U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hailed “tangible progress” made in recent months in tackling Libya’s almost decade-long crisis, in a report submitted Monday to the Security Council in which he demanded all foreign troops and mercenaries leave the country by the week’s end. “Tangible progress was achieved in advancing the UNSMIL-facilitated political, security and economic intra-Libyan dialogues over the last few months,” said the document, obtained by AFP and referring to the U.N. mission in Libya. Guterres said that “sustained international engagement” in U.N.-facilitated talks “has generated considerable impetus, demonstrated by tangible progress on the political, security, economic and international humanitarian law and human rights tracks, moving Libya forward on the road to peace, stability and development.” Recognizing that the “Libyan economy is at a precipice,” the U.N. head urged all parties in the drawn-out civil war “to maintain their resolve in reaching a lasting political solution to the conflict, resolving economic issues and alleviating the humanitarian situation for the benefit of all Libyan people.” He also urged all “regional and international actors to respect the provisions of the cease-fire agreement” agreed to October 23 that set out a withdrawal within three months of all foreign troops and mercenaries from the country. That deadline for withdrawal falls on Saturday, and the U.N. estimates there are about 20,000 foreign forces and mercenaries in Libya helping the warring factions, the U.N.-backed Government of National Unity in Tripoli and strongman Khalifa Haftar in the east of the country. Guterres encouraged all parties to implement the terms of the cease-fire “without delay,” something he noted “includes ensuring the departure of all foreign fighters and mercenaries from Libya, and the full and unconditional respect of the Security Council arms embargo,” which has been in place since the conflict broke out almost a decade ago. The next meeting of the Security Council on Libya is scheduled for January 28. Britain is preparing a resolution for the U.N. mission to have a supervisory role and to monitor the departure of foreign forces from Libya to ensure the terms of October agreement are met. 
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A former refugee from Sudan’s civil war who survived torture and homelessness to become a doctor is winning acclaim for saving the lives of COVID-19 patients in South Africa.Dr. Emmanuel Malish Taban was recently named one of the 100 most influential Africans of 2020 by London-based New African magazine. The U.S. embassy in Juba, South Sudan, congratulated Taban on its Dr. Emmanuel Malish Taban was recently named one of the 100 most influential Africans of 2020 by London-based New African magazine.“Dr. Taban’s extraordinary story and never-say-die spirit has become a source of great inspiration for millions of young Africans who find themselves in often hopeless situations,” said the New African.Taban successfully uses a procedure known as flexible fiberoptic bronchoscopy on critically ill COVID-19 patients. Taban, a pulmonologist, uses the technique to suck out mucous that collected in patients’ air passages, enabling them to breathe.“The majority of my [COVID] patients, over 90% of them, survived,” Taban told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus. “It is a procedure that has not been used for a long time. I think because of the fear [of infection], that is why everybody was not able to do bronchoscopies.”Helped by Catholic charitiesTaban, 43, grew up in what was then the southern part of Sudan, mired in a two-decade civil war against the government in Khartoum. In 1994, at age 17, he was arrested and tortured by military intelligence agents who accused him of being a rebel sympathizer.He fled after he was released, initially crossing into Eritrea via the border town of Gadarif to seek asylum. He was arrested for illegal entry but soon released.Taban said he was helped by some Catholic charities and South Sudanese living in Asmara to enter Ethiopia. From there he traveled south by bus and by foot through Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique to reach South Africa.Missionaries offer financial assistanceIn 1995, Taban said two South Sudanese missionaries working in South Africa helped to pay for his secondary and university studies at the Medical University of Southern Africa (MEDUNSA), University of Pretoria and University of Witwatersrand. He also studied pulmonology in the Hermes university system in Europe and earned a diploma in endobronchial ultrasound and lung cancer staging at the University of Amsterdam.“In South Sudan, we have the capabilities to match the rest of the world,” he told VOA. “We need to make sure that the children of South Sudan hear [my] story that there is a child who used to be homeless, who used beg for food on the streets, has done something great in the world.”’He said he would like to build schools across South Sudan to help children get a good education.Preventive measures aren’t followedRegarding South Africa, Taban said not enough people are following Ministry of Health preventive measures to avoid contracting COVID-19. The country has recorded more than 1.3 million cases of coronavirus with more than 37,000 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center.“People are not quarantining, people are not social distancing, people are not sanitizing,” he said.“I think saving lives is all that matters to me,” he added. “I don’t enjoy losing my patients, I don’t believe people die because it is their time. People die because of negligence and we don’t try enough to save those lives.”
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Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera has introduced new lockdown measures to contain a jump in confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19.  The restrictions include school closures, a night-time curfew, and no gatherings over 50 people.
 
The measure comes five days after Chakwera declared a state of national disaster in response to the recent spike in COVID-19 cases.
 
The new measures, he said, are being enacted because the situation is getting worse in the second wave of the pandemic.    
 
“This year alone, a total of 5,091 people have tested positive for Covid-19 across the country. This means that of all the people confirmed to have contracted the virus since April last year, 43% have been found with the virus this year alone, showing a sharp rise in infections and a lapse in prevention,” he said.
   
Chakwera said that so far this year, 111 Malawians have died from COVID-19, an average of seven people per day.
 
“This means that of all the deaths from COVID-19 in the past nine months, over a third have happened in the past 16 days, showing a sharp rise in fatalities,” he said.
 
To reverse this, Chakwera ordered that all schools to be closed for three weeks, except for students currently doing Certificate of Education examinations.
 
Chakwera also said all students in boarding schools must be screened for COVID-19 before they go home.   
 
The Ministry of Education disclosed Monday that out of 605 students at one girls’ secondary school in Lilongwe, 311, or just over half, have tested positive for coronavirus.
 
As for the lockdown measures, the president ordered markets to be closed at 5 p.m. and drinking establishments to close by 8 p.m.  He said no one should be on the streets between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m., and banned gatherings of over 50 people.
 
Benedicto Kondowe, executive director for the Civil Society Education Coalition,  argues that closing schools should be the last option.
 
“Schools were closed for not less than seven months in the first wave of COVID, and registered unprecedented number of teenage pregnancies in excess of 40,000. And that’s why we are saying ‘Could there be a mechanism of mitigating and containing the virus while the schools are still in sessions?” he asked.
   
Kondowe says the government should devise a plan that allows some students to continue with their education.
 
“We do not know for how long COVID will remain with us. If COVID takes three years, five years and you are seriously saying that ‘education should be suspended.’ What future will he have created for generations to come?” he asked.
   
However, George Jobe, executive director for Malawi Health Equity Network, commends the new measures.
 
He advises Malawians to strictly observe all restrictions for the sake of their own health, and not wait for police to enforce them.   
  
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Uganda’s government restored some internet access Monday after a five-day blackout during last week’s election that saw President Yoweri Museveni reelected to a sixth term.  The opposition National Unity Platform party plans to challenge the results and says the military has their leader Bobi Wine under house arrest.  Around 10:30 a.m. Monday, Ugandans heard their mobile phones ping for the first time in five days since the government shut down the internet.   However, social media platforms such as Whatsapp, Twitter and Facebook are still offline and can only be accessed via the virtual private network.   Government spokesperson Ofwono Opondo says social media was high on the list of possible threats to the election.  He says officials regret the inconvenience but says they took the right decision.   “Disinformation had started, with intention to discredit the election, with intention to intimidate, with intention to suppress voter turn up, with intention to spread hate speech, abuse of candidates directly, abuse of political formations you don’t agree with. To undermine the credibility of the results.  We knew, that if we didn’t shut social media, most likely we would have gone into chaos,” he said.  Uganda’s leading opposition challenger Bobi Wine walks back to his residence after giving a press conference outside Kampala, Uganda, Jan. 15, 2021, one day after Ugandans went to the polls.National Unity Platform leader Robert Kyagulanyi, better known as singer Bobi Wine, is contesting the election results, citing ballot box stuffing and other irregularities.     The government says the NUP will only be allowed to contest the election results through court.Wine’s lawyers say they have enough evidence to present to judges, but need their leader to advise on the next course of action.  However, as they attempted to see him Monday morning at his home, lawyer Benjamin Katana says they were blocked.    Ugandan police officers refuse lawyers of Ugandan opposition presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, from meeting him at his house in Kampala, Jan. 18, 2021.“Bobi Wine has challenged the results that were released by the Electoral Commission. And what that means is that several options available to him including going to court. To reach at that decision, he needs to consult his lawyers. And it’s his right to access lawyers. They have not allowed us to enter,” he said.   Police say the heavy deployment around Wine’s home is because it is one of the locations that are considered trouble hotspots. Fred Enanga, the Uganda police spokesperson, says intelligence agencies had received word of possible violence.    “Of instigating riotous situation and demonstrations in protests of the outcome of the election. That’s how you find that we have maintained a security cover around Kasangati and Magere. The movements are being controlled. It’s not that people have been blocked, lawyers and so on,”  he said.   President Yoweri Museveni was declared the winner of last week’s election.  Official results showed him beating Wine 59 to 35 percent.  Supporters of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) celebrate the victory of President Yoweri Museveni after the results of the presidential election in Kampala, Jan. 16, 2021.Museveni’s National Resistance Movement party also won a majority in parliament with 316 seats.  However, the National Unity Platform was able to capture 56 seats, defeating several ministers in the Museveni Cabinet.   Godber Tumushabe, a political analyst says the loss of the ministers including the vice president, is a strong sign of no confidence in Museveni and his government. “Because it’s unprecedented that you can have an entire Cabinet swept off,” he said. “Museveni has been timid to reform his Cabinet, now the voters have helped him to reshuffle it. The mere fact that all his ministers have lost, we should even be asking, how did Museveni win?”   A government spokesman says this is a natural trend in the elections of Uganda, with ministers losing big because voters want other people to come and enjoy the same position.   
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 A spokesman for Uganda’s main opposition party says government forces raided its headquarters Monday, a day after its leader vowed to challenge his loss in last week’s presidential election.
 
Joel Ssenyonyi told reporters that police have surrounded the compound of the National Unity Party located in a Kampala suburb and are preventing members from entering the building.   
 
A police spokesman told Reuters news agency that NUP offices have been cordoned off for security reasons, but did not say if troops have actually entered the building.   
 
Tensions have been rising in Uganda after the country’s election commission declared President Yoweri Museveni the winner of the 2021 general elections on Saturday over Wine, a singer-turned-lawmaker whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi.   
 
The commission said Museveni won 58.64% to Wine’s 34.83% of the votes cast in last Thursday’s balloting.  
 
An NUP party official said Sunday it had evidence of “ballot stuffing and other forms of election malpractice” and that the party would “take all measures that the law permits to challenge this fraud.” 
 
The incumbent president defended the process Saturday in a national address, saying the vote will turn out to be “the most cheating-free election” in Uganda’s history.   
 
Wine’s party also said Sunday that the opposition candidate and his wife are unable to leave their home, with soldiers surrounding the entrance and barring his colleagues and journalists from entering.  
 
“Everyone including media and my party officials are restricted from accessing me,” Wine tweeted Sunday. 
 
Legislator Francis Zaake, a Wine supporter who in the past has been arrested and allegedly tortured by security forces, was given access Saturday, only to be stopped at the roadblock. He was then pulled from his car and beaten before being thrown into a police van.  
 
Museveni, 76, has ruled Uganda continuously since seizing power in 1986.
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Cameroon police said Saturday they have opened investigations into a network of traffickers who allegedly buy babies from the central African state to sell in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some members of the network, believed to have illegally sold scores of children, were arrested Saturday in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, with babies they had bought and a mother who said she wanted to sell her unborn child because she is poor. The mother was also arrested. 
 
Baudouin Gweha, senior official of the Gendarmerie post at Mimboman, a Yaoundé neighborhood, says he arrested 41-year-old Pierre Essola for carrying out an activity that violates human dignity.  Essola tells Cameroon police that all negotiations with potential buyers and sellers of babies are by telephone.  He says he found a Congolese woman on social media who was offering to help teenage and single mothers to take care of their newborn babies. He says he immediately contacted the Congolese women through WhatsApp and told her that many young girls with unwanted pregnancies in Cameroon need help. He says he recorded and sent videos of poor teenage mothers to the woman in Congo. He says while in Cameroon, the woman disclosed to him that she had another partner who helps her to buy babies from the coastal Cameroonian city of Douala. Essolla said his intention is to help poor mothers, especially teenagers who abandon their babies on the streets because there is no one to help take care of the babies.   Cameroonian police report that last year, several hundred children were abandoned on the streets by poor mothers. At least two dozen babies were either killed or found dead after their mothers abandoned them. Gweha says Essolla is part of a network that sells Cameroonian babies in the DRC. He says among those already arrested is an online trafficker who facilitates the buying and selling of newborn babies.Baudouin Gweha and his gendarme peers, Yaounde, Cameroon, Jan. 16, 2021. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)He says the Cameroonian police have also arrested two mothers who sold their babies, two women from the DRC who bought babies, and a babysitter the women paid to take care of the newborns in Yaoundé. He says the four babies recovered from the traffickers have been handed over to the Chantal Biya hospital in Yaoundé for medical follow-up and care. Gweha said the buyers paid $2,000 for a 1-day-old baby who was still very fragile and $6,000 for children that were healthy and more than 3 months old. Artificial milk and injections given to the babies to sleep, Yaounde, Cameroon, Jan. 16, 2021. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)The police said the children were hidden in a Yaoundé house and fed infant formula. The children were given injections that put them to sleep. The presence of a pregnant girl near the house and cries of the children, however, caused neighbors to alert the police. Gweha said it was not the first time the women from the DRC bought Cameroonian children, but said that because of the investigation, he could not reveal the identities and towns of origin of the Congolese women. Betty Nancy Fonyuy, manager of the Yaoundé-based Timely Performance Care Center, says poor mothers could seek services of organizations like hers that take care of vulnerable and poor children. 
 
“Children that their parents cannot be able to take care, they bring them to the center, we take care of them, we feed them, we clothe them, we even send aid to their homes,” she said. “There are so many centers in Cameroon to help. Poverty in Cameroon is not all that bad to make people to sell their children out. And those that are selling children to other nations, this is very wrong.” 
 
There are no statistics on the illegal buying and selling of children in Cameroon, but the central African state says childless couples within and out of its borders are increasingly buying or stealing babies and claiming ownership.  Cameroon says it is also working to dismantle networks of child traffickers among Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Chad.
  
The 2020 trafficking in persons report by the U.S. State Department states that Cameroon also is a source, transit, and destination country for children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking.   
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