northeastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. UNHCR said that 5.2 million people in the northeast were in urgent need of food assistance and 450,000 children under five were in urgent need of nutrition. In Chad, over 408,000 refugees from CAR, DRC, Nigeria and Sudan lived in dire conditions in refugee camps. Botswana denied refugees freedom of movement, the right to work and local integration; asylum-seekers faced lengthy refugee status determination procedures and detention. Thousands continued to flee Eritrea, where the human rights situation and the imposition of indefinite military national service created major difficulties for many. They faced serious abuses in transit and in some destination countries, and many were subjected to arbitrary detention, abduction, sexual abuse and ill-treatment on their way to Europe. In August, Sudan forcibly returned more than 100 refugees to Eritrea, where they were at risk of serious human rights violations, in violation of international law. In South Sudan, around 340,000 fled an escalation of the fighting in the Equatoria region, which led to atrocities and starvation between January and October. Mainly government – but also opposition – forces in the southern region committed crimes under international law and other serious violations and abuses, including war crimes, against civilians. More than 3.9 million people − approximately one third of the population − had been displaced since the beginning of the conflict in December 2013. Other states did little to help neighbouring countries hosting more than 2 million refugees from South Sudan. Uganda hosted over 1 million refugees, mostly children, and encountered difficulties in implementing its progressive and widely respected refugee policy, due to chronic underfunding by the international community. Consequently, the Ugandan government, UNHCR and NGOs struggled to meet refugees’ basic needs. IMPUNITY Failure to ensure justice, redress and the holding of suspected perpetrators to account remained a key driver of human rights violations and abuses in a wide range of contexts and countries. In CAR, some progress was made towards operationalizing the Special Criminal Court, which was established to try individuals suspected of serious human rights violations and crimes under international law committed during the country’s 14-year conflict. The Court’s Special Prosecutor took office in May, but the Court was not yet operational and impunity remained the norm. In South Sudan, three transitional justice bodies provided for in the 2015 peace agreement had still not been established. In July, a joint roadmap for the establishment of the Hybrid Court for South Sudan was agreed between the African Union (AU) Commission and the government; discussions continued on the instruments for the establishment of the Court, but nothing was formally adopted. In Nigeria – amid concerns about independence and impartiality – a Special Board of Inquiry, established by the army to investigate allegations of gross human rights violations, cleared senior military officers of crimes under international law. Its report was not made public. In August, the acting President set up a presidential investigation panel to probe allegations of human rights violations carried out by the military; the panel held public hearings between September and November but there was no outcome by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the Nigerian authorities held mass secret trials for Boko Haram suspects; 50 defendants were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment in a trial that took place over four days. In DRC, the killing of two UN experts and the disappearance of their Congolese interpreter and three of their drivers, in Kasaï Central Province in March, illustrated the urgent need to end violence in the region. The Congolese authorities’ investigation was not transparent or Amnesty International Report 2017/18 23