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{{Angola’s veteran leader has promised to create more jobs as he looks to quell growing discontent among youth in the southern African country.}}

“The future is in your hands,” President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, 71, told a national youth meeting in Luanda Friday, adding that he would also create more training centres to impart skills.

“Two thirds of the country’s population is below 25 years and we are aware this is our main wealth,” President Dos Santos said at the closing of the first national youth forum attended by 3,000 delegates.

According to analysts in the capital, the gathering was called to quell growing discontent and prevent disgruntled youth in Africa’s second largest oil producer from demonstrating.

The Angolan youth revolutionary group has called up a demonstration on September 19, a day before the country holds the rink hockey World Cup.

“The demonstration is aimed at pressing the country’s government for social injustices,” Mr Adão Ramos, a youth member, told Voice of America Radio.

Youth groups in the post-conflict country have been holding anti government demonstrations since 2011 but these are frequently broken up by security authorities.

Veteran

The authoritarian Dos Santos, who will mark 34 years in power on September 21, is the second longest serving leader in Africa after Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang Nguema.

He was re-elected in August 2012 and heads the the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party, which holds a commanding majority in parliament.

“It is not fair that national or international companies operating here prefer employing foreign people than local when Angolan youth are also able,” he said.

On Tuesday, Angolan youths working in Luanda for the Chinese multinational CITIC accused the Asian company of ill-treatment and delaying pay.

CITIC has denied the allegations.

NMG

{{ A US-based rights body has accused South Sudan army (SPLA) of unlawfully killing and committing serious violations against civilians in the country’s Jonglei state.}}

The act, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, were carried out under the context of a counterinsurgency campaign in remote parts of the region, forcing thousands of the people to flee for safety.

Jonglei has in recent months experienced series of inter-communal violence and threats from rebels operating in its Pibor county, a situation that has placed the two-year old nation in the spotlight.

But HRW, in a report released Friday, urges the South Sudanese government to ensure abusive soldiers are held accountable for crimes and curb the spate of violence in the region.

The report, entitled, “‘They are Killing Us’: Abuses Against Civilians in South Sudan’s Pibor County”, highlights 24 incidences of unlawful killings allegedly by the SPLA of about 100 members of the Murle ethnic group carried out between December 2012 and July 2013.

Such an incident, it stressed, constitutes serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

“Murder and deliberate targeting of civilians during an armed conflict constitute war crimes,” the 45-page report reads in part.

The report, also extended to Sudan Tribune, further describes how southern army forces allegedly burned and looted homes, physically and verbally abused civilians, and destroyed schools, churches, and the compounds of aid agencies providing life-saving assistance.

“Soldiers should be protecting Murle civilians in Jonglei state from the fighting and the ethnic conflict,” Daniel Bekele, HRW Africa director says in the report.

Instead, the army has been killing these vulnerable people and driving terrified men, women, and children into the jaws of danger, he added.

The army has on several occasions been accused of failing to protect civilians, especially against David Yauyau rebels who operate from the remote area of Pibor county.

A disarmament exercise initiated in Jonglei by government ended with little success Both the United Nations, domestic and international right bodies’ criticised the process, which was largely marred by gross human rights violations.

sudantribune

Yemeni authorities say they are investigating the reported death of an eight-year-old girl from internal bleeding on the first night of her marriage, in a case that has rekindled international outrage over child brides.

Yemeni rights campaigner Arwa Othman said earlier this week that the girl, identified as Rawan, died after she was married to a man five times her age who then had intercourse with her, rupturing her uterus.

Othman said no action has been taken against the man.

Rajeh Badi, an aide to Prime Minister Mohammed Salem Basindwa, said on Friday:”The government is dealing seriously with this issue and it will investigate it and those responsible will be brought to justice.”

He had earlier said that the crime had not been confirmed, and that police had not reported such an incident.

Ahmed al-Quraishi, chairman of child rights’ organisation Siyaj told the AFP news agency that residents from the girl’s home province of Hajjah said she and her family disappeared shortly after the incident.

Some people in the area said the girl was married to the man who took her to a hotel, and that she died on the wedding night from bleeding caused by sexual intercourse.

However, a security official in the area told activists investigating the case that the girl and her father were being held by police, without giving any details, Quraishi said.

Activists also discovered that Rawan’s father had another daughter aged 10, who is also married.

agencies

{{Central African Republic’s new president has dissolved the rebel alliance that swept him to power, a group that has since been blamed for a wave of violence.}}

State radio on Friday broadcast a decree by President Michel Djotodia, declaring the Seleka rebel group dissolved “throughout the national territory”.

Seleka rebels seized the capital, Bangui, and overthrew leader Francois Bozize on March 23, the latest in a series of coups in the country that remains one of the world’s poorest despite its mineral resources.

The rebels have carried on looting and killing indiscriminately, witnesses have said.

French President Francois Hollande last month called for urgent UN action to stop the country slipping further into chaos.

Djotodia, sworn in as the country’s new president last month, was a former Seleka leader.

It was unclear what impact the order would have on Seleka, a loose alliance made up of five organisations. His order came the same week he dismissed the head of the armed forces after days of clashes with other fighters still loyal to Bozize that left 100 people dead.

“The measure taken by President Michel Djotodia will change nothing in terms of the behavior of the militia known as Seleka.

{wirestory}