A Netherlands-based group of Eritreans sued the European Union on Wednesday, demanding it cease financing a project in the east African dictatorship that uses forced labor, the lawyer representing the group said, the first test of an effort by individuals and organizations to hold the bloc accountable for the way it spends billions in Africa. The lawsuit in the Netherlands, a member of the European Union that directly contributes to the funding for Eritrea and is home to a large number of Eritrean migrants, will soon be followed by similar legal action in Britain. The Amsterdam-based group, Human Rights for Eritreans, accuses the European Union in the lawsuit of financing a project that uses forced labor in a country that is notorious for relying on it, of arranging the money through a deliberately opaque process, and of failing to provide meaningful oversight.
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
More Stories
CAR’s Previously Conjoined Twins Baptised by Pope Francis
Squeezing Dos Santos Out of Angola’s SOEs
Kenyan Non-profit Changes Gears to Yield Better Results for Farmers
How One Man and his Cellphone in Canada Rescued a Group of Africans Stuck in China
Mogadishu Foils Al Shabaab Prison Break
A Coastal City in Benin Restores Monuments from the Slave Trade Era
Litigating the Right to Education in South Africa: An Overview of Some of the Most Important Cases of the Last Ten Years
How to Achieve Successful Blue Growth in Africa
Windhoek Hopes to Catch a Big Fish to Finance its Fight Against the Pandemic
Scenario Planning Tool Shows the Effects of COVID-19 in the Sahel
The Moroccan Athlete Who Inspired a Generation
A Model of Culturally Relevant and Sustainable African Design