Category Archives: Conflict and arms

‘The country could fall apart’: drought and despair in Afghanistan

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As a funding appeal languishes, conflict, poverty and the worst drought for a decade have left millions facing desperate hunger

Shafiqa watches closely over her six-month-old niece. Lying on a bundle of fabric, Maryam’s legs jut out, thin and pale. When they arrived at hospital two weeks ago, she could hardly breathe. Her body was swollen with malnutrition, her lips and fingers were blue.

There are 24 children being treated at Mofleh paediatric hospital’s malnutrition ward, on the outskirts of Herat city, western Afghanistan. Mothers and aunts lean next to hospital beds, some rocking tiny babies back and forth.

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Britain’s arms export watchdog in danger of becoming toothless

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As ministers and weapons manufacturers alike shun the body that oversees UK arms exports, its authority is at risk of being eroded

As Britain’s foreign secretary warns of “a shortening window of opportunity” for peace in Yemen, the hours are also counting down for weapons manufacturer Raytheon UK to explain its activities to the government’s committees on arms export control (CAEC).

Raytheon, the world’s third largest manufacturer, was called upon to give live evidence on Wednesday. However, the company has effectively avoided face-to-face scrutiny by simply declining to attend.

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Three people dying in Yemen every day despite ceasefire agreement

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Since the Stockholm deal in December, airstrikes on Hodeidah have decreased but casualties have doubled elsewhere

Yemen is continuing to experience a steady stream of violence, claiming at least one life every eight hours – despite the agreements reached between the internationally recognised government and the Houthis at talks in Sweden just over three months ago.

According to figures compiled by two international aid agencies, in some areas of the country the number of casualties, far from falling, had doubled where the conflict was flaring up.

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South Sudan’s war: a relentless litany of almost unimaginable horrors

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A report laying bare the abominations associated with conflict in the world’s youngest state will shock the most hardened observer

There are wars that seem to slip under the wire almost unnoticed – where human rights abuses are rife and you would expect them to command far greater global attention.

Last week’s UN report into South Sudan is a case in point. An almost endless litany of human rights abuses, its 200-plus pages make for the most dismal reading, a portrait of the world’s youngest state as one of the latest additions to the category of failed state.

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I witnessed the purgatory of people trapped in Syria’s Rukban camp | Marwa Awad

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Constant hunger and thirst haunt those stranded in the desert, where escape means paying vast sums to smugglers

Between the southern border of Syria, Jordan and Iraq lies a stretch of land akin to purgatory. More than 40,000 people are stranded in Rukban, almost 300km from Damascus.

Families here are cut off from the world, facing hunger and lacking healthcare, transport and education.

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Have world leaders really got the will to bring peace to Yemen?

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We hear much about Yemen’s crisis, but far less about the hypocrisy of states fuelling the very conflict they condemn

During his historic recent visit to the United Arab Emirates, Pope Francis condemned the war in my home country, Yemen, as a terrible humanitarian crisis.

Addressing the world he said: “Let us pray strongly, because there are children who are hungry, who are thirsty – they don’t have medicine and they are in danger of death”.

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Life in the shadow of al-Shabaab: ‘If I don’t call, my mother thinks I’m dead’

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The extremist group’s enduring influence in Mogadishu makes the Somali capital a dangerous place to live and work

Once every other month, journalist Hassan Dahir, 28, leaves his hostel in central Mogadishu under the cover of darkness to visit his mother in Yaqshid district, north-east of the capital.

He will spend the night with her and return to his rented room before dawn.

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Why can’t we talk about the UK sending arms to Yemen? | Anna Stavrianakis

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A Commons committee is scrutinising UK arms export controls – yet the Yemen conflict isn’t even on the agenda

Seated in front of a tapestry embroidered with words from the lexicon of “British values” – freedom, equality, tolerance, liberty – ten MPs spent an hour last week taking evidence from NGOs on an issue that calls these values into question: UK arms export policy.

This is the Parliamentary committees on arms export controls (CAEC) in action: a body responsible for scrutinising government policy and holding it to account.

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From Iraq to Yemen: the grubby business of counting the war dead

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A Labour MP’s grotesque take on Yemen war casualties serves only to show the sordid and politicised nature of body counts

Counting the bodies in conflicts is a necessary, confusing and too often sordid business.

Body counts are necessary for obvious reasons. Numbers supply a moral reference point. They tell us about the scale of a conflict as well as if civilians were targeted and how. They provide evidence for different kinds of human rights advocacy in an international setting, and assist in setting policy for emergency assistance.

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Children and babies die as temperatures plummet in Syria

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World Health Organization sounds alarm over freezing conditions facing 23,000 people fleeing conflict

At least 29 children and newborn babies have died in freezing temperatures after fleeing conflict in the last Isis controlled villages in eastern Syria.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was extremely concerned about the conditions facing 23,000 people who have taken flight from rural areas of Deir ez-Zor over over the past two months, warning that services are severely overstretched.

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Damning Yemen report calls on UK to come clean over arms exports

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Study questions lack of detail surrounding scale and quantity of weapons sales

A highly critical report has found extensive flaws in the British government’s arms sales strategy.

Based on analysis of the Yemen conflict, the study urges a reduction in weapons exports to conflict zones and states involved in human rights abuses.

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‘We are afraid’: Brazilian women alarmed at relaxation of gun laws

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Bolsonaro’s move allowing more people to own firearms is causing unease in a society where domestic violence is rife

A pledge to make it easier for “good citizens” to buy guns for self-defence helped sweep Jair Bolsonaro to power. But there is alarm that the Brazilian president’s decree loosening firearms laws will make pervasive violence against women even worse – and more deadly.

“I believe this is a very negative measure that will lead more women to be threatened by violence,” said Maria da Penha, the women’s rights activist whose case changed Brazil’s domestic violence laws. “This decree should be reviewed.”

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‘These children are crucial’: teaching forgiveness in CAR’s besieged camps

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With peace talks starting this week in Khartoum, a quarter of the population of the Central African Republic have had to leave their homes – some into camps where makeshift teaching facilities offer hope to a potentially lost generation

Marie was fast asleep when the rebels came. “They wanted to kill all the men,” she says, “and to destroy our homes.”

Three militants burst into her room then moved to the next house, leaving her screaming in terror but unscathed. In a conflict zone where rape is routinely used as a weapon of war, other girls were less fortunate that night. She was just 12.

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Thousands flee north-east Nigeria after devastating Boko Haram attack

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More than 8,000 refugees cross border into Cameroon after Nigerian town of Rann is burned to the ground

Thousands of people have fled into Cameroon from north-east Nigeria following violent attacks by a faction of the militant group Boko Haram, which looted and destroyed large parts of a major town.

More than 8,000 refugees have crossed the border into Bodo after the attacks on the Nigerian town of Rann on Monday, in which at least 10 people are thought to have been killed. Homes and humanitarian organisations’ buildings were burned down.

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Afghanistan bucks global trend with sharp rise in civilian casualties

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Number of innocent people killed or maimed in Afghan war rises 36% despite overall fall in casualties worldwide

Civilian deaths and injuries in Afghanistan from explosive weapons rose by more than a third last year, against a downward trend globally, according to a survey seen by the Guardian.

Most of the 4,260 civilians killed or injured in explosions in the country in 2018 – up from 3,119 in 2017 – were victims of suicide attacks, found a report by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

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Yemen: Houthi rebels’ food aid theft only tip of iceberg, officials say

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Questions over relief effort multiply as it emerges aid officials knew for months of armed groups diverting food

The theft of food aid in Yemen by Houthi rebels might be only the tip of the iceberg, officials believe, as questions multiply over international relief efforts in the famine-ravaged country.

It has emerged that aid officials have been aware for months that armed groups – most prominently Houthi rebels in the capital, Sana’a – have been diverting food aid into the key areas they control, including by manipulating data in malnutrition surveys used by the UN.

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From abuse to abortion laws: the world’s 12 hot topics in 2018 | Liz Ford and Sneha Lala

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We cast a look back at the issues that dominated the headlines in the past year, from the devastation in Yemen to the trauma of Rohingya refugees

The year was dominated by allegations of sexual abuse and harassment in the aid sector, and anger at the failure of those in power to believe and support those making them.

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