Category Archives: Conflict and arms

Forcibly displaced now account for 1% of humanity – UN report

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Almost 80 million people are refugees or internally displaced, with the number doubling in the past decade

The number of people forcibly displaced from their homes has doubled over the past decade to almost 80 million, according to the UN refugee agency.

A 9 million rise in the number of those forced to flee in 2019, fuelled by conflict in Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burkina Faso, means that one in every 97 people around the world – about 1% of all humanity – is now displaced, according to numbers in UNHCR’s annual report, published on Thursday.

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Militant crackdown in Sahel leads to hundreds of civilian deaths – report

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Amnesty records 200 state killings and forced disappearances in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, state members of internationally-backed G5 group

Hundreds of civilians have been killed by their own governments in Africa’s Sahel region since countries pledged a surge against militant groups at a regional meeting held by France in January.

Amnesty International said on Wednesday that it had documented 200 cases of unlawful state killings and forced disappearances in February and March in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, which are members of the internationally backed G5 force set up to fight militants in the Sahel.

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Halt plan to withdraw Sudan peacekeepers, UN urged

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Civil groups fear replacing 26,000 troops with a ‘political mission’ will threaten fragile security situation in Darfur

Activists in Sudan are urging the UN and African Union not to go ahead with plans to withdraw 26,000 peacekeepers from Darfur this year, claiming the move will put lives at risk.

The peacekeepers from the AU-UN hybrid operation in Darfur (Unamid), which has a mandate to protect civilians by force if necessary, will leave in October under plans expected to be agreed by the UN security council, although it is understood the UK and Germany want to delay troop withdrawal.

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Children of Darfur: revisiting those orphaned by the conflict

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Photojournalist Paddy Dowling travelled to Sudan to find out what happened to those growing up in the midst of genocide

The Darfur genocide claimed the lives of an estimated 300,000 civilians, forced 1.6 million people to flee their homes inside the country and a further 600,000 refugees to spill across borders of neighbouring countries.

Of those internally displaced people (IDPs) affected by the large-scale conflict in this region of western Sudan, more than 60% were children, according to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

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‘Migrants never disappeared’: the lone rescue ship braving a pandemic

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As the coronavirus crisis deepens, the plight of people crossing the Mediterranean to escape conflict has been all but forgotten. A crew of German rescuers is intent on bucking that trend

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    • After a two-month break, the Alan Kurdi migrant rescue boat is heading back out into the central Mediterranean, as asylum seekers continue to attempt the desperate journey to reach Europe despite coronavirus fears.

    The boat, operated by the German NGO Sea-Eye, left the Spanish port of Castellón de la Plana on Tuesday and is expected to reach waters off the coast of Libya this weekend.

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    ‘Zero accountability’: US accused of failure to report civilian deaths in Africa

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    US military vows to be more open about activities after allegations that teenager and farmer were killed in Somalia airstrikes

    Faced with new allegations of killing civilians with drone strikes in Somalia, the US military has announced plans to make its operations across Africa more transparent.

    Amnesty International accused the US military on Wednesday of providing “zero accountability” for civilian victims of airstrikes by its Africa command, Africom.

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    Fears for civilians in Chad after army suffers devastating Boko Haram attack

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    Local communities flee as boundaries with Lake Chad become a war zone following ambush in which almost 100 soldiers died

    The Chadian army that lost nearly 100 soldiers to a Boko Haram ambush a week ago has declared the Lake Chad borderlands a war zone, heightening fears that civilians will suffer an escalation in violence.

    President Idriss Déby travelled to the region to announce the Wrath of Boma operation, named after the island where Boko Haram launched a seven-hour assault that Déby said was the worst the country’s military had ever suffered.

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    ‘No profit, no food’: lockdown in Kabul prompts hunger fears

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    Residents of Afghanistan’s capital face stark choice between providing food for their families and limiting risk of coronavirus

    The streets of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, were packed on Friday; a hectic bustling in the markets and shops, pious whispers ringing from prayer gatherings at the mosques, the skies full of kites that children were flying.

    But on Saturday the city of around six million people went into lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus in one of the poorest and most war-torn countries in the world.

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    The UK feigns ignorance, but five years on it’s still intimately involved in Yemen’s war

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    The British government refuses to track the use of its weapons in a conflict that has targeted civilians and healthcare facilities, and now a coronavirus outbreak looms

    The coronavirus pandemic has forced questions of life and death to the fore around the world. National health infrastructures risk being overwhelmed, food supply chains are struggling to keep up with stockpiling, and restrictions on movement are enforcing social distancing. Worries about loved ones and fears for the future combine with outbreaks of neighbourliness and solidarity.

    The questions about who is – or should be – responsible for mitigating the crisis and addressing its worst effects are being raised urgently. For many this is the new reality. But for those in conflict zones, such as Yemen, basic survival has long been the pressing preoccupation.

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    Covid-19 presents people in the crosshairs of conflict with a terrifying new threat

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    As the Red Cross launches an emergency appeal, its president calls for the world to pull together

    If the first casualty of war is truth, the second may very well be something the entire world values highly right now: healthcare.

    Families fleeing conflict, or currently in its crosshairs, know that medical assistance is a rare and precious privilege in war zones. Amid the terror of bombs and bullets, a functioning medical facility is a life-saving oasis, but it’s a near certainty medical staff will be overworked and short on supplies.

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    Coronavirus threatens to turn aid crises into ‘humanitarian catastrophes’

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    Restrictions on movement prevent food and medicine from reaching people in adversity, experts warn

    Stringent new international restrictions on movement introduced because of the coronavirus pandemic are threatening the lives of millions of people across the world already caught up in humanitarian emergencies.

    UN agencies, aid groups and international experts have warned that the new restrictions, which have closed borders and ports, and severely limited the movement of key staff from Africa to South America and Asia, threaten a “dramatic” knock-on effect in countries suffering from conflict, extreme climate events and other crises.

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    Locust crisis poses a danger to millions, forecasters warn

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    Experts fear swarms like those seen in Africa will become more common as tropical storms create favourable breeding conditions

    The locust crisis that has now reached 10 countries could carry on to endanger millions more people, forecasters have said.

    Climate change created unprecedented conditions for the locusts to breed in the usually barren desert of the Arabian gulf, according to experts, and the insects were then able to spread through Yemen, where civil war has devastated the ability to control locust populations.

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    Coronavirus in a war zone: Afghanistan braces for outbreak after first case

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    Lone Kabul laboratory preparing to treat patients in the midst of political turmoil and tentative peace talks, as border with Iran closed

    Preparations for an outbreak of coronavirus were underway in Afghanistan as the country confirmed its first case in the western province of Herat, which borders Iran.

    Seven more suspected cases have been identified in Herat, and three cases in the nearby provinces of Farah and Ghor.

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    Unexploded bombs pose rising threat to civilians in Libya

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    Rights groups and UN warn of rapidly accelerating danger as banned cluster weapons are deployed

    The threat posed by unexploded bombs is rising exponentially in wartorn Libya, experts have warned, with the use of banned cluster weapons a source of particular concern.

    The UN’s Mine Action Service (Unmas) said that even parts of the country previously cleared of explosive material had been recontaminated following a surge in fighting since April last year, when the warlord Khalifa Haftar launched a campaign to seize the capital, Tripoli.

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    Mogadishu left reeling as conflict and climate shocks spark rush to capital

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    Forced from their homes by floods and fighting, 800,000 people have crammed into informal settlements in the Somali capital. Now efforts are afoot to bolster local resources

    The number of Somalians being pushed out of the countryside and into the capital Mogadishu has reached an unprecedented high, putting pressure on the city’s already poor infrastructure and threatening its faltering recovery from three decades of conflict.

    More than 800,000 internally displaced people dwell in informal settlements across Mogadishu, according to the office of the mayor. They are crammed into makeshift shelters with little or no sanitation and limited access to the most basic services. There are “critical” levels of malnutrition, according to an assessment by Somalia’s food security and nutrition analysis unit.

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    Britain must be held to account for its role in the war in Yemen

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    As the death toll in Yemen passes 100,000, questions must be asked about UK arms exports to the Saudi-led coalition

    As British politics reverberates with the results of the general election and Brexit approaches, the announcement from researchers that the death toll in the war in Yemen now exceeds 100,000 went unnoticed in the mainstream press at the end of last year.

    With heightened US-Iranian hostility after the US government’s killing of Qassem Suleimani, the prospects for the war in Yemen look increasingly bleak.

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    One in four countries beset by civil strife as global unrest soars

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    Researchers predict worldwide turmoil will continue in 2020, with Venezuela, Iran and Libya at greatest risk

    A quarter of all countries experienced a dramatic surge in civil unrest last year in a worrying trend that is likely to continue into 2020, researchers have found.

    Verisk Maplecroft, a leading risk analysis and strategic forecasting company, said in a report published on Thursday that 47 countries experienced a significant rise in the number of protests over the course of the past year. Hong Kong, Chile, Nigeria, Sudan, Haiti and Lebanon were among the states affected.

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    Britain must spearhead action against sexual violence or relinquish the reins

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    Only with senior government backing can the inertia gripping the global fight against sexual abuse in conflict be arrested

    Rape and other forms of sexual violence in conflict are deliberate crimes against humanity, employed as a tactic of war and terrorism to systematically brutalise entire populations.

    They are entirely preventable, which is why I launched the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative (PSVI) in 2012 with UNHCR special envoy Angelina Jolie. From the start, we emphasised the crucial importance of addressing impunity. Without a realistic chance of justice being done, potential perpetrators of these crimes are unlikely to be deterred and the cycle of violence will continue.

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    Aid workers toil amid crisis and corruption to give Venezuelans the drugs they need

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    In Venezuela, hospitals lack the basics and medicine shortages are common, forcing humanitarian groups to pick up the slack

    Feliciano Reyna masterminds a drug running network that spans Venezuela. His organisation moves substances through ports, trucks them across the country, and deliver them into customers’ hands. But he is not on any DEA watchlist.

    “I am the biggest dealer in Venezuela,” says Reyna – though he is quick to qualify the remark – “If we’re talking about legal drugs.”

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    Hague and Jolie’s sexual violence scheme ‘letting survivors down’

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    MPs blame failure to sustain momentum following William Hague’s departure from Foreign Office for project falling ‘far short’

    A high-profile UK government programme to tackle sexual violence in conflict zones – launched by former foreign secretary Lord William Hague and Hollywood actor Angelina Jolie – has been criticised for falling far short of its ambitions and letting survivors down.

    A review, published on Thursday by the aid watchdog, found that waning ministerial interest, severe funding cuts and a lack of senior leadership meant the scheme “never had a strategic vision” and as a result “nothing [was] done to translate … pledges into practical action”.

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