Category Archives: Africa

Egypt says climate finance must be top of agenda at Cop27 talks

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Host of November’s summit wants focus to be on ‘moving from pledges to implementation’

Financial assistance for developing countries must be at the top of the agenda for UN climate talks this year, the host country, Egypt, has made clear, as governments will be required to follow through on promises made at the Cop26 summit last year.

Egypt will host Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in November. The talks will take place in the shadow of the war in Ukraine, as well as rising energy and food prices around the world, leaving rich countries grappling with a cost-of-living crisis and poor countries struggling with debt mountains.

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Médecins Sans Frontières condemned for ‘profiting from exploitative images’

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Medical charity criticised for using images that ‘endanger and exploit children’ amid row over photos from DRC identifying child rape survivor

Doctors, photographers, human rights activists and academics have written to Médecins Sans Frontières to raise concerns that the medical charity is exploiting the trauma of vulnerable patients to promote its work.

In an open letter to the international president and MSF board, almost 50 signatories, who include current and former staff, allege that the aid organisation has commissioned, published and allowed the sale of photographs that endanger and exploit vulnerable black people, including children.

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‘I saw an oncologist cry’: Tigray cancer patients sent home to die for lack of drugs

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Doctors call for international help as Ethiopia civil war leaves terminally ill being treated with paracetamol in Mekelle hospital

Doctors caring for cancer patients at the main hospital in Tigray say they have only two chemotherapy drugs left in date and are treating terminally ill people with expired medication and paracetamol. Eighteen months of war have left the sickest in society suffering agonising deaths, they say.

For the first time in 11 months, doctors at the Ayder referral hospital in Mekelle took receipt of an oral chemotherapy drug earlier this month as part of an airlift by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Until then, they had had only one, Doxorubicin, still in date.

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‘The fear still lives with me’: three years at mercy of the hostile environment

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After an error on a visa application form, Sarah slipped into immigration limbo

Six years ago, when she was 24, Sarah received an unexpected letter from the Home Office telling her she faced arrest and removal from the UK within seven days. She was so terrified that she climbed out of the back window of the house where she was living, taking her seven-year-old son with her, and they became homeless.

Sarah, who asked for her real name not to be published, had been in the UK since she arrived in 1994 as a two-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She had attended primary and secondary school in the UK and was working and paying taxes in London, but her uncertain immigration status had not been resolved when she was a child. As an adult she was required every three years to pay fees of about £1,000 to apply for visas that would allow her to remain. An error on her 2016 application form meant the visa was refused, but the fees were not refunded and she could not afford to reapply, and she slipped into immigration limbo. Even now, 28 years after arriving in the UK, she is still battling to get British citizenship.

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Confusion in Lagos as passenger plane is towed along highway

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Rumours spread online that the aircraft had crashed, but authorities said it was simply being delivered to its new owner

A plane that was towed along the side of a busy expressway in Lagos on Tuesday night has caused widespread confusion and amusement to commuters – and rumours it had crashed – before Nigerian authorities said that it was being delivered to its new owner via the busy road.

Several videos of the aircraft posted on social media showed it at various points along the side of a major road, within a mile of the international and domestic airport terminals and plane storage facilities in the Ikeja area of Lagos.

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Sudan security forces clash with protesters against military coup

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Police open fire on demonstrators as protest organisers detained in fierce crackdown by regime

Security forces in Sudan have mounted a fierce crackdown in recent days to crush remaining unrest, six months after a coup that brought a military regime to power in the unstable strategic country.

Police fired teargas and shotguns at protesters as thousands took to the streets in the capital, Khartoum, and twin city of Omdurman on Monday. The violence followed a similarly harsh response to demonstrations over the weekend. In all, 113 people have been injured and one killed in recent days, according to doctors.

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Rwanda plan challenged over alleged failure to identify risks for LGBTQ+ refugees

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Pre-action letter questions Home Office claims that east African country is ‘generally safe’

Priti Patel’s plan to send refugees on a one-way ticket to Rwanda is being legally challenged over the government’s alleged failure to identify risks facing vulnerable groups such as LGBTQ+ people.

A pre-action letter sent to the Home Office on behalf of the pressure group Freedom from Torture questions government claims that the east African state is “generally a safe country” for refugees.

The government’s claim that Rwanda is “generally” a “safe third country” is irrational.

It relies upon apparent pre-determination or bias.

The home secretary has breached her duty not to induce breaches of the European convention on human rights by her agents.

Removing asylum seekers to Rwanda is beyond Patel’s legal authority because it is contrary to the refugee convention.

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Why are monkeypox cases suddenly emerging across the world and could the virus have mutated?

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Data prior to current outbreaks suggested resurgence of the disease, with waning immunity from smallpox vaccination contributing to spread

The sudden emergence of monkeypox in several countries has raised questions about how the virus, which is most common in central and west Africa, has managed to spread.

Many health experts have said the monkeypox cases in 12 countries are not cause for panic, given the virus is much less infectious than illnesses like Covid and rarely fatal, but it is highly unusual.

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Sole survivor of 2009 Comoros plane crash recalls terrifying ordeal

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Bahia Bakari, who was 12 at the time, tells French court of the moments leading up to crash in which 152 died

A woman who was 12 when she became the sole survivor of the 2009 Yemenia Airways crash in the Comoros islands that killed all 152 others on board has described the terrifying moments leading up to her plunge into the ocean and subsequent rescue as part of the French trial against the airline.

Bahia Bakari, 25, has sat through several hearings with her father but had not testified or spoken to journalists attending the trial, which opened this month.

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Médecins Sans Frontières pulls images of teenage rape survivor after outcry

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NGO takes down photos of girl, 16, from DRC from website after critics call them unethical and racist

Médecins Sans Frontières has removed photographs of a teenage rape survivor from its website after criticism that the images were unethical and racist.

MSF took down two photos of a 16-year-old girl from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who was gang-raped by three armed men afterphotographers, activists and human rights lawyers condemned the images on Twitter.

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Number of displaced people passes 100m for the first time, says UN

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‘Staggering milestone’ calls for urgent international action to address underlying causes of conflict, persecution and the climate crisis, says high commissioner for refugees

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has said the global number of forcibly displaced people has passed 100 million for the first time, describing it as a “staggering milestone”.

The UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, said the grim new statistic should act as a wake-up call for the international community and that more action is needed internationally to address the root causes of forced displacement around the world.

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UK to announce more monkeypox cases as efforts ramp up to contain outbreak

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Close contacts of those infected with rare disease offered vaccines and told to isolate for up to 21 days

Public health officials are to announce more UK monkeypox cases on Monday, as efforts ramp up to contain the first multinational outbreak of the virus that has led to cases in at least 14 countries.

The unusual outbreak of the rare disease has sparked a wave of contact tracing and testing, with the closest contacts of confirmed cases – such as partners and people in the same household – offered a vaccine and told to isolate at home for up to 21 days.

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Britain slashes humanitarian aid by 51% despite global food crisis

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Campaigners say ministers must change course as millions face famine in Africa and the Ukraine war threatens to disrupt global food supplies

Ministers have been accused of choosing the “worst moment in history” to slash the foreign aid budget, as provisional figures showed that UK overseas humanitarian funding was cut by more than half last year.

MPs and charity campaigners say the aid budget urgently needs to be increased to cope with the Ukraine conflict and the risk of famine in Africa. Up to 23 million people face acute hunger in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia due to drought.

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Guinea junta allows former leader Alpha Conde to leave country

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84-year-old who was ousted last year boards plane for Turkey to receive medical treatment

Guinean ex-leader Alpha Conde boarded a plane for Turkey on Saturday after the junta that toppled him authorised his travel abroad for medical treatment, officials said.

The 84-year-old Conte, who was ousted last year, has been allowed to travel out of respect for his “dignity and integrity” and for “humanitarian reasons”, the junta’s governing body said.

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Mozambique confirms first wild poliovirus case in 30 years

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Case in child in Tete province follows detection of similar strain in Malawi in February, officials say

Mozambique has identified its first case of wild polio in three decades following the genetic sequencing of a similar strain of the childhood disease in Malawi earlier this year.

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, said the detection of the new case was “greatly concerning” and that it demonstrated “how dangerous this virus is and how quickly it can spread”.

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Widow of man killed in Libya accuses South Africa of ‘silence’ in hunt for his body

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The South African government sent Anton Hammerl’s passport to his widow in 2016 but has refused to say how it came to have it

The widow of a British-based photographer who was murdered by Col Gaddafi’s forces in Libya in 2011 has accused South Africa of withholding crucial information about her husband’s death that could help in efforts to locate his body.

Anton Hammerl was killed in an incident in May 2011 that saw other journalists, including James Foley – who was later kidnapped and beheaded by Islamic State in Syria – taken prisoner.

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‘Huge spike’ in global conflict caused record number of displacements in 2021

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Those fleeing combat were internally displaced 14.4m times, with biggest toll in sub-Saharan Africa, report reveals

Conflict and violence forced people from their homes a record number of times last year, a report has found, with sub-Saharan Africa bearing the brunt of mass internal displacement caused by “huge spikes” in fighting.

People fleeing violence were internally displaced 14.4m times in 2021, an increase of 4.6m on 2020, according to figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

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‘History repeating’: Amazon base in Cape Town splits Indigenous groups

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Building work is quiet, for now, on £200m project that pits different visions of South Africa’s future against one another

Smoke curls into the air, a drum beats, the dance begins, a chant is raised. Ten metres away, cars howl past on a busy road, drivers unaware of the sacred ritual taking place in the centre of a bustling South African city.

Francisco Mackenzie, a chief of the Cochoqua community of the Khoi people, talks of ancient beliefs and battles five centuries ago, against invaders from overseas. He points to the iconic skyline of Table Mountain, and then to a nearby building site.

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UN confirms death of one of last Rwandan genocide fugitives

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Phénéas Munyarugarama is second person wanted for their involvement in 1994 mass killings to die

One of the last five fugitives wanted for his role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Phénéas Munyarugarama, died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002, UN prosecutors have announced.

Munyarugarama, a local army commander, “died of natural causes” and was buried in Kankwala, in the eastern DRC, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) announced in The Hague.

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‘I thought the UK was a good country’: Sudan massacre refugee faces removal to Rwanda

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Mohammed is among first asylum seekers to face removal under Home Office’s controversial scheme

It took Mohammed more than three years and a journey of more than 5,000 miles to reach the UK after fleeing a massacre in his village in Sudan.

Now, just over a week after arriving by kayak across the Channel, he is among the first tranche of asylum seekers facing forced removal to Rwanda, on the continent where his journey began.

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