A humanitarian convoy delivered aid to residents of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region in January. © UNOCHA 9 March 2025 I   Peace and Security        Attacks across Ukraine on Friday reportedly left 21 civilians dead and scores injured, making it one of the deadliest days this year, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in the country said in a statement issued on Saturday night.   “With 21 civilians reported killed, 7 March was one of the deadliest days for civilians in Ukraine so far this year,” UN mission chief Danielle Bell said. Russian’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 has killed thousands and left millions displaced by the ongoing war. The UN monitoring mission said all the civilian deaths and 79 of the 81 injured on 7 March occurred in territory controlled by Ukraine. Right now, the mission is working to verify the casualty numbers according to its standard methodology. Deadly attacks in Donetsk Most of the casualties occurred in Donetsk region, including in Dobropillia town where a Russian attack with multiple weapons late on Friday evening killed 11 civilians and injured 47, including seven children, the UN mission reported. According to local authorities, the attacks destroyed or heavily damaged at least eight five-story residential buildings, an administrative building and a shopping centre. Only two other days in 2025 have seen as many people killed, the UN monitoring mission said. Local authorities reported 21 civilians killed on both 8 January and 1 February. For both dates, the UN mission was able to verify 19 of them. Though casualty numbers have fluctuated over recent months, they overall remain higher than in 2024. The UN monitoring mission said it will release its monthly protection of civilians update for February on its website  on 11 March. © 2025 United Nations.

Some opposition MPs lit flares and threw smoke bombs during a parliament session - the first since mass protests claimed the resignation of the Serbian prime minister. Milica Stojanovic and Katarina Baletic, March 4, 2025 Smoke bombs in the Serbian Parliament, March 4 2025. Screenshot: parlament.gov.rs Serbian MPs from the ruling majority and opposition brawled on Tuesday inside the National Assembly chamber, where smoke bombs were also set off on the first of this year’s parliament sessions, which was held amid heightened tensions as mass protests continue to shake the country. In the tense atmosphere, MPs could not even agree on the session agenda, with the opposition arguing that after Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic’s resignation last month, which came as the student-led protests escalated, the government has no right to propose any new laws apart from an amendment on university tuition fees. “We believe that only one item can be on the agenda, and that is the fulfillment of the student demands,” Radomir Lazovic from the Green-Left Front told media in front of parliament after the incidents. After the ruling majority voted for the planned agenda, a couple of MPs got into a fight, initially with the parliamentary security, then some of them lit flares and threw smoke bombs. Amidst the chaos, a fight broke out among MPs. Despite the chaos and smoke, governing coalition MPs continued the session. Parliament speaker Ana Brnabic said that three ruling party MPs had been injured, but insisted the working day would not be interrupted. “We will work today in accordance with the rules of procedure, until 6 p.m.,” she said. Riot police deployed at the back entrance of the Serbian parliament. Photo: BIRN. The opposition meanwhile continued to try to disrupt the session by blowing whistles and vuvuzelas while ruling MPs were talking. Mass protests sparked by the Novi Sad railway station disaster in November, which left 15 people dead, have continued for three months. Protesters say the disaster highlighted official corruption and the government’s disdain for the population. The ongoing protests represent the most powerful challenge to President Aleksandar Vucic’s rule since he came to power, and have already claimed the resignations of several senior officials. However, the political opposition has been largely sidelined by the ongoing protests, which have strongly avoided being coopted for party purposes. Tuesday’s parliamentary session was the first one in 2025, and the first one after Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic resigned in February as the authorities sought to defuse the growing protest movement. At the end of the session, Vucevic’s resignation should be confirmed. While the chaos in parliament was ongoing, members of the public started to gather in front of the parliament and police forces were deployed. Copyright BIRN 2007

In the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), insecurity and horrific sexual violence have left tens of thousands fleeing across borders with no sign of the exodus stopping, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday. People continue to flee fighting in the eastern DR Congo where Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have made major gains. © MONUSCO/Aubin Mukoni “Near the frontlines, sexual violence and human rights abuses remain rampant, as is the looting and destruction of civilian homes and businesses,” said Patrick Eba, Deputy Director of UNHCR ’s Division of International Protection. Speaking in Geneva, Mr. Eba told journalists that that North and South Kivu provinces remain unstable, with “hundreds of thousands of people on the move”. Close to 80,000 people have fled armed clashes between Congolese Government forces and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels into neighbouring countries and some 61,000 have arrived in Burundi since January, Mr. Eba stressed. 60 rape victims a day A staggering 895 cases of rape were reported to humanitarian actors in the last two weeks of February alone, the UN refugee agency official continued - an average of more than 60 a day. The UNHCR official highlighted other risks faced by civilians, including the dangers posed by explosive remnants of war to children and farmers trying to tend their fields. On Monday, the UN humanitarian affairs coordination office ( OCHA ) reported that armed men had raided at least two hospitals in North Kivu’s capital Goma, abducting dozens of patients. The fighting has also impeded humanitarian access to people on the move. The UN World Food Programme ( WFP ) has had to pause its aid operations in conflict-affected areas but was resuming emergency food assistance “in some parts of North Kivu” according to a post on social media platform X on Tuesday morning, aiming to reach over 210,000 people. M23 forced evictions Inside North and South Kivu, “significant” population movements have continued, in line with reported M23 orders issued to internally displaced people (IDPs) to leave the camps around Goma, UNHCR’s Mr. Eba said. “Today, only around 17,000 people are left residing in IDP sites, schools and churches around Goma, while an estimated 414,000 of their neighbours have been on the move for the past four weeks, encouraged by the de facto authorities to return to their villages of origin,” he explained. Given the widespread insecurity in eastern DRC, “many more” people may need to cross borders in search of safety, Mr. Eba warned. UNHCR’s position regarding returns to the area is that “Congolese nationals fleeing the conflict, as well as those who are outside the country, who originate from the areas affected by the conflict, may need refugee protection under international and regional legal frameworks,” he said. The UNHCR official emphasized the importance of “informed decision-making” for any voluntary returns to conflict-affected areas. Exempt from funding freeze Assistance for the current crisis that was spawned by a decades-long conflict in the mineral-rich region had “always been underfunded”, she said, expressing hope that UNHCR will be able to “continue to support this emergency”. There are over one million Congolese refugees across Africa, mainly in neighbouring countries. Uganda hosts more than half of that total, while Burundi has seen most new arrivals since January’s flash M23 offensive. Prior to the current crisis, some 6.7 million people were internally displaced within the DRC. Copyright © United Nations

UNICEF report says sexual violence, including rape, is ‘being used as a tactic of war’ in violation of international law and laws protecting children. Published: March 4, 2025 The war broke out in Sudan in April 2023 between the military and its rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, resulting in the death of at least 20,000 people and displacing more than 14 million from their homes [File: Diego Menjibar/EPA] Children in war-ravaged Sudan , some as young as a year old, have been raped since the beginning of 2024, according to the United Nations children’s agency. In a report published on Tuesday, UNICEF said at least 221 children, including boys, were raped by armed men, according to records compiled by gender-based violence service providers in the North African nation. Of those cases, 66 percent of the survivors were girls and the rest were boys. There were 16 survivors below the age of five, including four who were as young as one. UNICEF recorded an additional 77 reported cases of sexual assault against children – primarily attempted rape. The war in Sudan broke out in April 2023 between the military and its rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, with battles in capital Khartoum and around the country. Since then, at least 20,000 people have been killed, though the number is likely much higher. The war has also driven more than 14 million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine. ‘Rape as war tactic’ According to rights groups, atrocities, including sexual violence and forced child marriages, have been committed by both sides. An estimated 61,800 children have been internally displaced since the war began, according to UNICEF. The agency reported documented cases involving children who were raped during attacks on cities. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in the report that sexual violence, including rape, is “being used as a tactic of war” in violation of international law and laws protecting children. Since December 2024, about 110,000 people have arrived in Renk County in neighbouring South Sudan amid continuing violence in Sudan, according to Doctors Without Borders [File: Diego Menjibar/EPA] The cases of rape were reported in the states of Gadarif, Kassala, Gezeira, Khartoum, River Nile, Northern State, South Kordofan, North Darfur and West Darfur. In South Kordofan, a boy was raped at gunpoint and several children, including a six-year-old, were also raped. They were all out picking fruit. “In a culture of really serious social stigma and at a time when access to services has been severely hampered, the fact that this group came forward tells us that it is only a small sample,” UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram told The Associated Press news agency. “It is only the tip of the iceberg of what are undoubtedly hundreds more children who have been raped.” Ingram, who was in Sudan in December, said she met with victims who “endured horrors that no person would want to experience in their lifetime, and in the aftermath of those horrors, their suffering doesn’t stop”. Many of the victims dealt with physical injuries and “serious psychological scars”, Ingram said, adding that some have attempted suicide. Survivors are often reluctant to report that they were subjected to sexual violence due to social stigma and fear of retribution from armed groups and rejection from family. UNICEF urged the Sudanese government and all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations to protect civilians, especially children, while those providing services to survivors must be protected. “Children as young as one being raped by armed men should shock anyone to their core and compel immediate action,” said Russell. © 2025 Al Jazeera Media Network

Following the adoption of laws banning state institutions from operating in the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, the staff of the State Investigation and Protection Agency were told to leave their office in Banja Luka. Azem Kurtic, March 7, 2025 SIPA regional office in Banja Luka. Photo: BIRN. Police in Republika Srpska on Friday asked the State Investigation and Protection Agency, SIPA, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s national police service, to leave its premises in Banja Luka, the administrative centre of the mainly Serb entity. The move came after the Republika Srpska Assembly adopted laws undermining Bosnia’s state-level institutions in a response to the recent first-instance conviction of Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik. Dodik was sentenced to one year in prison plus a six-year ban on being president of Republika Srpska for defying the decisions of the High Representative, the international official overseeing Bosnia’s post-war peace agreement. According to media reports, SIPA workers on Friday left the building in Banja Luka. The director of the Republika Srpska Police, Sinisa Kostresevic, informed the director of SIPA, Darko Culum, who then notified the SIPA regional office in Banja Luka about the request to vacate the building. All the employees were told to leave and take their belongings, including their weapons. Culum sought to play down the situation. “I am at my workplace, for me, it’s just a regular working day,” he told Euronews.ba . He was dismissive about the call to quit the building: “That’s nothing, just an ordinary request, a letter,” he said. SIPA also said Republika Srpska Interior Ministry did not come to its office in Banja Luka, and that operations at the agency’s main headquarters in East Sarajevo, also in the Republika Srpska, were running smoothly. “Work at SIPA’s headquarters in East Sarajevo is proceeding without disruption,” the agency stated. The statement followed reports about attempts by the Republika Srpska authorities to take over all SIPA facilities in the entity. Following the verdict in Dodik’s trial on February 26, the RS National Assembly voted to ban Bosnia’s state-level court and prosecutor’s office, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council and SIPA from exercising jurisdiction in the entity. Dodik then enforced the laws by signing a presidential decree late on Wednesday night. The same assembly session voted changes to the entity’s criminal code, allowing for the prosecution of “any Serb who stays working in these [state-level] institutions”. The Republika Srpska Interior Ministry issued a call on Thursday for SIPA employees to apply for transfer to it, while Dodik warned that all those who stay in the state-level institutions would be considered “Serb traitors”. The Bosniak member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Denis Becirovic, among others, immediately filed an appeal to the Constitutional Court of Bosnia, challenging the laws. The state prosecutor’s office meanwhile summoned Dodik for questioning on Friday over the adoption of these laws, as a part of a wider investigation into the alleged undermining of Bosnia’s constitutional order. Dodik said he would not respond. “The legal absurdity of Bosnia and Herzegovina is best reflected in the fact that an extra-constitutional institution is discussing the Constitution,” Dodik said on X . “The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina is summoning me to give a statement tomorrow as a suspect for undermining the constitutional order simply because I fulfilled my constitutional and legally prescribed duty following the decisions of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska,” Dodik added, again calling the state prosecutor’s office an unconstitutional entity. Under Bosnian law, the state court can issue an arrest warrant to bring him in for questioning. It remains unclear if such steps will be made. Copyright BIRN 2007

By Padmini Baruah & Angshuman Choudhury Photo: The Leaflet Published on 18 Feb 2025 In February 1983, in one of the nation's bloodiest pogroms, over 2000 Bengali-Muslims were killed in the wake of the Assam agitation. What happened in Nellie continues to reverberate in the everyday persecution of Indian Muslims. Nellie, more than a memory, stays with us as a metaphor. Preserving its memory is an assertion of itself. EXACTLY  forty two years ago, on the morning of February 18, 1983, Sirajjudin was on his way back from the market, having stepped out to get a few essentials. As he drew closer to his village, he saw people running towards him, away from their homes and the village. Panic stricken, Sirajjuddin looked for his family, finally spotting his two sons cowering in a pond nearby. He hoisted the younger son upon his back, held his elder son by the hand and began running. On either side, he could hear shots being fired. As he pushed his way through the exodus, his elder son’s fingers somehow slipped out of his grip. He lost him to the stampede.   Soon after, Sirajjudin saw an Assamese man running after him with a sickle. Tired from carrying the child, and unable to keep up speed, soon the man had caught up with him. The man raised his sickle high into the air, and with one motion, cracked open his younger son’s skull. Letting the lifeless body drop, Sirajjudin somehow made it to the river, and escaped his pursuers. Around him, corpses dotted the land as far as he could see. He would revisit these harrowing memories to filmmaker Subasri Krishnan for her 2015 film  What the Fields Remember . The Nellie massacre had begun, and would, over the course of six hours on February 18, 1983, take over 2000 lives. All of the victims were Bengali Muslims. The Nellie Massacre is among the bloodiest pogroms in independent India, a cataclysmic ethnic cleansing exercise that was perpetrated by the hegemonic Assamese and minority Tiwa communities in the backdrop of the intense, anti-foreigner Assam Movement (1979-1985). The death toll is comparable to, if not higher than, the 2002 Gujarat riots. Yet, it occupies little space in Assamese and Indian public imagination today. Even as Nellie is seared into the memories of Assam's Bengali/Muslim population, it lies without acknowledgement, restitution, and reparation from the Assamese community.    The Nellie Massacre is among the bloodiest pogroms in independent India, a cataclysmic ethnic cleansing exercise Bringing up old stories Last year, when one of the authors (Padmini Baruah) interviewed several Bengali-Muslim people in Assam for a research on citizenship disenfranchisement, Nellie came up again and again. Zubeda Begum (name changed), a survivor of citizenship detention who had spent ten years in jail due to a legal revocation of her citizenship, remembered Nellie as a part of her childhood, “When we were growing up, there was no sign of Hindu-Muslim violence. We all played together, we ate together. Even in 1983, when we heard about Nellie, we simply could not believe it. Our village did not see any conflict at all.”  She acknowledged that things had changed now. “With this government, hate is being sowed in people’s hearts,” she said. A Muslim activist known for their role in campaigns and movements for minority upliftment  told me  that there had been no justice for the people in Nellie whatsoever: “You are bringing up old stories, no one has any memory of this,” they said, “Do you understand me? No one cares.” It would be wrong to see Nellie as a standalone, let alone an aberrational, event. Rather, it should be understood as a social and political metaphor that transcends a particular period of modern Assamese history. ‘Nellie’ is not a floating word – it has a certain prefix and a suffix.  ‘Nellie’ is not a floating word – it has a certain prefix and a suffix.  What happened forty two years ago was precluded by a decades-long push by the dominant Assamese civil society to mark out and reject the cultural ‘outsiders’. For example, the ‘Bongal Kheda’ movement in the 1960s asserted to establish Assamese as the official state language and retain jobs for the Assamese by violently targeting (mostly Hindu) Bengalis. K.C. Chakravarti, an academic,  recorded  in 1960 how influential Assamese socio-cultural organisations like the Assam Sahitya Sabha legitimised the ethno-linguistic agenda of the movement. The fervent linguistic nationalism, fuelled by sociopolitical rhetoric around the unmitigated influx of Bengali Muslims into Assam after the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, reached a fever pitch by the late 1970s. It is at this point that the right-wing Hindu nationalists, then seeking provincial entry points in a bid to dislodge the ‘secular’ Congress, intervened to give an explicitly anti-Muslim edge to Assamese nationalism. By the time the Assam Movement began, Bengali Muslims had become the explicitly marked cultural enemy in Assam. There was no going back from there. The forgetting of Nellie has enabled majoritarian impunity The suffix (of Nellie) is equally critical for us to grasp, if we have to understand the event in full. The pogrom set the tone for a form of xenophobic social and political script in Assam that plays out in different forms even today both kinetically and iteratively. From Assam’s former governor S.K. Sinha’s 1997 report titled  Report on Illegal Migration in Assam , which warned of “external aggression” of ‘illegal immigrants,’ to the Supreme Court’s decision in  Sarbanda Sonowal  ( 2005)  which reverted the burden of proof of citizenship to suspected ‘illegal immigrants’, this hydra-headed script has taken many forms. Most of all, it indelibly marked out the bodies of Assam’s ethno-religious minorities for bureaucratic and physical violence. The fading of Nellie’s memory by the dominant society has brought a sense of impunity to the State. We have seen its striking refractions in the last decade, as the Bharatiya Janata Party has captured the Assamese electorate with great success through routinised acts of violence against the Bengali Muslim community, such as forced evictions and alleged extrajudicial killings. In the last eight years, Assam has  evicted over 10,000 families  from their land and homes. One of the authors (Padmini Baruah), during their field work, found multiple sites where the state had razed down government schools, Anganwadi centres, water storage units, madrassas, and mosques. Assam’s chief minister has  gone on record  more than once to explicitly deny  social  and political space to the Bengali Muslims. Nellie comes up, every now and then, in majoritarian discourse, not as an event that warrants sombre introspection, but as an idealised historical act that must be repeated if Assam is to be ‘saved’.  Preserving Nellie's memory Recently, against all odds, a new crop of young academics, writers, and poets – including many from the Bengali Muslim community of Assam – have begun to revive and reinstate Nellie’s memory. This literary revival is mostly aimed at reminding the old and young of Assam and the rest of the world of the pogrom and the politics around it.  The pogrom set the tone for a form of xenophobic social and political script in Assam that plays out in different forms even today both kinetically and iteratively. It is worth asking, however: why must we faithfully remember Nellie every year? Is there any value in digging up old trauma? Should we not move on?  A people have the right to forget as much as they have the right to remember. Most Bengali Muslims in Assam have chosen to suppress the memory of the event. One cannot imagine the weight of the memories of community trauma and humiliation.  But, what happens when the perpetrator community chooses to forget it?  It is this basic distinction that the civil society in Assam and beyond needs to recognise. If we do decide to move on, we must necessarily ask: on whose terms do we do so? It is a difficult question, but here, we go back to our original point – that Nellie isn’t a mere historical event, but a metaphor. It is a microcosm of politics and society not just in Assam, but all of India today. That the horror and disgust of Nellie is discernible even after four decades in our mundane bureaucratic practices, social spaces and political attitudes is precisely why we must continue to talk about it in as many words as we can every single year. This annual ritual is, of course, driven by a collective hope that not all is lost, that we still have the time and space to prevent a repeat of it. A postscript: Padmini Baruah sought to do an autoethnographic exercise – their positionality, as a child of an active participant and block level student leader in the Assam Agitation, means that they are rooted in, and have access to the rooms of, the oppressors. They asked all the members of their extended family, young and old, what they remembered about the Nellie Massacre. In the older generation, the response was muted: “We remember it happening far away.” “We obviously didn’t want violence, this was a non-violent movement.” “I don’t think that we bear the responsibility for this, this was just a mob mentality. This was not the Assam Movement.” The universal response from the Assamese millennials: “What? Never heard of it.” 2025 © The Leaflet. All Rights Reserved

Published: March 6, 2025 A protestor chants during a rally against “UAE interference in Sudan’s internal affairs” in front of the Embassy of United Arab Emirates in Washington DC, United States on February 18, 2024. [Mostafa Bassim – Anadolu Agency] Sudan has filed a case against the United Arab Emirates at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), asking it to impose emergency measures and to order the Emirates to prevent genocidal acts in West Darfur, the court said today. In response, the UAE will seek the immediate dismissal of a case brought against it, an Emirati official said in a statement sent to Reuters, adding that the allegations “lack any legal or factual basis.” The official, who was speaking on behalf of the UAE government but declined to be named, was speaking in reference to a case alleging the UAE violated its obligations under the Genocide Convention in relation to attacks against the Masalit ethnic group in West Darfur by the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias. Sudan has accused the UAE of  arming  the rival Sudanese paramilitary group, the RSF, who it accuses of carrying out “gruesome violations, including killings, torture and even the rape of women by militias, with some of these crimes documented by the perpetrators themselves.” Testimony of witnesses who escaped ethnic violence in Sudan’s Darfur region in the summer of 2023  recount  disturbing scenes of children being “piled up and shot” by the RSF as they tried to flee from El Geneina, the regional capital. This violence was part of an ethnic cleansing campaign targeting Sudan’s non-Arab Masalit tribe, with thousands of civilians losing their lives, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported. Genocide Watch Comment: Genocide Watch rejects the term "ethnic cleansing" which is a euphemism invented by Slobodan Milošević to deny genocide . Ethnic cleansing is not prohibited by any treaty or other international law. What is underway is genocide. The Sudanese armed forces have been locked in an almost two-year civil war with the RSF that has devastated the country and sparked bouts of ethnic killings. © Ardi Associates Ltd 2009-2025. All Rights Reserved

UN NEWS UNICEF/Mohammed Jamal Displaced families flee North Darfur's El Fasher town in search of safety. Across Sudan, more than 12 million people have been driven from their homes by the war between rival militaries that erupted in April 2023. “I am deeply worried about reports of destruction of homes and livelihoods in North Darfur,” said Clementine Nkweta-Salami, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan. “Civilians continue to pay the price. Access to Zamzam camp is nearly impossible, just when people need support the most . We need unimpeded humanitarian access to deliver life-saving aid.” Zamzam camp is around 15 kilometres south of El Fasher town, the capital of North Darfur, which has been besieged by militia forces opposing the Government in Khartoum now for months. It opened in 2004 to shelter people uprooted by the war in the west of the country. Just last week, the UN World Food Programme  reported that children were already dying in the camp and that thousands could starve in the coming weeks, after it was forced to pause aid distribution amid heavy shelling. Allies-turned-foes Across Sudan, the Government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have been battling their former allies- turned-adversaries, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, since 15 April 2023 when a planned transition to civilian rule broke down. The RSF now controls virtually all of Darfur but has been laying siege to the city of El Fasher for months, close to Zamzam. RSF militia stormed the camp on 11 February triggering several days of clashes with army troops and allied forces, according to news reports. On Tuesday evening, in another attack on civilians that have been a feature of the Sudan conflict, dozens of mainly Muslims were believed to have been killed in North Darfur’s Abu Shouk camp after an attack on a busy market there, credited to the RSF. That followed another reported shelling attack on the camp on Sunday which left six dead. In a related development, the Security Council expressed grave concern over the signing of a charter by Sudan’s opposition forces seeking to establish a parallel governing authority in Sudan. “The members of the Security Council underscored that such actions risk exacerbating the ongoing conflict in Sudan, fragmenting the country, and worsening an already dire humanitarian situation,” the 15-member body said. $22 million in emergency aid provided Today, two million people in 27 locations across Sudan are now experiencing famine or on the brink of it. The Sudanese army controls northern and eastern regions, while the militia and their allies hold sway in much of the Darfurs in the west and parts of the south. To help the most vulnerable civilians, the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, announced on Thursday that $22 million is to be allocated to support lifesaving humanitarian aid in Sudan. he funds will be released from the Central Emergency Response Fund ,  CERF , to offer assistance to counter the impact of the spiralling conflict, hunger, disease and climate shocks. Child rape horror Earlier this week, the UN Children’s Fund ( UNICEF )  warned that infants as young as one year old were being raped by armed forces. More than 220 cases of child rape have been reported since the start of 2024, the UN agency said, citing data from teams helping victims of gender-based violence. “ Children as young as one being raped by armed men should shock anyone to their core and compel immediate action ,” said  UNICEF Executive Director  Catherine Russell. UN NEWS 2025.

By Matthew Mpoke Bigg In a blistering social media post, the president told Hamas that if it continued to hold hostages, “you are DEAD!” Hamas militants during the release of three Israeli hostages last month in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times President Trump has directly warned Hamas militants to immediately release all the hostages held in Gaza or face death. In a blistering social media post on Wednesday, Mr. Trump addressed Hamas militants and built on a statement he made in his address to Congress the night before, when he said his administration was “bringing back our hostages from Gaza,” without providing details. “Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you,” he posted on Truth Social on Wednesday. It was the latest example of Mr. Trump’s use of threats to try to cut through obstacles to a desired political objective. Even as he warned the militant group, officials said that the United States and Hamas had held direct talks in Qatar about the hostages, sidestepping separate negotiations involving Hamas and Israel over the terms of the next phase of a cease-fire in Gaza. The Israeli government has said that about 25 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others are still in Gaza. Mr. Trump, who has directed strong threats at their captors before, said the militants were “sick and twisted” for keeping bodies. “I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say,” Mr. Trump wrote. “This is your last warning,” he went on, adding that if the group continued to hold hostages, “you are DEAD!” Hamas said in a post on the Telegram app that Mr. Trump’s statement would complicate efforts to negotiate the second phase of its cease-fire agreement with Israel, and would make it easier for the Israeli government not to meet its obligations under the deal. Israel and Hamas are at a deadlock over the second phase, which aims to reach a comprehensive truce that would end the war and free the remaining living hostages. “The language of threats does not intimidate us. It only complicates matters further,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, in a statement. Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups seized around 250 hostages during the deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war in Gaza. The Palestinian authorities say more than 45,000 Gazans have been killed in the conflict. Military experts say that while Israel’s military campaign has weakened Hamas, the group still holds power in Gaza . More than 100 hostages were released during a truce in late 2023, and 30 others — along with the bodies of eight people seized in the attack — were returned during a second cease-fire that began in January. Under the terms of both cease-fires, Israel has released hundreds of Palestinian detainees in exchange. Mr. Trump’s post made no mention of a prisoner exchange, and he gave no details of the military aid he said he was sending to Israel. But in one possible indication of the administration’s approach, Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week invoked “emergency authorities” to bypass Congress and send $4 billion in weapons to Israel . It was the second time in a month that the administration had skirted the process of congressional approval for sending arms to the country. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Reporting by Stanley Widianto in Jakarta; Writing and additional reporting by Poppy McPherson ; Editing by Alex Richardson A wooden boat that carried Rohingya Muslims floats off the coast of Karang Gading village, Deli Serdang, North Sumatra province, Indonesia, January 1, 2024, in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/Fransisco Carolio/via REUTERS/File Photo Summary IOM reduces aid to hundreds of Rohingya in Pekanbaru Refugees barred from working were dependent on aid Local official says worried about unrest JAKARTA, March 6 (Reuters) - The United Nations' migration agency has slashed aid to hundreds of Rohingya refugees in Indonesia, according to a letter seen by Reuters and two people briefed on the matter, because of massive funding cuts by their biggest donor, the United States. In the letter, dated February 28, the International Organization for Migration said it would be unable to provide healthcare and cash assistance to 925 Rohingya refugees sheltering in the western city of Pekanbaru from March 5, "due to resource constraints". Some help would continue for the most vulnerable people, it said. Many ethnic Rohingya - who are mostly Muslim, originally from Myanmar and constitute the world's largest stateless population - escape squalid camps and persecution in Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh each year, sailing aboard rickety boats to Thailand or Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia. Rohingya refugees are pictured at a temporary shelter after they landed at Labu Pekan beach in Deli Serdang, North Sumatra province, Indonesia, October 24, 2024, in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/Yudi Manar/via REUTERS/File Photo IOM's move was due to the decision by the Trump administration to cut most foreign assistance, said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, a group that monitors the Rohingya crisis, and another person briefed on the matter. In a statement to Reuters, IOM said it was "complying with all legal orders" as a result of the U.S. government's decision, which was "impacting our staff, operations, and the people we serve". The organization remained “committed to delivering vital humanitarian assistance” and continued to engage donors and partners including the U.S. to sustain critical services, it said. The U.S. embassy in Jakarta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The move since President Donald Trump took office in January to halt most U.S. foreign aid and dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has thrown the humanitarian sector into turmoil  globally. Reuters reported on Wednesday that the World Food Programme would halve rations to more than a million Rohingya living in Bangladesh, which hosts the world's largest refugee settlement, to $6 per month. The U.N. says about 2,800 Rohingya refugees live in Indonesia. The 925 in Pekanbaru on Sumatra island, close to Malaysia, had arrived by boat and were entirely dependent on cash assistance, said Abdu Rahman, a Rohingya refugee in the city. "People don't have support for their daily survival and can't eat since the refugees are not allowed to work," he said. Hadi Sanjoyo, a senior official with the Pekanbaru government's task force overseeing refugee issues, said officials planned to talk to local non-profits about how to handle the situation, adding that he was concerned about the potential for unrest amid increased tension between the refugees and locals. "They're our brothers and sisters, too," he said. "Humanity is beyond borders." (This story has been corrected to make clear that IOM has not halted all support, in the first bullet point) © 2025 Reuters. All rights reserved.

AFP | The Defence Post Newly graduated Sudanese army soldiers show their skills during a ceremony in Merowe in northern Sudan on February 27, 2025. Since April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a war between the army the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). (AFP) Paramilitary artillery shelling of a crowded market and nearby displaced people’s camp in Sudan’s Darfur region killed six people on Sunday, local health volunteers said. The camp, Abu Shouk, is on the edge of the North Darfur state capital, El-Fasher, which paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have besieged since last May as part of the nearly two-year-old war against Sudan’s army. The shelling “resulted in the deaths of six unarmed civilians so far, with other injuries yet to be counted,” said the local Emergency Response Room, one of hundreds of volunteer groups across war-torn Sudan helping to evacuate wounded, staff soup kitchens and maintain health services. “This attack… struck the crowded market while civilians were shopping for Ramadan necessities,” the committee added, blaming the RSF. The Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, which started on Saturday in Sudan, comes as the northeast African country continues to grapple with war, starvation and displacement. In December, a United Nations-backed assessment said famine had taken hold in Abu Shouk and two other camps in the El-Fasher area, Al-Salam and Zamzam, and was projected to expand to five more areas including the city itself by May. The RSF have seized nearly the entire vast western region of Darfur. However, they have not managed to claim El-Fasher, where army and allied forces have repeatedly pushed them back. Sudan’s war has so far killed tens of thousands, uprooted more than 12 million and brought millions to the brink of mass starvation. On Wednesday the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said intense fighting in Zamzam camp had forced it “to temporarily pause the distribution of life-saving food and nutrition assistance” there. © Copyright 2017-2025 The Defense Post

A teenage boy stands in front of a destroyed school in the village of Partyzanske close to the frontline. © UNICEF/Oleksii Filippov 2 March 2025 I Migrants and Refugees         Communities on the frontline of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine are being killed, injured and displaced on a daily basis, as the war grinds on.       “In the last six months alone, more than 200,000 people have been evacuated from frontline areas in the east and north,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on the three-year anniversary of the war on Monday 24 February. Mr. Grandi added that, since the start of the war, around 10.6 million people have been forced from their homes. While most fled during the early stages of the Russian invasion, he said, the displacement and suffering continues. Drones ‘swarming over the city every day’ Many of those being displaced in the east and north of the country arrive at transit centres before being helped to find temporary shelter at repurposed public buildings known as collective sites. Serhii Zelenyi was recently evacuated by bus to a transit centre in the eastern city of Pavlohrad after fleeing daily bombardments of Pokrovsk, his home city, in the frontline Donetsk region, 130 kilometres from the border with Russia. “It was very difficult in Pokrovsk. Drones were swarming over the city every day, from morning till late in the evening,” says Zelenyi. “Sometimes there was a two-hour pause, then the bombardments started again. It was impossible.” The handyman and small-scale farmer was among the last of his neighbours to leave, finally deciding that the constant danger, lack of food, water and electricity, and the need to stay indoors almost the entire day was too much to bear. On arrival in Pavlohrad, Mr. Zelenyi received clothes and cash assistance from the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR , through its local partner organizations, and is now wondering what he will do next. “I lost everything,” he said, “I need to start again from scratch.” A safe space to cry Mr. Zelenyi’s story is not unusual, says Alyona Sinaeva, a psychologist with Proliska, UNHCR’s partner organization in Pavlohrad. Those arriving from frontline regions are, “in acute stress, because they come from cities where active fighting is taking place.” The UN continues to work with local organizations to distribute food aid. © URCS The centre provides a safe place for traumatized civilians while Proliska and other UNHCR partners provide the arriving evacuees with clothing, cash assistance to buy essentials, hygiene kits, legal aid and psychosocial support.  “In this space they can relax and cry. These are the emotions that they have not been able to show up until now,” said Sinaeva. “People are tired. Tired of war. Everyone is tired.” Three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and 11 years since the start of the war in the east and the occupation of Crimea, destruction and displacement continue to be a daily reality and an estimated 12.7 million people – around a third of the population still living in Ukraine – need humanitarian assistance.  © 2025 United Nations.