On this day — August 13 in African history

Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

The Central African Republic gained independence from France, with David Dacko becoming its first president.

Sources: BBC News ; France, Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (Diplomatic Archives)

UK Government photo — Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed commander of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa that would launch later that year.

Sources: U.S. Army Center of Military History ; U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command

Morocco and Libya signed the Oujda Treaty establishing the short-lived Arab-African Union between the two North African states.

Sources: United Nations Treaty Series ; U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian

The Universal Negro Improvement Association, meeting in New York under Marcus Garvey, adopted the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, a landmark statement of Black rights and Pan-African solidarity.

Sources: PBS American Experience ; ActiveHistory.ca

EC Audiovisual Service, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Hissène Habré, who ruled Chad as president from 1982 to 1990 and was later convicted of crimes against humanity by an internationalized tribunal in Senegal, was born.

Sources: International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) ; Al Jazeera

Attackers, many of them from the Hutu rebel Forces for National Liberation, overran the Gatumba refugee camp near Bujumbura, Burundi. Human Rights Watch counted at least 152 Congolese refugees dead and 106 wounded; researchers at Clark University put the toll at 166 dead. The victims were overwhelmingly Banyamulenge, a Tutsi community from South Kivu, and were targeted by ethnicity. No one has been prosecuted.

Sources: Human Rights Watch ; Clark University