Since fighting erupted last month, dozens of people have vanished, but communities are organising to find and bring them home
Kamal Ali Osman sent a text message to his family saying he was being stopped by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the militia group whose checkpoints now throttle the roads of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
Minutes later, the text was deleted from his phone. He has not been heard from since.
Continue reading...International academics join effort to highlight crackdown on freedom after jailing of opposition leader, Rached Ghannouchi
European powers must stand by pro-democracy Tunisians resisting a fierce onslaught designed to take the country back to the darkest days of dictatorship, a letter from more than 70 academics has urged.
The letter, designed to shine a light on the Tunisian crackdown, was in part collated by Soumaya Ghannoushi, whose father, the Tunisian opposition leader, Rached Ghannouchi, was sentenced to a year in jail on Monday.
Continue reading...Schools told to honour court order as families seek compensation and training for pupils who missed education because of their hair
About 1,200 Rastafarian children in Malawi are expected to return to state schools over the next month after being banned for a decade because of their hair.
After a landmark decision at the high court in March, letters have now been sent out to about 7,000 schools telling headteachers that the exclusion of children with dreadlocks from the classroom has been ruled as unconstitutional.
Continue reading...Refugees are among those receiving support since civil war broke out last month – and officials believes more sexual assault cases are going unreported
There have been multiple reports of civilians being raped by armed men in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum where fighting broke out last month, say government officials.
Four women and a girl, three of them refugees, are being supported by a specialist unit whose director said she thought most of the sexual violence in the city was going unreported.
Continue reading...With makeshift coolbags and an endless quest for ice, refugees are desperately struggling to protect their precious medication – if they can access any at all
Bags of ice and wet towels have become the emergency lifelines for Sudanese diabetics struggling to keep their insulin cool while waiting in extreme heat as they try to escape the recent violence.
A vital medication for many diabetics, insulin must be kept cool to remain effective, But since fighting broke out between the Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces last month, hospitals and pharmacies have forced to close and there has been damage to cold-storage facilities.
Continue reading...International fund set up at Cop27 is intended to provide compensation to countries worst hit by climate breakdown
A tax on wealthy Britons of just 0.5% could more than meet the UK’s entire “fair share” contribution to the international loss and damage fund established to support countries worst hit by global climate breakdown, a charity has suggested.
Taxing 5p of every £10 of individuals’ wealth over £1m would raise £15bn a year by 2030, well in excess of an estimated $15bn (£12bn) UK contribution to the new fund, according to an analysis by the anti-poverty campaigners Christian Aid.
Continue reading...With 20m people at the highest risk of famine for 25 years, farmers are desperately trying to kill the pests before vast swarms form
The northern “breadbasket” of Afghanistan is battling a potentially devastating outbreak of locusts that threaten to eat their way through up to a quarter of the country’s annual wheat harvest, the UN has warned.
After three years of disappointing, drought-afflicted harvests, Afghan farmers were expecting better this year – a much-needed boost for a country where nearly 20 million people are thought to be at the highest risk of famine in 25 years.
Continue reading...War in Ukraine and Pakistan’s ‘monsoon on steroids’ among events driving surge on ‘scale never seen before’ as 71m people displaced
The number of people around the world who were forced to flee their homes leapt by a fifth last year, as a “perfect storm” of Russia’s assault on Ukraine and climate disasters brought displacement on an unprecedented scale.
By the end of 2022 the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) – those forced from their homes but remaining within their country of residence – reached 71 million, according to figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), up from 59.1 million in 2021.
Continue reading...With hospitals struggling amid the violence, medics are using helplines on messaging platforms to reach those in need
Sudanese doctors are turning to social media to reach patients as hospitals and heath facilities struggle to function or close completely in the violence. Volunteers have set up 24-hour helplines on messaging platforms including WhatsApp, staffed by hundreds of doctors and specialists.
Only 16% of hospitals in the capital, Khartoum, are operating at full capacity, according to the World Health Organization. Last week at least four people, including a child, were killed in an airstrike outside East Nile hospital in north Khartoum, while Médecins Sans Frontières reported that El Geneina teaching hospital, in west Darfur, was looted on 28 April. Doctors in the country are reporting death threats and on Monday two volunteers who were working to reopen a hospital in Bahri were released after being held for days by the army.
Continue reading...About 5,500 people still missing after intense floods and landslides with thousands also left homeless
At least 411 people are now known to have died in intense flooding and landslides that hit the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s South Kivu province last week.
Efforts to rescue inhabitants and recover bodies in Kalehe, where the flooding happened, are continuing. Some houses, schools and hospitals have collapsed or become dilapidated or unsafe. Others were entirely swept away.
Continue reading...Harare high court quashes suspended sentence and fine handed down to Booker-longlisted writer last year
Zimbabwean author and activist Tsitsi Dangarembga has had her conviction for inciting violence by staging a peaceful protest overturned.
The critically acclaimed writer was given a six-month suspended sentence and fined 70,000 Zimbabwean dollars (£170) in September 2022 for staging a protest calling for political reform. During the 2020 protest, alongside fellow activist Julie Barnes, Dangarembga held a placard inscribed: “We want better. Reform our institutions.”
Continue reading...Hundreds, mostly Venezuelans, hope to cross into Peru to flee harsh immigration protocols and growing xenophobia in Chile
The wind sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean buffets makeshift tents made of blankets and scraps of fabric, as sheltering migrants peer out, squinting against the whipped-up sand and fierce sun overhead.
This desolate stretch of the Atacama desert has been home for days – and in some cases weeks – to hundreds of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, fleeing harsher immigration protocols and growing xenophobia in Chile and hoping to cross its northern border into Peru.
Continue reading...Thousands of Sudanese are crossing borders into countries already severely stressed by drought, conflicts and food insecurity, say UN officials
The UN is in a race against time to get food supplies to Sudanese refugees crossing the border into Chad before the rainy season begins, as neighbouring countries struggle to cope with the numbers of people fleeing the civil war.
More than 110,000 people are now estimated to have crossed into other countries as patchy ceasefires fail to stop deadly clashes between Sudanese army troops and a paramilitary rival that have killed hundreds and forced more than 330,000 from their homes.
Continue reading...UN children’s agency welcomes drop in number of underage brides, but warns 12 million girls still getting married each year
The number of child marriages is declining worldwide, but at too slow a pace for any hope of eliminating the practice this century, Unicef, the UN children’s agency, has said.
In a new report, Unicef tentatively welcomed the reduction but warned that it was nowhere close to meeting its sustainable development goal of ridding the world of the practice by 2030.
Continue reading...Religious laws are increasingly being used to silence civil society and human rights groups, say activists
Six Libyans are facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity and proselytising under laws increasingly being used to silence civil society and human rights organisations, say activists.
The women and men – some from Libya’s minority ethnic groups, including the Amazigh, or Berbers, in the west of the country – were separately detained in March by security forces.
Continue reading...Bill retains harshest measures of legislation adopted in March, including death penalty for certain same-sex acts
Uganda’s parliament has passed a mostly unchanged version of one of the world’s strictest anti-LGBTQ+ bills after President Yoweri Museveni asked that certain provisions from the original legislation be toned down.
Despite four amendments, the bill retains most of the harshest measures of the legislation adopted in March. Those include the death penalty for certain same-sex acts and a 20-year sentence for “promoting” homosexuality, which activists say could criminalise any advocacy for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer citizens.
Continue reading...Access to PCV jabs in South Sudan, Somalia, Guinea and Chad ‘could save 40,000 children a year’
Delays in rolling out a vaccine against childhood pneumonia in four of the world’s poorest countries have been blamed for thousands of unnecessary deaths.
South Sudan, Somalia, Guinea and Chad are four of the last African nations without the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV), one of the most powerful tools against pneumonia in children.
Continue reading...Even stories on cost of living leave journalists facing assault, threats and arrest under Digital Security Act
Four weeks ago, a reporter in Bangladesh was hauled from his office, badly beaten – and then thrown from the roof of his building, leaving him with fractures in his back, three broken ribs and a machete wound on his head.
The journalist, Ayub Meahzi, believes he was targeted for reporting on alleged local government ties to a criminal group.
Continue reading...Concerns truce agreement may not hold despite three-day extension as unrest continues
Street battles and gunfire threaten what remains of a fragile ceasefire in Sudan, now hanging by a thread despite a three-day extension of the truce agreement, as a Turkish evacuation plane was shot at as it attempted to land.
The Sudanese Armed Forces, loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and its rival, the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, traded blame for the incident at the Wadi Seidna airbase, 12.5 miles (20km) north of Khartoum on the western bank of the Nile
Continue reading...Rapporteurs also chastise the German and Namibian governments for excluding Herero and Nama minorities from talks dealing with the mass murder of their ancestors
UN special rapporteurs have criticised the German and Namibian governments for violating the rights of Herero and Nama ethnic minorities by excluding them from talks over reparations for colonial crimes against their ancestors.
Publishing their communication with both governments, the seven UN representatives urged Germany to take responsibility for all its colonial crimes in Namibia – including mass murder – and said it was wrong for the Herero and Nama to have been involved indirectly in talks via an advisory committee. They called on Germany to pay reparations directly to the Herero and Nama and not to the Namibian government.
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