THE KINGDOM OF LESOTHO COMBINED SECOND TO EIGHTH PERIODIC REPORT UNDER THE AFRICAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES’ RIGHTS AND INITIAL REPORT UNDER THE PROTOCOL TO THE AFRICAN CHARTER ON THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN AFRICA unemployment and poverty. Basotho will have an advanced sense of political maturity and effective conflict and dispute resolution mechanisms to safeguard their peace. 269. The government of Lesotho has also adopted several measures such as joint peace demonstrations by the LDF and LMPS to assure the public that the two institutions are working together and will continue to work together to maintain peace and security in the country despite clashes that had taken place during an attempted coup in 2014. Challenges 270. As stipulated in the background information in Lesotho’s initial report and in the background information above, Lesotho has had political instability from its independence to date. The instability has been characterised by post-election violence in 1998, attempted coup d’état in 2014, the killing of the army commander and other individuals in 2015 and the killing of an acting commander and two other senior army officials in 2017. 271. As a means of ensuring the people’s right to peace, over and above resort to use of legislative and institutional frameworks available in Lesotho, the government of Lesotho has requested intervention from SADC in order to ensure that political instability and sporadic killings do not escalate to armed conflicts which may have catastrophic effect on the people of Lesotho. For instance, following the 1998 post-election violence, SADC military intervention assisted to quell what would have otherwise amounted to a fullfledged armed conflict in Lesotho. In 2014, following the attempted coup, SADC Troika on Defence, Politics and Security made up of Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe met to map the way forward. This was followed by a meeting between the then LDF Commander Tlali Kamoli and regional military officers from the SANDF, Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) and Namibia Defence Forces (NDF) to allow the return of the prime minister and guarantee national security. 101