Comoros. This led France to retaliate by suspending visas to all Comorian nationals. According to Simon Massey, a senior lecturer in international relations at Coventry University, the dispute provided Assoumani with an opportunity to galvanize the electorate and build support for a referendum on constitutional revisions […]

After years of political unrest in Burundi, the country is now in the midst of an authoritarian crackdown.Even as the human rights sphere shrinks, there are signs of a deepening ethnic crisis in Burundi. In early December, the tiny east African country of Burundi garnered international attention when its Foreign Ministry, at the request of President Pierre Nkurunziza, called for the closure of the U.N. human rights office in the capital, Bujumbura. The move was not altogether surprising from a regime once called one of “the most prolific slaughterhouses of humans in recent times” by former U.N. rights chief Zeid […]