life imprisonment, and set a new benchmark for efforts to end impunity in Africa. The case was the continent’s first universal jurisdiction case and Habré the first former African leader to be prosecuted before a court in another country for crimes under international law. In March, the ICC convicted Jean-Pierre Bemba, former Vice-President of DRC, for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in CAR. The ICC’s sentence of 19 years followed its first conviction for rape as a war crime and its first conviction based on command responsibility. The guilty verdict was a key moment in the battle for justice for victims of sexual violence in CAR and around the world. The ICC also began the trial of Côte d’Ivoire’s former President Laurent Gbagbo and his Youth Minister, Charles Blé Goudé, on charges of crimes against humanity. The ICC also convicted Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi – an alleged senior member of the Ansar Eddine armed group – for attacks on mosques and mausoleums in Timbuktu, Mali, in 2012, a crime under international law. Elsewhere, South Africa’s Supreme Court rebuked the government for its failure to abide by its domestic and international obligations when it failed to arrest Al-Bashir during a visit to the country in 2015. This affirmed the international norm of rejection of immunity of perpetrators for international crimes, irrespective of official capacity. DISCRIMINATION AND MARGINALIZATION Women and girls were frequently subjected to discrimination, marginalization and abuse often because of cultural traditions and norms, and discrimination institutionalized by unjust laws. Women and girls were also subjected to sexual violence and rape in conflicts and countries hosting large numbers of displaced people and refugees. High levels of gender-based violence against women and girls were reported in many countries such as Madagascar, Namibia and Sierra Leone. 22 In Sierra Leone, the government continued to ban pregnant girls from going to mainstream schools and taking exams. The President also refused to sign a bill legalizing abortion in certain situations despite it having been adopted by Parliament twice and despite Sierra Leone’s high maternal mortality rate. The country rejected UN recommendations to prohibit female genital mutilation by law. Early and forced marriage in Burkina Faso had robbed thousands of girls as young as 13 of their childhood, while the cost of contraception, along with other barriers prevented them from choosing if and when to have children. But following an intense civil society campaign, the government announced that it would revise the law to increase the legal marriage age to 18. LGBTI people, or those perceived to be so, continued to face abuse or discrimination in countries including Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo and Uganda. In Kenya, two men petitioned the High Court in Mombasa to declare the anal examination, HIV and hepatitis B tests they were forced to undergo in 2015 were unconstitutional. However, the court upheld the legality of anal examinations on men suspected of engaging in sexual activity with other men. Forced anal examinations violate the right to privacy and the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment under international law. In Malawi, an unprecedented wave of violent attacks against people with albinism exposed a systemic failure of policing. Individuals and criminal gangs perpetrated abductions, killings and grave robberies as they sought body parts that they believed contain magical powers. Women and children were particularly vulnerable to killings, sometimes targeted by their own relatives. In Sudan, freedom of religion was undermined by a legal system under which conversion from Islam to another religion was punishable by death. Lack of accountability for corporations was also another factor for gross violation of the Amnesty International Report 2016/17