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Category: International News

  • UN seeks $2.6bn for humanitarian needs in Sudan

    UN seeks $2.6bn for humanitarian needs in Sudan

    25 million people, more than half the population of Sudan need humanitarian aid and protection

    The United Nations humanitarian response plan is seeking nearly $2.56 billion to help people affected by the crisis in Sudan, a senior U.N. official said on Wednesday.

    Meanwhile, the U.N. refugee agency is also seeking more funding to assist those forced to flee.

    “Today, 25 million people, more than half the population of Sudan, need humanitarian aid and protection.

    This is the highest number we have ever seen in the country,” said Ramesh Rajasingham, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva and director of the Coordination Division

    “The funding requirements of nearly 2.6 billion dollars are also the highest for any humanitarian appeal for Sudan.’’

    The plan, a revised version of the annual humanitarian plan for 2023, is designed to target 18 million people in need.

    The conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has caused a humanitarian crisis that threatens to destabilise the region, displacing more than 700,000 people inside Sudan and forcing about 200,000 to flee into neighbouring countries.

    The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),is making a joint appeal with the aid agency on Wednesday, said it was seeking 472 million dollars to assist more than 1 million people over the next six months.

    “Sadly, we once again need to call on countries and individuals with the means to step up for innocent people who have lost everything through no fault of their own,’’ said Raouf Mazou, Assistant High Commissioner for Operations at UNHCR.

  • 400 perish in devastating Myanmar cyclone

    Cyclone Mocha: Deadly storm hits Myanmar and Bangladesh coasts

    Officials on Tuesday reported that cyclone Mocha, which hit Myanmar’s Rakhine State, claimed over 400 lives and caused severe damage.

    Ramanathan Balakrishnan, the UN relief coordinator in Myanmar, said: “It really is a nightmare scenario.”

    Mocha was the strongest cyclone to hit the region in more than a decade and its impact was especially felt in Rakhine, a state on the western coast which is home to Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.

    According to Balakrishnan, the cyclone struck the poorest parts of the country, which were already affected by the coronavirus pandemic, domestic conflict and economic problems.

    “Now they are also on the front line of the climate crisis,” he said, referring to the increasingly frequent weather extremes observed in the wake of climate change.

    Most of those killed were Rohingya, a spokesman for Myanmar’s opposition National Unity Government told dpa.

    The National Unity government was formed after Myanmar’s 2021 military coup as an alternative to the ruling junta.

    It warned people about the cyclone in advance and has worked to organise international aid for the victims.

    The tropical cyclone made landfall in Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh on Sunday with wind speeds of more than 250 kilometres per hour in some places.

    The full extent of the damage, however, is only slowly becoming clear due to widespread cuts to communication lines.

    The Irrawaddy news website reported hundreds of deaths in Rohingya camps around the city of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State. Many were said to have drowned or were hit by falling trees.

    Since the coup, displaced people have been living in makeshift shelters in the region due to ongoing violence associated with the junta.

    Many people had barely been able to shelter from the huge gusts of wind and heavy rain.

    In both countries, hundreds of thousands of people were taken to temporary shelters as a precaution which saved many lives, the charity Oxfam said.

    According to authorities in Bangladesh, no deaths have yet been reported there.

    Nevertheless, the damage around the city of Cox’s Bazar in south-eastern Bangladesh is substantial.

    In Cox’s Bazar, around one million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar live in the world’s largest collection of refugee camps, mostly in dwellings made of bamboo and plastic sheets.

    Even before the cyclone, the United Nations estimated six million people were in humanitarian need in the regions affected.

  • Sudan: Air strikes, artillery fire escalate crisis

    Air strikes and artillery fire intensified sharply across Sudan’s capital early on Tuesday, residents said, as the army sought to defend key bases from paramilitary rivals it has been fighting for more than a month.

    The air strikes, explosions, and clashes could be heard in the south of Khartoum, and there was heavy shelling across the River Nile in parts of the adjoining cities of Bahri and Omdurman, witnesses said.

    The fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has triggered unrest in other areas of Sudan, especially in the western region of Darfur, but is concentrated in Khartoum.

    It has caused a humanitarian crisis that threatens to destabilise the region, displacing more than 700,000 people inside Sudan and forcing about 200,000 to flee into neighbouring countries.

    “The situation is unbearable. We left our house to go to a neighbour’s house in Khartoum, escaping from the war, but the bombardment follows us wherever we go,” said Ayman Hassan, a 32-year-old resident.

    “We don’t know what the citizens did to deserve a war in the middle of the houses.”

    Fighting has surged both in Khartoum and in Geneina, capital of West Darfur since the two warring parties began talks in Jeddah brokered by Saudi Arabia and the United States more than a week ago.

    The talks have produced a statement of principles around providing access to aid supplies and protecting civilians, but mechanisms for setting up humanitarian corridors and agreeing to a ceasefire are still being discussed.

    The army has relied mainly on air strikes and shelling, only occasionally engaging in ground fighting, as it tries to push back RSF forces that took up positions in neighbourhoods across Khartoum soon after the fighting erupted on April 15.

    The RSF attacked major military bases in northern Omdurman and southern Khartoum on Tuesday in an apparent attempt to prevent the army from deploying heavy weaponry and fighter jets, residents and witnesses said.

    The army has been trying to cut off RSF supply lines from outside the capital and to secure strategic sites including the airport in central Khartoum and the major Al-Jaili oil refinery in Bahri.

    The war began after disputes over plans for the RSF to join the army and the future chain of command under an internationally backed deal for a political transition towards civilian rule and elections.

    Army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, took the top positions on Sudan’s ruling council following the 2019 overthrow of former leader Omar al-Bashir during a popular uprising.

    They staged a coup two years later as a deadline to hand power to civilians approached, but both sides began to mobilise their forces as mediators tried to finalise the new transition plan.

  • Number of global executions hits 53%– Amnesty Int’l

    The total number of known executions carried out around the world in 2022 rose by 53 percent on the figure recorded for 2021, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

    The human rights organisation, in a report on the worldwide use of the death penalty, documented at least 883 executions in 20 countries for 2022, the highest figure in five years.

    The number was likely higher, it noted, as thousands of executions in China “are being kept under wraps.”

    State secrecy in North Korea and Vietnam, along with limited access to information in several other countries, continued to hinder a fuller assessment of the use of the death penalty, the report said.

    Amnesty said 90 per cent of the world’s known executions in 2022 were carried out by just three countries, namely: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

    The number of recorded executions in Iran rose from 314 in 2021 to 576 in 2022, it said.

    In Saudi Arabia, the number tripled from 65 in 2021 to 196 last year – the highest figure recorded by Amnesty for the country in 30 years.

    Six countries abolished the death penalty completely or partially last year, according to the report.

    However, executions resumed in five countries during 2022 – Afghanistan, Kuwait, Myanmar, the State of Palestine, and Singapore, the report said.

    More than a third of the world’s recorded executions in 2022 were for drugs offences, a clear breach of international law, Amnesty said.