Category Archives: Conflict and arms

Haiti faces ‘hunger emergency’ amid escalating gang violence and surging inflation

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Acute hunger is affecting 4.9 million Haitians, according to a UN report, which outlines the increased need for humanitarian aid

Haitians are increasingly desperate for humanitarian aid as gang violence engulfing the country has left nearly half the population regularly going hungry, a World Food Programme (WFP) report has found.

“These are the worst conditions on record,” said Jean-Martin Bauer, WFP’s Haiti director. “Food insecurity in Haiti has been going downhill and Haiti is sliding into a hunger emergency.”

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‘Trail of war crimes’ left by DRC rebel group as recent attacks leave 300,000 displaced

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After a year of murder, rape, disease and looting, aid workers ask the international community: ‘Where the hell have you been?’

More than 300,000 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have had to abandon their homes because of fighting between the M23 rebel group and the government last month.

According to the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, more than 800,000 people have now been displaced by the conflict since last March, and there is a humanitarian crisis that regional and international powers have allowed to fester.

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South Sudan ‘failed’ by international aid system as food crisis intensifies

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Catholic charity Cafod says local NGOs are best placed to respond on the frontline but are being cut out of the process

South Sudan is facing the world’s most severe food insecurity crisis, yet the local groups most effective at delivering aid are not being directly funded, according to a new report.

Only 0.4% of humanitarian funding meant for food is directly channelled towards South Sudanese NGOs, despite them being the most effective at tackling hunger, according to the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod).

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Gangs, cholera and political turmoil leave half Haiti’s children relying on aid

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Triple threat sees Caribbean country in worst crisis since 2010 earthquake, with young people bearing the brunt, warns Unicef

An escalation of gang violence, political instability and a deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti has left half its children relying on humanitarian aid to survive, Unicef says.

At least 2.6 million are expected to need immediate lifesaving assistance this year as the overlapping crises leave Haiti’s children in the worst position since the earthquake of 2010, Unicef’s Haiti representative, Bruno Maes, told the Guardian.

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Help world’s poor as well as Ukraine, say faith charities as pope visits South Sudan

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An open letter, backed by opinion poll, urges the UK to restore aid budget on eve of a three-day ‘pilgrimage for peace’ in the east African country

The British government’s financial support for Ukraine must not be at the cost of aid to other areas of the world in crisis, three faith-based charities have warned, on the eve of an unprecedented joint pilgrimage to South Sudan led by Pope Francis.

The organisations are calling on the government to restore the 59% cut in the UK’s aid budget to South Sudan, and invest in peacebuilding, conflict management and reconciliation.

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Yazidi women kept as slaves by IS appeal to UN to intervene in their fight for compensation

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Lawyers demand support from Australia for five victims of Khaled Sharrouf in test case for international law on torture survivors

Five Yazidi women held as slaves by an Islamic State fighter are appealing to the UN to intervene in their case for compensation in a move lawyers hope will help fix a “lawless” global system that is failing torture survivors.

The women, captured in Iraq in 2014, were taken to Syria as slaves by IS fighters, including the Australian citizen Khaled Sharrouf, who was pictured standing next to his young son holding a severed human head.

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Pakistan sends back hundreds of Afghan refugees to face Taliban repression

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About 250,000 Afghan asylum seekers have arrived in Pakistan since August 2021, but a migrant crackdown has left many of them in fear of being jailed or deported

More than 600 Afghans have been deported from Pakistan in the past three days, and hundreds more face expulsion in a renewed crackdown on migrants.

On Saturday, 302 people were sent back to Afghanistan from Sindh province and 303 on Monday, including 63 women and 71 children. A further 800 people are expected to be deported in the coming days.

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Haiti receives its first batch of cholera vaccines to tackle deadly outbreak

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Campaign to stem the spread of the disease takes place against a backdrop of political chaos, gang violence and fuel shortages

Haiti has received its first shipment of cholera vaccines since an outbreak was declared more than two months ago.

The first of the 1.1m doses, delivered last week, will be distributed in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and surrounding areas in the hope of stemming the spread of the disease, which has been aided by political instability and lawlessness.

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Nobel prize winner criticises western ‘neglect’ and urges action over DRC violence

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Denis Mukwege has demanded sanctions be imposed on Rwanda to ease the crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo

The west must ditch its “double standards” and act decisively against the violence worsening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Dr Denis Mukwege, the Nobel prize-winning surgeon, has said.

In a stinging criticism of the international community’s “negligence”, Mukwege urged Britain and its allies to impose sanctions on neighbouring Rwanda to help ease the growing crisis in the east of the country.

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Starvation being used as a weapon of war in South Sudan, report reveals

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International community urged to intervene as hundreds of thousands forced into refugee camps as homes and crops destroyed and aid workers attacked

Starvation is being used as a weapon of war by South Sudan government forces against their own citizens, an investigation has found.

Deliberate starvation tactics used by government forces and allied militia, and by opposition forces, are driving civilians out of their homes, exacerbating Africa’s largest refugee crisis, according to the report published on Thursday.

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Stop Eritrea’s ‘war-funding diaspora tax’, say MPs and lords

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UK parliamentarians call for inquiry into 2% levy on Eritreans abroad, amid fears that it fuels Tigray war

A group of UK parliamentarians is calling for an urgent investigation into the collection of a “diaspora tax” by the Eritrean authorities, which they say could have helped fund war in neighbouring Ethiopia.

MPs and members of the House of Lords want the government to launch a “full, formal, and fully funded” public inquiry into the collection of the 2% tax in the UK, and take “robust action to stop the practice”.

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Failure to extend Yemen ceasefire leaves millions at risk, say charities

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International organisations cite 60% fall in civilian casualties over six months, but critics say benefits of truce have been exaggerated

The expiry of a six-month ceasefire in Yemen has thrust the country back into war after limited improvements in humanitarian conditions, according to analysts.

Charities have criticised the failure to extend beyond Sunday the truce that was first agreed in April, and which they said had created hope for Yemenis. Although critics have said it created only a temporary stop in fighting that allowed the Houthi rebels to strengthen.

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‘Humanitarian crime’: fighting cuts off insulin supply in Tigray

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International Diabetic Federation decries reports ongoing war has led to shortages of life-saving drug at Ethiopian region’s biggest hospital

Doctors at the biggest hospital in Tigray say they have just days supply left of insulin, as the resumption of fighting between rebels and Ethiopian government troops once again cuts off supplies to the region.

In what the head of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) has branded “a humanitarian crime,” medics at Ayder specialist referral hospital warn they have already run out of one kind of the life-saving medicine and have only a week’s supply of another.

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Sudan accused of trying to ‘bury the truth’ with mass graves for protesters

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Families demand DNA tests to identify if their relatives are among thousands of unclaimed bodies in hospital morgues

The families of those missing after three years of political unrest in Sudan are to meet government officials to discuss how to bury more than 3,000 unclaimed bodies in the country’s mortuaries.

Last week, the government announced plans to dig mass graves as Sudan’s senior public prosecutor said mortuaries were overcrowded, many remains were decaying and they needed to be cleared.

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Ten years on, first full report records Syrian regime’s massacre at Daraya

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Investigation into attacks by Bashar al-Assad’s forces that left 700 people dead could help bring justice for victims

The “startling display of violence” meted out by Syrian government forces against civilians in the town of Daraya 10 years ago has been laid bare in the first detailed investigation into the massacre.

At least 700 people were killed when forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad stormed the town between 24 and 26 August 2012. Troops went door to door killing and detaining men, women and children. Terrified people sheltered in basements.

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Death toll reaches 36 in eastern DRC as protesters turn on UN peacekeepers

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With elections due next year, analysts fear political motives could be driving the rising violence and tensions in the region

Fears of a new wave of violence in the restive east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are growing after weeks of deadly protests against UN peacekeepers and rising regional tensions.

Thirty-six people, including four UN peacekeepers, have died in the past two weeks as hundreds of protesters vandalised and set fire to UN buildings in several cities in eastern frontier provinces.

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Eritrean refugees say they are being arbitrarily detained in Ethiopian camps

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Exclusive: Tigrinya speakers say they face beatings, detention and privation, and blame UN for ‘abandoning’ them, despite right to be in Ethiopia

Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia say they are being targeted for arbitrary arrest and forcible relocation to war-torn parts of the country, despite having UN permission to remain in Ethiopia.

Government security officers are accused of rounding up, abusing and unlawfully detaining refugees who have legal status, as well as Eritreans who have foreign citizenship.

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Gang warfare traps thousands in Haiti slum as fuel crisis add to desperation

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Calls for aid to be let into Port-au-Prince district after ‘battlefield’ violence leaves dozens dead and cuts supplies of food and water

Haiti’s capital has been racked by a week of heavy fighting between gangs, with the global medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warning that thousands of people were trapped without food or water in one district of Port-au-Prince’s notorious Cité Soleil slum.

“We are calling on all belligerents to allow aid to enter Brooklyn and to spare civilians,” said Mumuza Muhindo, the MSF’s head of mission in Haiti, in a statement referring to the contested area within the sprawling Cité Soleil.

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More than 4,000 arrested in Amhara as Ethiopia cracks down on militia

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At least 19 journalists caught up in mass detentions after government moves against Fano, its former ally in Tigray conflict

Ethiopia has launched a sweeping crackdown against an influential armed militia in its Amhara region that has led to the arrest of more than 4,000 people, including journalists, activists and a former general.

The militia group, known as the Fano, played a key role alongside the federal military in beating back November’s southward advance through the Amhara region by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which is fighting an 18-month-long civil war against the government and its allies.

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‘You hear bullets, you run’: Congolese refugees stream over Uganda’s border

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As thousands flee the latest fighting in DRC to join 1.5m already in Uganda, the UN’s food aid agency is stretched as never before

The rain will determine what time Uwimana Nsengiyuava gets on the truck to Nyakabande transit centre, where Uganda is hosting 20,000 refugees who, like her, have fled fresh fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Since March, up to 500 refugees a day have been silently streaming into the east African country via Kisoro, a picturesque district in south-west Uganda dotted with endless hills, streams and a lake.

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