establishments were reported in the Northwest and Southwest regions, including the abduction of children and teachers, between January and July, and at least 2,245 schools were closed. In the DRC, the education of around 750,000 children was disrupted in two of the most conflict-affected provinces in the east. Thousands of schools were attacked, forced to close due to insecurity, or used as shelters for displaced people. On a positive note, Zambia’s Free Education Programme for primary school age children began in January under which an extra 4,500 teachers were recruited. In Tanzania, there was an overall increase in enrolment and literacy rates, and a reduction in barriers to children’s access to school. However, despite the lifting in 2022 of the ban on pregnant girls and adolescent mothers attending mainstream schools, low retention rates continued. RIGHT TO HEALTH Access to healthcare in many countries remained a challenge. The Ghana Health Service revealed in February that 27 pregnant women in Bawku municipality died between 2021 and 2022 due to their inability to access medical services. In South Africa, a strike action in March relating to wage disputes, hindered access to healthcare services and resulted in four deaths, according to the health minister. Meanwhile, shigellosis, cholera, typhoid and other disease epidemics were reported in Congo, South Sudan and elsewhere. FORCED EVICTIONS Governments continued to carry out forced evictions in the name of development projects. In Benin, thousands of people who had been forcibly evicted in connection with tourism projects along the coast, between the cities of Cotonou and Ouidah, complained about the lack of adequate compensation. In the DRC’s Lualaba province, the expansion of industrial-scale cobalt and copper mines, driven by the growing global demand for energy transition minerals, fuelled forced evictions of thousands of people from their homes and farmland. In Uganda’s Hoima district, security forces used violence to forcibly evict nearly 500 families from their land to allow for the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. In Tanzania, at least 67 Maasai Indigenous People were arrested, mainly in Endulen village, for refusing to leave their ancestral lands under ongoing enforced relocation plans to establish a protected wildlife area in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Governments must take immediate action to address socio-economic hardships, ensuring that resources are made available, in line with their minimum core obligations, to provide their populations with economic and social rights. INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLES’, REFUGEES’ AND MIGRANTS’ RIGHTS Nearly 7 million people were estimated to be internally displaced in the DRC, the highest number in Africa. The country hosted 500,000 refugees from armed conflict and persecution in other African countries. Between January and August, around 45,000 people fled the DRC for neighbouring countries, including Uganda which hosted over 1.6 million refugees, the largest refugee population in Africa. Over 5.8 million people were internally displaced since April in Sudan, making it the scene of the largest displacement crisis in the world in 2023. Over 4.5 million of them were displaced between April – when the conflict began – and October, while about 1.4 million Sudanese and other nationalities fled to neighbouring countries. However, some countries denied Sudanese asylum seekers entry; the Egyptian authorities required all Sudanese nationals to obtain an The State of the World’s Human Rights 29