COTONOU/BENIN , Apr 26 2024 (IPS)* — A group of young girls aged between 15 and 17 sit tight, following attentively a lesson being taught by a Mualim (Islamic teacher) in a makeshift madrassah (Qur’anic school) located in one of the impoverished townships of Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou.
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Girl refugees from Niger now living in Benin, often end up as child brides. Graphic: IPS
They arrived in Benin recently, fleeing poverty, hunger, climate change, and rising insecurity in their home country, Niger, in the aftermath of the military coup that toppled democratically-elected president Mohamed Bazoum.
KAMPALA, BULIISA, and HOIMA , Apr 18 2024 (IPS)* —When Mugisha Jealousy Mulimba learned that the government of Uganda was dragging him to court, he expected justice. But he says he has realized these courts are being used to deprive him of his rights to a fair hearing and the right to fair and adequate compensation for his land and property.
Works at the Tilenga Development Project operated by TotalEnergies. Some landowners object to what they consider forced evictions with inadequate compensation. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS
A three-day Palestine conference in Berlin was forcibly shut down after three hours on Friday [12 Apr]. Electricity was abruptly terminated in the midst of the presentation by Salman Abu Sitta, the 87 year old author of the authoritative “Atlas of Palestine”.
Rick Sterling
Former Greek Finance Minister and leader of DIEM25, Yanis Varoufakis, was prevented from entering Germany to attend the conference.
He went on Twitter/X to send a message, “Do you know that the German Interior Ministry has just banned me from entering Germany? Indeed if that were not enough, I have been banned from talking to you via zoom, or indeed through a video message like this, exactly like this. The threat being that I will be tried in Germany for breaking German law. Why?
“While the attention of the world is focused on Gaza, abuses in the West Bank, fueled by decades of impunity and complacency among Israel’s allies, are soaring.”
A destroyed car is pictured after Jewish settlers set fire to Palestinian homes and vehicles in the occupied West Bank on 14 Apr 2024. (Photo: Nedal Eshtayah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
17 Apr 2024 – Israeli soldiers have either passively watched or participated in the uprooting of at least seven communities in the West Bank since October of last year, Human Rights Watch said today [17 Apr 2024] in a new report documenting surging settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory.
(UN News)* — A youth activist in Haiti has described how years of gang violence, kidnappings and insecurity in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, has forced their “tears to run dry”.
The security situation has worsened in the Caribbean country since then. In the first three months of 2024, over 2,500 people have been killed or injured due to gang violence, according to the United Nations mission in the country, BINUH.
(UN News)* —The ongoing crisis in Haiti is having a “massive” and “devastating” impact, with over half the population acutely food insecure and more than one million staring at emergency levels of hunger, a senior UN World Food Programme (WFP) official said on Thursday [].
Joint Statement by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, and Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Joyce Msuya:
Sexual violence continues to affect women, especially in Khartoum, Darfur and Kordofan, with reports of rapes, forced marriages, sexual slavery, and trafficking of women and girls. Photo: OCHA/Ala Kheir.
(UNOCHA)* 25 April 2024 —After one year of hostilities in Sudan, we are appealing for more international engagement to combat sexual violence against women and girls in the country. These barbaric acts, which echo the horrors witnessed in Darfur two decades ago, must spur immediate action.
(Nairobi) – The Burkina Faso military summarily executed at least 223 civilians, including at least 56 children, in two villages on February 25, 2024, Human Rights Watch said today [25 April 2024].
These mass killings, among the worst army abuse in Burkina Faso since 2015, appear to be part of a widespread military campaign against civilians accused of collaborating with Islamist armed groups, and may amount to crimes against humanity.
Unexpected blistering temperatures across Gaza have added to the daily misery faced by the enclave’s people and sparked new fears of disease outbreaks amid a lack of sufficient clean water and waste disposal, UN humanitarians said on Thursday [].
The warning from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, came as some 1.2 million people continued to shelter in tents pitched in and around the enclave’s southernmost city, Rafah, with nowhere else to go.
“It is like living in a greenhouse, no-one can tolerate living inside,” the UN agency said, quoting Mustafa Radwan, formerly from Gaza City, in a social media post on X.
Rome, 24 April 2024 (FAO)* – According to the latest Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), nearly 282 million people in 59 countries and territories experienced high levels of acute hunger in 2023 – a worldwide increase of 24 million from the previous year.
This rise was due to the report’s increased coverage of food crisis contexts as well as a sharp deterioration in food security, especially in the Gaza Strip and the Sudan.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 