forces repeatedly arrested the aggrieved presidential candidate Dr Kizza Besigye and some of his party colleagues and supporters, also besieging his home and raiding the party’s office in Kampala. In DRC, there was a systematic crackdown on opponents of President Joseph Kabila’s attempt to stay in power beyond the constitutionally mandated second term – which ended in December – and those criticizing election delays. Security agents arrested and harassed those taking an explicit stand on the constitutional debate or denouncing human rights violations, accusing them of betraying their country. In Somalia, an acute humanitarian crisis was compounded by a political crisis over electoral colleges for parliamentary and presidential elections, with the armed group al-Shabaab rejecting all forms of elections and calling on its followers to attack polling venues to kill clan elders, government officials and MPs taking part in elections. Authorities in Congo continued to detain Paulin Makaya, President of “Unis pour le Congo” (UPC), simply for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression. After the opposition rejected the results of the March presidential election, the authorities arrested leading opposition figures and suppressed peaceful protest. The authorities in Côte d’Ivoire targeted opposition members and unfairly restricted their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, before a referendum on constitutional changes in October. This included the arbitrary arrest and detention of dozens of opposition members at a peaceful protest. Some of them were dropped in several places in the economic capital, Abidjan, others around 100km away from their homes and forced to walk back in a practice known as “mobile detention”. In October, during a peaceful protest against the referendum, police fired tear gas, clubbed the leaders and arrested at least 50 people. Amnesty International Report 2016/17 ARMED CONFLICT Civilians in Africa’s armed conflicts – including in Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, DRC, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan – faced serious abuses and violations. Genderbased and sexual violence was widespread, and children were recruited as child soldiers. In west, central and eastern Africa, armed groups such as al-Shabaab and Boko Haram continued to perpetrate relentless violence and abuses, with hundreds of civilians killed and abducted and millions forced to live in fear and insecurity, both within and outside their countries. In Cameroon, over 170,000 people – mostly women and children – were internally displaced across the Far North region as a result of Boko Haram’s abuses. In Niger, over 300,000 people needed humanitarian aid during the state of emergency in the Diffa region, where most attacks were carried out by Boko Haram. Many governments responded to these threats with disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law, including through arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detention, torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. In Nigeria, 29 children under the age of six – including babies – were among more than 240 people who died in horrendous conditions during the year in the notorious Giwa barracks detention centre in Maiduguri. Thousands rounded up during mass arrests in the northeast, often with no evidence against them, continued to be detained in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, without trial or access to the outside world. Similarly in Cameroon, more than 1,000 people – many arrested arbitrarily – were held in horrific conditions and dozens died from torture, or disease and malnutrition. In cases where detainees suspected of supporting Boko Haram were brought to trial, they faced unfair trials in military courts in which the death penalty was by far the most likely outcome. Elsewhere, the security and humanitarian situation in Sudan’s Darfur, Blue Nile and 19