António Guterres has voiced alarm over the M23 rebel group’s advance towards eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s largest city in a renewed insurgency that has displaced more than 178,000 people in the past two weeks.

In a statement though his spokesperson, the United Nations secretary general said M23’s advance had had a devastating toll on the civilian population and heightened the risk of a broader regional war.

“The secretary general calls on the M23 to immediately cease its offensive,” the statement said.

M23 has been advancing rapidly in eastern DRC in the past few weeks, surrounding Goma as it battles the Congolese army and tries to seize the city, the provincial capital of North Kivu province.

Earlier this month, the rebels captured Minova, Katale and Masisi towns. On Tuesday, the rebels took control of Minova town, a vital trade hub for Goma that is about 30 miles from the city. And two days later, it captured Sake town, about 15 miles from Goma.

The advance has caused panic in eastern DRC, with bombs being heard going off in Goma’s distant outskirts and hundreds of wounded civilians brought in to the main hospital from the area of the fighting on Thursday.

Thousands of displaced people reached the outskirts of Goma as they fled the rebel advance.

Congolese helicopter gunships swooped low over the plains to fire volleys of rockets and troops trucked towards the frontline to halt the rebels. Trucks loaded with soldiers and pulling cannons passed by followed by an old spluttering Soviet tank.

Many Sake residents fled the M23 advance. Thousands of people escaped the fighting by boat on Wednesday, making their way north across Lake Kivu and spilling out of packed wooden boats in Goma, some with bundles of their belongings strapped around their foreheads.

Neema Matondo said she had fled Sake during the night, when the first explosions started to go off. She recounted seeing people around her torn to pieces and killed. “We escaped, but unfortunately” others did not, Matondo told the Associated Press.

Mariam Nasibu, who fled Sake with her three children, was in tears – one of her children lost a leg, blown off in the relentless shelling. “As I continued to flee, another bomb fell in front of me, hitting my child,” she said.

Decades-long fighting among regional armies and rebels in DRC has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with about 6 million people killed since 1998 and more than 7 million displaced internally.

M23, which is made up of Tutsis who left the Congolese army more than 10 years ago, is one of more than a hundred armed groups fighting against Congolese forces in the mineral-rich eastern DRC. The group has more than 8,000 fighters, according to the UN.

It controls Rubaya, a key coltan-mining region that brings it $800,000 (£644,800) monthly in taxes for production and trade of the mineral, the UN says.

DRC, the US and the UN accuse neighbouring Rwanda of backing M23. Rwanda’s government had long denied the claim, but last year said it had troops and missile systems in eastern DRC to safeguard its security, pointing to a buildup of Congolese forces near the border.

In July, UN experts said in a report that 3,000 to 4,000 Rwandan government forces operated with M23 in eastern DRC. The Rwandan forces’ “de facto control and direction over M23 operations also renders Rwanda liable for the actions of M23,” the experts said.

M23 took over Goma for more than a week in 2012 but withdrew after international donors stopped aid to Rwanda.

Guterres called on parties involved in the conflict to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the DRC and “put an end to all forms of support to armed groups, whether Congolese or foreign”.

Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed to this report

World leaders, senior ministers and key figures in climate diplomacy have one by one reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris agreement this week, in response to the order by Donald Trump to withdraw the US from the pact.

The prospect of the world keeping temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, as the treaty calls for, was damaged by the incoming US president’s move. Hopes of meeting the target were already fast receding, and last year was the first to consistently breach the 1.5C limit, but the goal will be measured over years or even decades and stringent cuts to emissions now could still make a difference.

Along with withdrawing from the Paris agreement, Trump also abolished many of the limits and incentives to reduce fossil fuel use, and signalled his intention to continue to back big oil. The US is already the world’s leading exporter of gas, and oil production rose to record levels under Biden. These factors could counter the progress that renewables have made across the country in recent years, in part owing to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Adair Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission thinktank, said that Trump’s actions could add about 0.3C to global heating and spur other countries to dial back on their carbon-cutting efforts.

However other countries have made progress without, or even in spite of, the US before. After all, Trump also began the process of withdrawal during his last presidency, although it only took effect as he was leaving office. Before that, international agreement on climate action was held up for years under George W Bush’s presidency.

The US now joins only a handful of failed or war-torn states, including Libya, Iran and Yemen, in rejecting the 2015 accord. While the US has long been one of the world’s top two biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions – along with China – its significance has diminished as developing countries rapidly increase their share of global carbon output.

So how has the world reacted to Trump’s move, and what does it mean for global climate diplomacy?

The EU

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in a speech at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos: “The Paris agreement continues to be the best hope for all humanity. So Europe will stay the course, and keep working with all nations that want to protect nature and stop global warming.”

Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s climate commissioner, wrote on social media that the decision was “a truly unfortunate development” but that “despite this setback, we remain committed to working with the U.S. and our international partners to address the pressing issue of climate change... The Paris Agreement has strong foundations and is here to stay.”

The UK

Ed Miliband, the UK’s energy security and net zero secretary, told a committee of the House of Lords on Tuesday he would “try to find common ground” with Trump, and that it was still in the US “national self-interest” to seek to tackle the climate crisis. “We are strong supporters of the Paris agreement,” he added. “I believe this transition [to clean energy] is unstoppable.”

The recent Cop29 summit in Azerbaijan had demonstrated that, he added. “Countries believe their national self-interest remains in the Paris agreement. The dangers to them are in not moving forward. [The transition] is not happening fast enough, but it is unstoppable.”

William Hague, the former foreign secretary, wrote in the Times: “For a country that has just experienced the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, and faces ever more terrifying hurricanes, to abandon the Paris climate agreement and remove all limits on fossil fuel use is to live in denial.”

Kim Darroch, former UK ambassador to the US, and John Ashton, the UK’s climate envoy from 2006 to 2012, wrote to the newspaper calling for those in the US still committed to climate action to work with international partners. “Climate failure will impoverish us all and make our tinderbox world yet more insecure. We must now work with those in the US and elsewhere who understand the imperative of bringing the age of fossil energy to the earliest possible end.”

Canada

Steven Guilbeault, Canda’s minister of environment and climate change, told journalists: “It is deplorable that the president of the US has decided to pull out of the Paris agreement. It is unfortunately not the first time. The Paris agreement is bigger than one country, it is 194 countries who have collectively continued to fight climate change despite the absence of the US. Despite the fact that the federal government no longer seems interested in fighting climate change, we see a lot of support from US states and the private sector. It is ironic that the president would do that when California is going through the worst forest fire season in its history.”

Canada was “fully committed to its obligations under the Paris agreement”, he later told the Guardian in a statement. “By continuing to work together, Canada and the US can achieve far more in driving green growth and creating economic opportunities which also address climate change and protect lands and oceans.”

African Group of Negotiators

In a joint statement, the climate change group said: “This decision is a direct threat to global efforts to limit temperature rise and avert the catastrophic impacts of climate change, particularly for the world’s most vulnerable nations. The US, one of the world’s largest carbon emitters, bears a historical responsibility to lead in climate action. By abandoning its commitments under the Paris agreement, the US undermines years of hard-fought progress and sends a dangerous signal to the international community. For Africa and other developing countries, the implications are severe. Africa, already on the frontline of the climate crisis, faces escalating droughts, floods, and extreme weather events that threaten lives and livelihoods, exacerbate food insecurity, and destabilise economies. The withdrawal of US leadership diminishes the critical financial and technical support required to adapt to these challenges, leaving vulnerable nations to bear an unjust burden.”

The chair of the Least Developed Countries group, Evans Njewa, said on X: “We deeply regret USA plans to exit from #ParisAgreement (PA). This threatens to reverse hard-won gains in reducing emissions & puts our vulnerable countries at greater risk. The PA remains a vital climate pact & we must protect it for the future of our planet & generation.”

China

China’s foreign minister spokesman Guo Jiakun told a news conference: “Climate change is a common challenge faced by all of humanity. No country can remain unaffected or solve the problem on its own. China will work with all parties to actively address the challenges of climate change.”

Brazil

Marina Silva, environment minister of Brazil, which will host the Cop30 talks in Belem in November, said: “[Trump’s decisions] are the opposite of policies guided by evidence brought by science and common sense, imposed by the reality of extreme weather events, including in his own country.”

World leaders, senior ministers and key figures in climate diplomacy have one by one reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris agreement this week, in response to the order by Donald Trump to withdraw the US from the pact.

The prospect of the world keeping temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, as the treaty calls for, was damaged by the incoming US president’s move. Hopes of meeting the target were already fast receding, and last year was the first to consistently breach the 1.5C limit, but the goal will be measured over years or even decades and stringent cuts to emissions now could still make a difference.

Along with withdrawing from the Paris agreement, Trump also abolished many of the limits and incentives to reduce fossil fuel use, and signalled his intention to continue to back big oil. The US is already the world’s leading exporter of gas, and oil production rose to record levels under Biden. These factors could counter the progress that renewables have made across the country in recent years, in part owing to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Adair Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission thinktank, said that Trump’s actions could add about 0.3C to global heating and spur other countries to dial back on their carbon-cutting efforts.

However other countries have made progress without, or even in spite of, the US before. After all, Trump also began the process of withdrawal during his last presidency, although it only took effect as he was leaving office. Before that, international agreement on climate action was held up for years under George W Bush’s presidency.

The US now joins only a handful of failed or war-torn states, including Libya, Iran and Yemen, in rejecting the 2015 accord. While the US has long been one of the world’s top two biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions – along with China – its significance has diminished as developing countries rapidly increase their share of global carbon output.

So how has the world reacted to Trump’s move, and what does it mean for global climate diplomacy?

The EU

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in a speech at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos: “The Paris agreement continues to be the best hope for all humanity. So Europe will stay the course, and keep working with all nations that want to protect nature and stop global warming.”

Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s climate commissioner, wrote on social media that the decision was “a truly unfortunate development” but that “despite this setback, we remain committed to working with the U.S. and our international partners to address the pressing issue of climate change... The Paris Agreement has strong foundations and is here to stay.”

The UK

Ed Miliband, the UK’s energy security and net zero secretary, told a committee of the House of Lords on Tuesday he would “try to find common ground” with Trump, and that it was still in the US “national self-interest” to seek to tackle the climate crisis. “We are strong supporters of the Paris agreement,” he added. “I believe this transition [to clean energy] is unstoppable.”

The recent Cop29 summit in Azerbaijan had demonstrated that, he added. “Countries believe their national self-interest remains in the Paris agreement. The dangers to them are in not moving forward. [The transition] is not happening fast enough, but it is unstoppable.”

William Hague, the former foreign secretary, wrote in the Times: “For a country that has just experienced the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, and faces ever more terrifying hurricanes, to abandon the Paris climate agreement and remove all limits on fossil fuel use is to live in denial.”

Kim Darroch, former UK ambassador to the US, and John Ashton, the UK’s climate envoy from 2006 to 2012, wrote to the newspaper calling for those in the US still committed to climate action to work with international partners. “Climate failure will impoverish us all and make our tinderbox world yet more insecure. We must now work with those in the US and elsewhere who understand the imperative of bringing the age of fossil energy to the earliest possible end.”

Canada

Steven Guilbeault, Canda’s minister of environment and climate change, told journalists: “It is deplorable that the president of the US has decided to pull out of the Paris agreement. It is unfortunately not the first time. The Paris agreement is bigger than one country, it is 194 countries who have collectively continued to fight climate change despite the absence of the US. Despite the fact that the federal government no longer seems interested in fighting climate change, we see a lot of support from US states and the private sector. It is ironic that the president would do that when California is going through the worst forest fire season in its history.”

Canada was “fully committed to its obligations under the Paris agreement”, he later told the Guardian in a statement. “By continuing to work together, Canada and the US can achieve far more in driving green growth and creating economic opportunities which also address climate change and protect lands and oceans.”

African Group of Negotiators

In a joint statement, the climate change group said: “This decision is a direct threat to global efforts to limit temperature rise and avert the catastrophic impacts of climate change, particularly for the world’s most vulnerable nations. The US, one of the world’s largest carbon emitters, bears a historical responsibility to lead in climate action. By abandoning its commitments under the Paris agreement, the US undermines years of hard-fought progress and sends a dangerous signal to the international community. For Africa and other developing countries, the implications are severe. Africa, already on the frontline of the climate crisis, faces escalating droughts, floods, and extreme weather events that threaten lives and livelihoods, exacerbate food insecurity, and destabilise economies. The withdrawal of US leadership diminishes the critical financial and technical support required to adapt to these challenges, leaving vulnerable nations to bear an unjust burden.”

The chair of the Least Developed Countries group, Evans Njewa, said on X: “We deeply regret USA plans to exit from #ParisAgreement (PA). This threatens to reverse hard-won gains in reducing emissions & puts our vulnerable countries at greater risk. The PA remains a vital climate pact & we must protect it for the future of our planet & generation.”

China

China’s foreign minister spokesman Guo Jiakun told a news conference: “Climate change is a common challenge faced by all of humanity. No country can remain unaffected or solve the problem on its own. China will work with all parties to actively address the challenges of climate change.”

Brazil

Marina Silva, environment minister of Brazil, which will host the Cop30 talks in Belem in November, said: “[Trump’s decisions] are the opposite of policies guided by evidence brought by science and common sense, imposed by the reality of extreme weather events, including in his own country.”

António Guterres has voiced alarm over the M23 rebel group’s advance towards eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s largest city in a renewed insurgency that has displaced more than 178,000 people in the past two weeks.

In a statement though his spokesperson, the United Nations secretary general said M23’s advance had had a devastating toll on the civilian population and heightened the risk of a broader regional war.

“The secretary general calls on the M23 to immediately cease its offensive,” the statement said.

M23 has been advancing rapidly in eastern DRC in the past few weeks, surrounding Goma as it battles the Congolese army and tries to seize the city, the provincial capital of North Kivu province.

Earlier this month, the rebels captured Minova, Katale and Masisi towns. On Tuesday, the rebels took control of Minova town, a vital trade hub for Goma that is about 30 miles from the city. And two days later, it captured Sake town, about 15 miles from Goma.

The advance has caused panic in eastern DRC, with bombs being heard going off in Goma’s distant outskirts and hundreds of wounded civilians brought in to the main hospital from the area of the fighting on Thursday.

Thousands of displaced people reached the outskirts of Goma as they fled the rebel advance.

Congolese helicopter gunships swooped low over the plains to fire volleys of rockets and troops trucked towards the frontline to halt the rebels. Trucks loaded with soldiers and pulling cannons passed by followed by an old spluttering Soviet tank.

Many Sake residents fled the M23 advance. Thousands of people escaped the fighting by boat on Wednesday, making their way north across Lake Kivu and spilling out of packed wooden boats in Goma, some with bundles of their belongings strapped around their foreheads.

Neema Matondo said she had fled Sake during the night, when the first explosions started to go off. She recounted seeing people around her torn to pieces and killed. “We escaped, but unfortunately” others did not, Matondo told the Associated Press.

Mariam Nasibu, who fled Sake with her three children, was in tears – one of her children lost a leg, blown off in the relentless shelling. “As I continued to flee, another bomb fell in front of me, hitting my child,” she said.

Decades-long fighting among regional armies and rebels in DRC has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with about 6 million people killed since 1998 and more than 7 million displaced internally.

M23, which is made up of Tutsis who left the Congolese army more than 10 years ago, is one of more than a hundred armed groups fighting against Congolese forces in the mineral-rich eastern DRC. The group has more than 8,000 fighters, according to the UN.

It controls Rubaya, a key coltan-mining region that brings it $800,000 (£644,800) monthly in taxes for production and trade of the mineral, the UN says.

DRC, the US and the UN accuse neighbouring Rwanda of backing M23. Rwanda’s government had long denied the claim, but last year said it had troops and missile systems in eastern DRC to safeguard its security, pointing to a buildup of Congolese forces near the border.

In July, UN experts said in a report that 3,000 to 4,000 Rwandan government forces operated with M23 in eastern DRC. The Rwandan forces’ “de facto control and direction over M23 operations also renders Rwanda liable for the actions of M23,” the experts said.

M23 took over Goma for more than a week in 2012 but withdrew after international donors stopped aid to Rwanda.

Guterres called on parties involved in the conflict to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the DRC and “put an end to all forms of support to armed groups, whether Congolese or foreign”.

Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed to this report

The European Commission is fundamentally overhauling how it makes payments to Tunisia after a Guardian investigation exposed myriad abuses by EU-funded security forces, including widespread sexual violence against migrants.

Officials are drawing up “concrete” conditions to ensure that future European payments to Tunis can go ahead only if human rights have not been violated.

The conditions will affect payments worth tens of millions of pounds over the next three years.

Last year, the Guardian detailed allegations that Tunisia’s national guard had raped hundreds of migrants, beaten children and colluded with people smugglers.

Critics will view Europe’s shift in position towards Tunisia as an admission that a controversial Tunisia-EU deal in 2023 prioritised lowering migration to the bloc over human rights.

Until now, the EU has rejected accusations of wrongdoing in its dealings with Tunisia, arguing that it has one of the most sophisticated systems for monitoring human rights violations.

Officials, however, now confirm that new arrangements are being prepared for its relationship with the increasingly authoritarian north African state over “the coming years”.

A commission spokesperson described the reset as a “re-dynamisation” of the relationship, adding that a series of subcommittees would be formed over the next three months to ensure human rights were central to its dealings with the country from now until 2027.

“Human rights and democratic principles are at the centre of EU relations with partner countries,” the spokesperson said.

Emily O’Reilly, the EU ombudsman whose recent report concluded that the commission was not transparent about the human rights information it held on Tunisia, said: “There have been highly worrying reports about the human rights situation in Tunisia.”

O’Reilly said that during a recent inquiry into abuse allegations surrounding the EU’s deal with Tunisia – which included about €100m (£85m) to strengthen its borders as part of a larger deal – she had urged the introduction of conditions to reclaim EU funds in cases of abuse violations.

“I asked the European Commission to set out clear criteria for the suspension of EU funds due to human rights violations,” she said.

Last September’s Guardian report prompted calls by the EU for Tunis to investigate the allegations, though nothing has since been made public. Instead, the commission has taken matters into its own hands to ensure its dealings with Tunisia’s president, Kais Saied, are not linked to abuse.

Reports indicate that Tunisia has become increasingly repressive since Saied secured a second term last October, prompting a crackdown on activists campaigning for migrant rights, as well as on parts of the media.

Human rights groups believe that the EU’s tougher stance towards Saied could precipitate similar measures towards other countries where it has struck deals to reduce migration into Europe.

Concerns have already been raised about human rights assessments on EU deals with Egypt and Mauritania, and over plans to provide more funding to others such as Morocco.

O’Reilly, who leaves her post at the watchdog next month, said: “The apparent normalisation of the outsourcing of migration to non-EU countries must not obscure the fact that the EU institutions’ fundamental rights obligations remain the same.

“These obligations should not be sacrificed for expediency or to meet geopolitical concerns.”

Italy’s interior minister said on Thursday a Libyan man detained under an international war crimes arrest warrant and then unexpectedly released had been swiftly repatriated because of his “social dangerousness“.

Osama Najim, also known as Almasri, was detained on Sunday in Turin under an arrest warrant issued by The Hague-based international criminal court (ICC).

Najim, who is chief of Libya’s judicial police, is wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as alleged rape and murder. He also presides over Mitiga prison, a facility near Tripoli condemned by human rights organisations for the arbitrary detention, torture and abuse of political dissidents, migrants and refugees.

He was freed on Tuesday due to a procedural technicality and flown on an official state aircraft to Tripoli. The ICC demanded an explanation, saying on Wednesday that he had been released from custody and transported back to Libya by prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing government “without prior notice or consultation with the court”.

“Following the non-validation of the arrest … considering that the Libyan citizen … presented a profile of social dangerousness … I adopted an expulsion order for reasons of state security,” interior minister Matteo Piantedosi said.

Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani made light of the ICC’s objections, telling reporters the international court “is not the word of God, it’s not the font of all truth”.

“Italy is a sovereign country and we make our own decisions,” he added.

Najim is a brigadier general in Libya’s judicial police who the ICC says is suspected of crimes against humanity and war crimes at Mitiga prison.

Meloni’s government depends heavily on Libyan security forces to prevent would-be migrants from leaving the north African nation and heading to southern Italy.

Piantedosi told lawmakers during a question time session in the Senate that Rome’s appeals court ordered Najim’s release because they considered his arrest non-compliant with procedures.

An interior ministry source told Reuters previously that he was freed because local police had not immediately informed the justice ministry of the arrest, as required.

Opposition parties said Piantedosi’s explanations were inadequate and called on prime minister Meloni to come to parliament to clarify.

“You are plunging our country into utter shame, you talk about technicalities, but you have made a precise political choice,” said senator Giuseppe De Cristofaro, from the Green-Left Alliance party.

Lukhanyo Calata’s first memory of his father was the funeral. His mother sobbing, the earth beneath his feet shaking from the number of people gathered at the graveside, and the fear he felt aged three as the red box holding his father, Fort, was lowered into the ground.

Fort Calata was one of four men stopped at a roadblock in June 1985 by security officers. The Cradock Four were beaten, strangled with telephone wire, stabbed and shot to death in one of the most notorious killings of South Africa’s apartheid era.

In 1999, the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) denied six security officers amnesty for their role in the killings. They were never prosecuted and have all since died.

Now, as part of a group of 25 families and survivors of apartheid-era deaths and violence, Lukhanyo Calata is suing South Africa’s government for failing to bring his father’s alleged killers to court.

“Losing my father has impacted every fibre of my being,” Calata said. “We were ultimately betrayed by the people that we trusted to lead us into a new society.”

Calata’s case, filed at the high court in Pretoria this week, demands an inquiry to establish why there were no prosecutions. It also asks for “constitutional damages” of 167m rand (£7.3m) to fund further investigations, litigation, memorials and public education.

Spokespeople for the case’s respondents – the government, presidency, justice minister, police minister, police and National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) – did not respond to requests for comment. The justice ministry reopened an inquest into the Cradock Four killings last year, but proceedings were delayed until June.

“The TRC cases were deliberately suppressed following a plan or arrangement hatched at the highest levels of government,” Calata alleged in court papers.

In 2021 a supreme court of appeal judgment found that “from 2003 to 2017, investigations into the TRC cases were stopped as a result of an executive decision” and that “this was indeed interference with the NPA”. The court added that there was an “absence of detail as to why it occurred”.

Thabo Mbeki, who was South Africa’s president from 1999 to 2008, said in a statement in March 2024: “During the years I was in government, we never interfered in the work of the NPA. Instead of propagating falsehoods, the NPA must investigate and prosecute the cases referred to it by the TRC.”

Nombuyiselo Mhlauli was reluctant to speak about the new legal case. She preferred to talk about her husband, Sicelo Mhlauli – who was killed alongside Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe and Sparrow Mkonto – and the impact his loss had had on her and their two children.

“We were so close to each other,” she said. “I depended on him so much.”

“He was such a friendly person, who liked to joke a lot, full of laughter all the time,” said Mhlauli, who like her husband was a teacher. “Wherever you find him he is laughing and the other people around him are laughing a lot.”

After her husband’s killing, Mhlauli was harassed by security forces, who would regularly kick down her door at night, until she fled in 1989 to Cape Town, where she still lives.

So, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, before going on to be South Africa’s first black president, Mhlauli was excited.

But the fact that the Cradock Four case has not been prosecuted while Mandela’s African National Congress party has been in government, “left us so hurt and bitter”, she said. “I wish the government would come forward and tell us: why did they delay the process?”

The family of the jailed British-Egyptian writer Alaa Abd El Fattah have urged the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, to prioritise the dissident’s release above trade deals during his visit to Egypt.

Fattah remains in a Cairo jail even though his sentence for dissent has been served. His mother is on a hunger strike in London with her health now deteriorating.

Arguing Lammy and his commitment to human rights is facing “a moment of truth”, Fattah’s family said Lammy should return with him on the plane.

The Foreign Office confirmed Lammy’s visit on Thursday to Egypt and said he would again raise the British government’s call for his release. But the family fear the foreign secretary may be about to throw away vital leverage by not setting any conditions on its relations with Egyptian business.

The Foreign Office highlighted how Egypt could contribute to UK growth and help stem the flow of illegal migration, the two issues Downing Street is demanding it must reference in its communications.

Lammy is expected to meet his counterpart Badr Abdelatty and intends to thank the Egyptian government for its role in brokering the ceasefire in Gaza.

Fattah’s sister Sanaa Seif expressed her scepticism about the Foreign Office assurances: “When Liz Truss signed the last UK-Egypt association agreement she was also telling parliament that Alaa should be released.

“David Cameron had an emotional meeting with me and my family and claimed he was looking for any leverage to use for Alaa – when he was in fact overseeing the largest weapons purchase in the two countries’ history.

“I can only hope things are different under this government and when the foreign secretary says Alaa is the number one issue that means he is going to resolve it and get him out of jail.”

Fattah’s 68-year-old mother, Laila Soueif, has been protesting outside Downing Street each morning and is on a hunger strike in which she has taken only limited fluid for 116 days.

Her refusal to eat food or take calories has led to her blood sugar readings dropping below 3.0mmol/L for the first time. She looks increasingly frail, and says she is tired but determined to remain on hunger strike until he is released – or she collapses. Fattah has a young son in Brighton.

Uncertain how much longer she will survive, Soueif had asked prison officials for permission to hug her son during her last visit to jail, but was forced again to speak to him through a glass window.

His morale is said to be low because he believes officials are breaking the Egyptian code of criminal procedure by not counting the two years in which he was in jail before trial as part of his served sentence, and that in reality his detention is indefinite.

He completed his five-year sentence last September but is now due to stay in jail until 2027. Articles 482 and 484 of the code state that time served in pre-trial detention should be deducted from prison sentences.

A software engineer and award-winning writer, Fattah first came to prominence during the Arab spring and has served many periods in jail.

The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has written to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and his plight was also raised by the UK’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, on 2 January. But the family were deeply distressed to see reports that Starmer did not raise the issue in a meeting with Sisi at the G20, saying it was the first time that Sisi had met a British prime minister and the issue had not been raised.

When Lammy was in opposition as shadow foreign secretary in July 2022 he called for serious diplomatic consequences for Egypt if Fattah was not released, describing him as “a prisoner of conscience and a courageous voice for democracy”.

He said he had been jailed solely for sharing a Facebook post that included a reference to torture in prison.

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive, said Lammy should demand to see Fattah, who was a British citizen held in jail in Cairo.

Giorgia Meloni’s government is under pressure to clarify why a Rome court refused to approve the arrest of a Libyan general accused of war crimes, allowing him to return home to a hero’s welcome on an Italian secret flight in what critics believe was a tactic to shield alleged abuses committed in the north African country as a result of a migrant pact with Italy.

Osama Najim, also known as Almasri, was detained in Turin on Sunday on a warrant issued by the international criminal court (ICC) before being freed on Tuesday owing to a procedural technicality.

Najim, who is chief of Libya’s judicial police, is wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as alleged rape and murder. He also presides over Mitiga prison, a facility near Tripoli condemned by human rights organisations for the arbitrary detention, torture and abuse of political dissidents, migrants and refugees.

In a statement on Wednesday, the ICC said Najim was released from custody and transported back to Libya “without prior notice or consultation with the court”.

“The court is seeking, and is yet to obtain, verification from the authorities on the steps reportedly taken,” the statement said, added that it had engaged with the Italian authorities and asked them to consult the court without delay if any problems arose that would “impede or prevent the execution of the present request for cooperation”.

The arrest warrant was issued after many testimonies of his alleged crimes were provided to the ICC.

News of the general’s release was issued to the Italian media about 20 minutes after his flight left Turin’s Caselle airport. An image of him arriving in Tripoli to celebrations was shared on the Facebook page of Libya’s judicial police authority, which had called his arrest an “outrageous incident”.

In a document seen by the Guardian, Rome’s court of appeal did not validate the ICC warrant after the arrest was declared to be “irregular” by the city’s attorney general because it had not been preceded by discussions with Italy’s justice minister, Carlo Nordio.

Andrea Delmastro, the undersecretary at the justice ministry, denied accusations that Najim’s release was a favour to Libya.

A source familiar with the situation said Najim had entered Italy from France on Saturday in a hire car registered in Germany. Accompanied by other Libyans, he attended a football match that evening between Juventus and AC Milan at Turin’s stadium. He was arrested at a hotel in the city by Italy’s anti-terrorist squad, Digos, after a tip-off from Interpol.

Opposition parties have asked Meloni to urgently explain the “very serious” development while calling on Nordio to resign.

“Last night, a state plane landed in Tripoli and brought Almasri home, an [alleged] torturer welcomed with applause and great celebration in his homeland,” a group of opposition parties said in a shared statement. “This is enough to ask for urgent information from Meloni and the resignation of Nordio.”

Ilaria Salis, an Italian MEP who last year spent five months under house arrest in Budapest after demonstrating at an anti-Nazi rally in the Hungarian capital, said: “The government must provide explanations, and they should do so especially for prisoners held in Libyan concentration camps.”

Others noted that the move appeared to contradict the Meloni government’s repeated pledges to crack down on criminals engaged in human trafficking.

“The Italian government claims to want to hunt down human traffickers wherever they are,” said Nello Scavo, a journalist with Avvenire who claimed in his book, Le Mani sulla Guardia Costiera, that Najim was “among the figures capable of blackmailing Italy and Europe with boats”.

“But when the possibility of bringing one of those suspects to international justice arose, Italy returned him to his country, where he now enjoys greater fame and greater consideration because thanks to Italy, a country with strong interests in Libya, he managed to escape the process of the international court.”

The Najim case has put the spotlight on a controversial pact between Italy and Libya, signed in 2017 and renewed every three years. The deal, approved by the European Council, involves Italy funding and equipping the Libyan coastguard to prevent boats of refugees leaving the north African country. Humanitarian groups have criticised it for pushing people back to detention camps where they face torture and other abuses.

Luca Casarini, the head of mission of the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans, believes the Italian government did not want to hand Najim to the ICC as it would expose Italy’s complicity in the abuses suffered by migrants and refugees in Libya as a result of the pact.

He said: “Because if people start talking [in court] it will show that what they do is criminal and a violation of human rights, and it is done in agreement with [European] authorities. This is a shameful, and I believe unprecedented, episode for Italy.”

The Guardian has written to Libya’s judicial police authority with a request for comment.

Elliot Malunga Delihlazo’s grandmother would say that her brother Bhesengile went to war and never came back. The family knew he had died in the first world war, but they never had a body to bury, only a memorial stone in the rural family homestead in Nkondlo in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province.

Now the Delihlazos know that Bhesengile died on 21 January 1917 of malaria in Kilwa, Tanzania, more than 2,000 miles from home. He was a driver in the British empire’s military labour corps, but was never given a war grave.

Bhesengile Delihlazo was one of 1,700 mainly black South Africans named on a memorial unveiled in Cape Town on Wednesday, as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) begins to honour hundreds of thousands of black and Asian service personnel who died fighting for Britain, but were not commemorated like their white counterparts.

“It pained us that … we can’t find the remains,” Elliot Malunga Delihlazo, a retired history teacher, said after the ceremony to open the memorial to his great uncle. “But we are happy that at last we know exactly that he died in 1917.”

The CWGC was founded in 1917 as the Imperial War Graves Commission, to commemorate those from the British empire who lost their lives in the first world war. It was meant to treat people equally in death, with names engraved on a gravestone or on a memorial.

More than four million black and Asian men served in European and American armies, according to research by Dr Santanu Das, many conscripted or coerced from Egypt and colonies in west and east Africa.

A 2021 inquiry found that 116,000 to 350,000 first world war casualties were never commemorated because of “pervasive racism”. A 1923 letter from the colonial governor of the Gold Coast (now Ghana), cited in the report, said Africans were “hardly in such a state of civilisation as to appreciate such a memorial”.

Another 45,000 to 54,000 African and Asian service members were commemorated “unequally”, according to the report, commissioned after a 2019 Channel 4 documentary, The Unremembered, highlighted missing war graves.

Another memorial is being prepared in Freetown to honour 1,100 members of Sierra Leone’s labour corps. The CWGC is also looking into how to commemorate 90,000 service members who do not have graves or memorials in east Africa.

White South African racism also played a part in Delihlazo and his comrades going unremembered, said David McDonald, CWGC’s operations manager.

“In [other] colonies, black Africans were armed and allowed to fight. In South Africa, there was a strong desire at the time that that was not to be the case, and that’s why these men were filling labour requirements,” he said. “The government didn’t want them to be involved … and I think that’s why the story was gradually forgotten over time, apart from families, who knew that they lost loved ones.”

Sonwabile Mfecane, a local historian, tracked down descendants of six of the men commemorated with wooden posts inscribed with their name and date of death, opened by the CWGC’s president, Princess Anne, in Cape Town’s Company’s Garden.

Many thought their relatives were among the 600 South African Native Labour Corps who died on the SS Mendi when it was rammed by another British ship in the Channel in 1917. On being told what had really happened, two men told Mfecane that recurring dreams about their missing relatives now made sense.

“What we believe in our African spirituality is … we are not cursed, but there is that thing we didn’t break, that chapter we didn’t close,” Mfecane said. “We close the chapter and allow the deceased to proceed.”

Lloyd’s Register, the maritime and industrial group owned by one of Britain’s biggest charities, has apologised for its role in the trafficking of enslaved African people but has been criticised for not going far enough.

Founded in 1760 as the Society for the Registry of Shipping by merchants and underwriters who met at Edward Lloyd’s coffee house in Lombard Street in London, the company provided classification for ships.

The apology comes after Lloyd’s Register (LR) commissioned research into its links to slavery. It also highlights the connections between the maritime and insurance sectors, the businesses that served both and the transatlantic trade in people at the time, which laid the foundations for the global expansion of British financial interests.

The Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull published the findings from its research focusing on records from 1764 to 1834.

In a statement on its website, LR said that during the period Lloyd’s Register had been engaged in recording information about vessels’ seaworthiness for the use of the trade in buying, selling and insuring them, adding: “It then sold that information on to subscribers, many of whom were actively involved in the slave economy.

“Some of our early committee members were involved in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved African people. Notably, at least six committee members of the Society for the Registry of Shipping from 1764 were identified as enslavers, while another six were involved in the trafficking of enslaved Africans.

“What is clear from this initial research is that, from our founding in 1760 until the UK’s Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, we played an important role supporting a maritime system that enabled the slave economy.

“We are deeply sorry for this part of our history. Acknowledging this legacy is important for our organisation, the descendants of those affected and those who still live with the consequences of this trafficking, and society as a whole.”

LR said it has made a £1m grant to the National Archives to launch a project to catalogue and share archived materials and support scholarship in the Caribbean and west Africa “for the development of new narratives” on the history of enslavement.

It has also pledged to support the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool in a project enabling descendant communities to research their histories.

LR is owned by one of the UK’s largest charities, the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, which had an income of £560m in 2023.

Laurence Westgaph, of Liverpool Black History Research Group, said £1m was a “pittance” in light of profits generated by exploitation, and questioned why the research only looked at records up to 1834 when the British maritime sector continued to benefit from the plantation economy in the US and Brazil long after slavery was abolished in the UK.

In a statement, LR said: “Whilst the original scope of our research took us up until the abolition of slavery in the British empire in 1834, we know that slavery went beyond this date and recognise that there is much more work for us to do.”

On its site, the company described Britain as a “major participant in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved African people”, with British ships “forcibly taking and transporting about 3.4 million people, 800,000 of whom died in transit” in more than 10,000 voyages.

LR is unaffiliated to insurers Lloyd’s of London, which apologised for its role in enslavement in 2020, although it emerged from the same coffee house on Lombard Street in London.

A Libyan general wanted for alleged war crimes and violence against inmates at a prison near Tripoli has been arrested in the northern Italian city of Turin.

Osama Najim, also known as Almasri, was detained on Sunday on an international arrest warrant after a tipoff from Interpol, a source at the prosecutors office for the Piedmont region confirmed.

Italy’s justice minister, Carlo Nordio, is evaluating the transmission of the ICC’s request to Rome’s attorney general.

Najim was reportedly chief of Libya’s judicial police and director of Mitiga prison, a facility close to Tripoli condemned by human rights’ groups for the arbitrary detention, torture and abuse of political dissidents and migrants and refugees. It is not clear whether he is still in either role.

The arrest warrant was issued by the international criminal court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as alleged rape and murder.

The general was in Turin for a football match on Saturday between Juventus and AC Milan accompanied by other Libyans, according to the Italian press. They reported he was arrested at a hotel in the city.

The NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans wrote on X that the arrest “came after years of complaints and testimonies from victims, sent to the international criminal court, which conducted a difficult investigation”.

Nello Scavo, a journalist on the Italian newspaper Avvenire, wrote about the general in his book, Le Mani sulla Guardia Costiera, in which he described him as being “among the figures capable of blackmailing Italy and Europe with boats”. In the book, Scavo alleged that Najim illegally transferred migrants “from both unofficial and official places of detention in Tripoli to the Mitiga facility, for the primary purpose of using them for forced labour as a form of slavery”.

The Libyan judicial police reportedly condemned what they described as Najim’s “arbitrary detention”, calling his arrest an “outrageous incident” on Facebook.

The arrest puts the spotlight on a controversial pact between Italy and Libya, signed in 2017 and renewed every three years. The deal, approved by the European Council, involves Italy funding and equipping the Libyan coastguard to prevent boats of refugees leaving the north African country. Humanitarian groups have criticised it for pushing people back to detention camps where they face torture and other abuses.

In November 2022, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), a German NGO, filed a criminal complaint at the ICC against several high-profile European politicians for allegedly conspiring with Libya’s coastguard to illegally push back people trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search of refuge in Europe.

Scavo told the Guardian that many testimonies from migrants and refugees presented to the ICC had provided evidence for the investigation into Najim. “It would be a turning point if a trial could be opened before the ICC, but I fear that many countries are afraid of what he might say, because these are representatives of authorities who have relations with Italy, with Malta and in general with Europe,” he said.

The hardline immigration policies of Georgia Meloni’s government, including a similar deal with Tunisia, are at least partly credited for the sharp decrease in refugees crossing from north Africa in 2024.

A Libyan general wanted for alleged war crimes and violence against inmates at a prison near Tripoli has been arrested in the northern Italian city of Turin.

Osama Najim, also known as Almasri, was detained on Sunday on an international arrest warrant after a tipoff from Interpol, a source at the prosecutors office for the Piedmont region confirmed.

Italy’s justice minister, Carlo Nordio, is evaluating the transmission of the ICC’s request to Rome’s attorney general.

Najim was reportedly chief of Libya’s judicial police and director of Mitiga prison, a facility close to Tripoli condemned by human rights’ groups for the arbitrary detention, torture and abuse of political dissidents and migrants and refugees. It is not clear whether he is still in either role.

The arrest warrant was issued by the international criminal court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as alleged rape and murder.

The general was in Turin for a football match on Saturday between Juventus and AC Milan accompanied by other Libyans, according to the Italian press. They reported he was arrested at a hotel in the city.

The NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans wrote on X that the arrest “came after years of complaints and testimonies from victims, sent to the international criminal court, which conducted a difficult investigation”.

Nello Scavo, a journalist on the Italian newspaper Avvenire, wrote about the general in his book, Le Mani sulla Guardia Costiera, in which he described him as being “among the figures capable of blackmailing Italy and Europe with boats”. In the book, Scavo alleged that Najim illegally transferred migrants “from both unofficial and official places of detention in Tripoli to the Mitiga facility, for the primary purpose of using them for forced labour as a form of slavery”.

The Libyan judicial police reportedly condemned what they described as Najim’s “arbitrary detention”, calling his arrest an “outrageous incident” on Facebook.

The arrest puts the spotlight on a controversial pact between Italy and Libya, signed in 2017 and renewed every three years. The deal, approved by the European Council, involves Italy funding and equipping the Libyan coastguard to prevent boats of refugees leaving the north African country. Humanitarian groups have criticised it for pushing people back to detention camps where they face torture and other abuses.

In November 2022, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), a German NGO, filed a criminal complaint at the ICC against several high-profile European politicians for allegedly conspiring with Libya’s coastguard to illegally push back people trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search of refuge in Europe.

Scavo told the Guardian that many testimonies from migrants and refugees presented to the ICC had provided evidence for the investigation into Najim. “It would be a turning point if a trial could be opened before the ICC, but I fear that many countries are afraid of what he might say, because these are representatives of authorities who have relations with Italy, with Malta and in general with Europe,” he said.

The hardline immigration policies of Georgia Meloni’s government, including a similar deal with Tunisia, are at least partly credited for the sharp decrease in refugees crossing from north Africa in 2024.

South African police are hunting an alleged “kingpin” of illegal mining after he escaped from custody following a rescue operation last week in which 78 bodies were brought out of an illicit goldmine.

James Neo Tshoaeli, a Lesotho national known as Tiger, has been accused by other illegal miners of being a ringleader who was allegedly responsible for assaults, tortures and deaths underground, as well as keeping food from others, the South African Police Service said.

Tshoaeli was neither booked into custody nor admitted at any local hospitals for medical care, police said, describing his escape as an “embarrassment”. “Heads will roll once they find those officials that aided the kingpin to escape from police custody,” they said. “Tiger is a fugitive of justice and is considered dangerous.”

In late 2023, police launched Operation Vala Umgodi (Plug the Hole) to try to stamp out illegal mines across South Africa’s north-eastern mining belt. Officers blocked supplies of food, water and medicine from being sent to workers underground in attempt to force them to the surface so they could be arrested.

After reports of dead bodies at an illegal goldmining site near Stilfontein earlier this month, the government launched a rescue operation. Over four days last week, a crane winch lifted 246 survivors and 78 bodies from the 1.2-mile-deep shaft. Local volunteers said they had previously hauled out nine dead miners using a hand-operated rope pulley system.

Activists and relatives of the miners blamed South African authorities for what they called a “massacre” of starving people unable to resurface. Officials said the men, known as zama zamas (those who try), could have exited via a different mineshaft but stayed underground to avoid arrest.

In recent years, illegal miners have flocked to sites in South Africa that mining companies have abandoned as no longer commercially viable. Analysts estimate there could be 30,000 zama zamas producing 10% of South Africa’s gold output from 6,000 abandoned mines, often controlled by violent criminal syndicates.

Since 18 August, 1,907 illegal miners have come out of the abandoned goldmines around Stilfontein, according to police. Most were from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, with just 26 from South Africa. Police have blamed Lesotho nationals for leading the operations.

“You have got people who voluntarily entered mines and did some illegal activities and in the process died inside those mines,” South Africa’s finance minister, Enoch Godongwana, told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. “To then come back and say the state is going to take the blame for that, in my view, is misplaced.”

Reuters contributed to this report

A fuel tanker exploded after flipping over in central Nigeria on Saturday, killing 70 people who had scrambled to take the fuel.

Kumar Tsukwam, the head of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) in Niger State, said a truck carrying 60,000 litres of gasoline had an accident at about 10am at the Dikko junction on the road linking the federal capital Abuja to the northern city of Kaduna.

“Most of the victims were burnt beyond recognition,” Tsukwam said. “We are at the scene to clear things up.”

An FSRC statement said a “large crowd of people gathered to scoop the fuel” when “suddenly the tanker burst into flames, engulfing another tanker.

“So far 60 corpses recovered from scene, the victims are mostly scavengers,” it said.

Last year, shortly after his election, President Bola Tinubu abolished a fuel subsidy, sending prices of essentials and other goods soaring, triggering protests.

The price of gasoline has increased fivefold in 18 months, leading many to risk their lives to recover fuel during tanker truck accidents, which are common in Africa’s most populous country.

Niger state governor Umaru Bago said in a statement that the explosion was “worrisome, heartbreaking and unfortunate”.

He said an undisclosed number of people also experienced various degrees of burns.

In October, more than 170 people died in a similar incident in Jigawa State, in northern Nigeria.

In 2020, the FRSC listed 1,531 fuel tanker accidents which claimed more than 535 lives.

The World Health Organization (WHO) could see lean years ahead if the US withdraws membership under the new Trump administration. Such a withdrawal, promised on the first day of Donald Trump’s new administration, would in effect cut the multilateral agency’s funding by one-fifth.

The severe cut would be uncharted territory for the WHO, potentially curtailing public health works globally, pressuring the organization to attract private funding, and providing an opening for other countries to influence the organization. Other countries are not expected to make up the funding loss.

The WHO works to improve the health of millions of people globally – from working to eradicate polio and tuberculosis to coordinating US HIV and Aids prevention work in Africa.

“There are many influential people around him that say he’ll announce the withdrawal on day one in office,” Lawrence Gostin, a global health law expert at Georgetown University who opposes US withdrawal from the WHO, said. “The threat is real, it’s palpable and it’s likely.”

The WHO has declined to comment on any potential preparations for such a move.

In a press conference on Thursday, a WHO spokesperson, Dr Margaret Harris, told reporters: “This is a government in transition, and as a government in transition they need the time and space to make their own decisions, to make that transition. And we are not going to make any comment further.”

The same day, the WHO made an “emergency appeal” for funds, citing the threats of climate breakdown and conflict to world health. In addition, the WHO held its first ever “investment round” in May 2024, promising to use member states’ financial commitment to save 40 million lives through 2028.

A US funding withdrawal would also put pressure on the WHO Foundation to make up the shortfall. The independent Swiss entity was established during the pandemic to raise funds from “non-state actors”, including wealthy individuals and corporations. The foundation was announced in May 2020, the same month that President-elect last threatened to withdraw US funding from the WHO.

“The WHO plays a critical role in global health security, disease outbreaks and eradication, international emergencies, and mobilization of global cooperation,” Anil Soni, CEO of the WHO Foundation, said in a statement.

“The Organization is critical in protecting US business interests worldwide. Its programs in disease surveillance, outbreak response, and pandemic preparedness help prevent disruptions to supply chains, international markets, and trade. No other organization has the capacity and bandwidth to coordinate international rapid response efforts, to share medical research and innovation, and to disseminate critical intelligence worldwide.”

Past WHO Foundation donors include the global food giant Nestlé, the makeup company Maybelline and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. The foundation has granted anonymity to some donors, a practice which academics criticize as making it difficult to spot conflicts of interest.

An arm of the United Nations, the US helped found WHO in 1948 through a joint resolution of Congress. The US remains its largest funder, providing about 22% of all member states’ assessed contributions. The US is the only member state that can withdraw from the agency.

The US provided $1.2bn to WHO in 2023 – a fraction of the federal government’s $6.1tn budget and about what Joe Biden spent in one round of student loan debt relief in 2024.

Although the US is legally required to provide written notice of intent to withdraw one year before taking any action, legal experts worry WHO funding could, in practical terms, disappear virtually overnight.

Trump’s renewed efforts to withdraw funding and support from the WHO were first reported in December – one of many potential day-one actions. Like much of Trump’s health policy agenda, the pandemic haunts the promise. Trump argued WHO was overly deferential to the Chinese government during the pandemic, and announced he would withdraw the US in May 2020.

“The world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government,” Trump said in a Rose Garden speech in May 2020 announcing his plan to withdraw. “Countless lives have been taken, and profound economic hardship has been inflicted all around the globe.”

Trump’s decision was rendered moot when Biden won the election in 2020, and promptly reversed course. Gostin sees no such reprieve in the upcoming administration.

“This time he has four years to accomplish this goal,” said Gostin.

Resentment against the WHO has simmered in Republican circles since the pandemic. Some conservatives accuse the agency of threatening US sovereignty in a new pandemic treaty, which seeks to distribute vaccines equitably around the world. The first Covid-19 vaccine was released in the US in December 2020. Much of the global south lacked vaccines for years afterward, even as wealthy countries stockpiled doses.

Ironically, legal experts worry that withdrawing the US from the WHO would provide an open door for Chinese government influence, a country Trump views as one of the US’s chief global rivals.

Experts say withdrawing from the WHO could also harm US national security interests by cutting off access to programs such as pandemic preparedness and seasonal influenza strain sequencing (used to develop annual flu shots).

The United States has imposed sanctions on Sudan’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, accusing him of choosing war over negotiations to bring an end to the conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes.

The US treasury department said in a statement that under Burhan’s leadership, the army’s war tactics have included indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on schools, markets and hospitals, and extrajudicial executions.

Washington announced the measures a week after imposing sanctions on Burhan’s rival in the two-year-old civil war, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Sources said that one aim of Thursday’s sanctions was to show that Washington was not picking sides.

Speaking earlier on Thursday, Burhan was defiant about the prospect that he might be targeted.

“I hear there’s going to be sanctions on the army leadership. We welcome any sanctions for serving this country,” he said in comments broadcast on Al Jazeera television.

Washington also issued sanctions over the supply of weapons to the army, targeting a Sudanese-Ukrainian national as well as a Hong Kong-based company.

Thursday’s action freezes any of their US assets and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. The treasury department said it issued authorizations allowing certain transactions, including activities involving the warring generals, so as not to impede humanitarian assistance.

The Sudanese army and the RSF together led a coup in 2021 removing Sudan’s civilian leadership, but fell out less than two years later over plans to integrate their forces.

The war that broke out in April 2023 has plunged half of the population into hunger.

Dagalo, known as Hemedti, was sanctioned after Washington determined his forces had committed genocide, as well as for attacks on civilians. The RSF has engaged in bloody looting campaigns in the territory it controls.

In a statement, Sudan’s foreign ministry said the latest US move “expresses nothing but confusion and a weak sense of justice” and accused Washington of defending genocide by the RSF.

The US and Saudi Arabia have tried repeatedly to bring both sides to the negotiating table, with the army refusing most attempts, including talks in Geneva in August which in part aimed to ease humanitarian access.

The army has instead ramped up its military campaign, this week taking the strategic city of Wad Madani and vowing to retake the capital Khartoum.

Rights experts and residents have accused the army of indiscriminate airstrikes as well as attacks on civilians, most recently revenge attacks in Wad Madani this week. The US had previously determined the army and RSF had committed war crimes.

In his final news conference ahead of the president-elect Donald Trump’s 20 January inauguration, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Thursday that it was a “real regret” Washington had not managed to end the fighting under his watch.

While there have been some improvements in getting humanitarian assistance into Sudan through US diplomacy, they have not seen an end to the conflict, “not an end to the abuses, not an end to the suffering of people”, Blinken said. “We’ll keep working here for the next three days, and I hope the next administration will take that on as well.”

A human rights lawyer involved in a case featuring a prominent Ugandan opposition leader has been tortured after he was arrested and detained without trial, according to colleagues who have visited him.

Eron Kiiza was assaulted and arrested by soldiers on 7 January while entering a military courtroom where he was representing Dr Kizza Besigye – a political opponent of President Yoweri Museveni – and his aide Haji Obeid Lutale.

He was convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment on the same day. He was immediately transferred to Kitalya prison, 34 miles from the capital, Kampala.

Human rights organisations including Amnesty International and the International Federation for Human Rights have called for Kiiza’s immediate release. In a statement, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders said the sentence “constitutes a violation of international, constitutional and Ugandan domestic law”.

According to Ugandan lawyers Andrew Karamagi and Primah Kwagala, who have worked with Kiiza and visited him in prison, Kiiza showed signs of mental and physical torture. Most parts of his body, particularly joints, knees, nails, knuckles and head, were swollen.

Karamagi said Kiiza was recovering from beatings at the court and in transit to prison. “It is routine that [forces] will beat up arrested people and he was subjected to as much, which explains the pains he was feeling in his chest and lower back, and the bruises I saw when I visited him in prison.”

A deputy spokesperson for Uganda’s armed forces, Lt Col Deo Akiiki, dismissed allegations of torture as “absolute rubbish” and said Kiiza is “very well”. He said Kiiza’s imprisonment did not contravene Ugandan law and that his rights had not been violated.

“Our politicians have gone to the dogs,” he added. “They ride on anything to smear government dirt.”

Reaction to Kiiza’s detention was one of “shock and awe”, said Kwagala, because until last week lawyers had not been beaten, arrested or detained in the course of their work.

“This arrest is testament to the breakdown of rule of law and constitutionalism in Uganda,” she said. “Our constitutional court has barred military courts from handling civilians but this is happening in vain.”

In November Besigye, a political opponent of Museveni, who has been in power for almost 40 years, was abducted in neighbouring Kenya.

He was returned to Uganda and charged with the illegal possession of firearms and with undermining the east African country’s security by a military court, despite being a civilian.

During a court hearing on Monday, treachery, which carries the death penalty, was added to the list of charges.

Besigye’s wife, Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAids, has said the charges against him are politically motivated. His lawyers have rejected the charges as baseless.

Kiiza’s detention comes amid growing restrictions in a year leading up to general elections.

“It’s foreseeable and understandable that repression will simply increase,” said Karamagi. “The situation will get worse.”

Sudan’s military and its allies have taken back a strategic city from the rebel Rapid Support Forces, officials said.

The recapture of Wad Madani, the capital of Gezira province, took place more than a year after it fell to the RSF. Wad Madani had previously been a haven for displaced families in the early months of the war.

The conflict in Sudan started in April 2023 when simmering tensions between the leaders of the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and other cities across the large north-eastern African country.

The conflict has killed more than 28,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine hit parts of the country.

Atrocities, including ethnically motivated killing and rape, have been committed throughout the war, according the United Nations and rights groups. The international criminal court said it was investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration said the RSF and its proxies were committing genocide, and put sanctions on the RSF leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, as well as seven RSF-owned companies in the United Arab Emirates, including one handling gold probably smuggled out of Sudan.

The military said in a statement that its forces had entered Wad Madani early on Saturday and that they were working to “clear the rebels’ remnants inside the city”.

“Congratulations to the Armed Forces, their supporting forces everywhere and to our people as they reclaim their dignity, security and stability,” it said.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF.

The culture and information minister, Khalid Aleiser, the spokesperson for the government, said the military and its allies had “liberated” Wad Madani, which is about 100km (60 miles) south-east of Khartoum, Sudan’s capital.

Soldiers posted videos on social media purportedly showing forces celebrating with residents in the city centre. One video showed people taking to the streets to celebrate the “liberation” of the city, and shouting, “Allah is Great.”

Since the RSF captured Wad Medani in December 2023, tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes in and around the city.

In recent months the RSF has suffered multiple battlefield blows, giving the military the upper hand in the war. It has lost control of many areas in Khartoum, the capital’s sister city of Omdurman, and the eastern and central provinces.

The war has created the world’s largest displacement crisis, driving more than 14 million people – about 30% of the population – from their homes, according to the UN. An estimated 3.2 million people have crossed into neighbouring countries including Chad, Egypt and South Sudan.

Famine has been detected in at least five areas, including three camps for displaced people in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, according to an international monitoring project, the Integrated Food Security Classification, or IPC. The IPC said five other areas were projected to experience famine in the next six months. More areas are also at risk of famine, it said.

South African police have rescued 26 Ethiopians from a suspected human trafficking ring in Johannesburg after the group broke a window and burglar bar to escape from a house where they were being held naked.

Three people were arrested on suspicion of people trafficking and possessing an illegal firearm on Thursday night after neighbours in the Sandringham suburb heard the commotion and tipped off the police, the Hawks serious crime unit said in a statement. Police urged the public to report any other escaped naked people in the area.

About 60 Ethiopian men were held captive in the bungalow, the local TV station eNCA reported, showing what appeared to be blood spattered below an open window at the front of the house. Police said 11 people were taken to hospital for medical treatment. A number of the Ethiopians are still at large after not being picked up by police.

“The signs that we have is this is a human trafficking matter, because they were actually escaping from that house and they were kept naked, almost as if it’s a modus operandi to keep them humiliated and not trying to escape,” said Philani Nkwalase, a police spokesperson.

South Africa has attracted immigrants from across Africa since the end of apartheid more than three decades ago. However, fears that they are smuggling drugs and driving up unemployment and violent crime have fuelled persistent xenophobia.

There are about 2.4 million foreign-born people in South Africa out of the 62 million population, according to the 2022 census, which aimed to count people regardless of immigration status. While more than three-quarters come from other southern African states, there are about 58,000 Ethiopians in the country.

In August 2024, 82 Ethiopians were discovered crammed into a house in the same area of Johannesburg, without enough food or proper toilet and bathroom facilities. Seven of them were initially deemed to be minors and 19 others said they were underage when they were taken to court on suspicion of entering South Africa illegally.

“They were all undocumented migrants who were not victims of trafficking but were smuggled into the country,” the department of home affairs said in a statement later that month.

Nkwalase said it was not yet clear if the two cases were connected, adding that police were seeking an interpreter as language barriers were preventing officers from getting answers from the men about how, why and when they came to South Africa.

A neighbour of the house from which the Ethiopians had escaped told eNCA she was shocked by the incident, adding that the only time she had seen anyone at the property was a few weeks ago when her son went to retrieve a ball he had kicked over the fence.

A Kenyan judge has declared as unconstitutional sections of the country’s laws that criminalise attempted suicide. In a landmark ruling on Thursday, Judge Lawrence Mugambi of the country’s high court stated that section 226 of the penal code contradicts the constitution by punishing those with mental health issues over which they may have little or no control.

While the constitution says in article 43 that a person has the right to the “highest attainable standard of health”, criminal law states that “any person who attempts to kill himself is guilty of a misdemeanour and is subject to imprisonment of up to two years, a fine, or both”, with the minimum age of prosecution for the offence set at eight years old.

“It is my finding that applying the purpose and effect principle of constitutional interpretation, section 226 of the penal code offends article 27 of the constitution by criminalising a mental health issue thereby endorsing discrimination on the basis of health, which is unconstitutional. It also indignifies and disgraces victims of suicide ideation in the eyes of the community for actions that are beyond their mental control,” Mugambi ruled.

The ruling came after a court petition by, among others, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) and the Kenya Psychiatric Association, in which they contended that the main factors driving up suicide cases include “undiagnosed and untreated mental health conditions as well as mental disabilities which result in suicidal thoughts that may lead to attempted suicide by persons affected”.

“Today’s judgment is a rallying call for an open and candid conversation among individuals, communities, organisations and the government, and it goes a long way in raising awareness, fighting stigma and discrimination,” KNCHR said in a statement, urging communities and families to provide “safe spaces where individuals affected by mental health challenges can share their experiences and seek support without fear of stigma or discrimination”.

Human rights groups and medical practitioners in Kenya have failed in the past to have attempted suicide decriminalised, stating that such persons require specialised medical attention.

In March 2024, officials from Kenya’s leading mental health hospital urged parliament to consider repealing the offending law to shift perceptions and stigma.

Dr Julius Ogato, chief executive officer at Mathari national teaching and referral hospital, said: “Just as diabetes results from a lack of insulin in the body, mental illness involves an imbalance of chemical transmitters in the brain. There is a biological basis for such thoughts. When someone exhibits these thoughts, they require empathy and much-needed support to access treatment.”

While admitting that data on suicide is hard to come by due to the “fragmented nature of reporting systems”, Kenya’s health ministry’s Suicide Prevention Strategy 2021-2026 says the country has an “age standardised suicide rate of 11.0 per 100,000 population, which translates to about four suicide deaths per day”.

The World Health Organization says more than 700,000 people die by suicide every year with over 70% of cases taking place in low- and middle-income countries.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

More than 600 people have been forcibly deported from Libya on a “dangerous and traumatising” journey across the Sahara, in what is thought to be one of the largest expulsions from the north African country to date.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) confirmed 613 people, all Nigerien nationals, arrived in the desert town of Dirkou in Niger last weekend in a convoy of trucks. They were among a large number of migrant workers rounded up by the authorities in Libya over the past month.

“This is something new. There was one expulsion of 400 people last July, but this convoy is the largest number to date,” said Azizou Chehou, of the migrant distress response charity Alarm Phone Sahara.

The expulsions come as EU countries have been accused of ignoring the widespread and systematic human rights violations and abuses against migrants in Libya as they seek to reduce the number of people arriving in Europe, with Italy signing deals with Tunisia and Libya to reduce Mediterranean crossings. According to the Italian interior ministry, 66,317 people reached Italy in 2024, less than half the number in 2023.

David Yambio, spokesperson for the nonprofit organisation Refugees in Libya, said: “This is Europe’s border policy laid bare, outsourcing mass expulsion and death to Libya, where the desert becomes a graveyard.

“Leaders like [Viktor] Orbán, [Giorgia] Meloni, or Trump applaud such efficient cruelty. It’s no accident; it’s the design. The EU pays to erase migrants, to make suffering invisible, and to wash its hands while others do its dirty work.”

Chehou said the journey across the Sahara region between Libya and Niger was “dangerous and traumatising”. “Winter in the desert is very cold and with migrants packed like sardines, fights to find the most comfortable spots can break out and people can fall out of the truck breaking limbs. People will arrive [in Agadez] in a very sorry state.”

Jalel Harchaoui, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a specialist on Libya, said the periodic roundup and expulsion of foreign workers was, “something of a tradition in southern Libya since even during the time of Gadafi”, but that this incident was notable and different because of the large number of people expelled in one go.

“There has been no official announcement nor clear policy – this is simply local authorities rounding people up. However, in the rhetoric of the Haftar coalition [the Libyan National Army led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar], which largely controls Sabha [a city in southern Libya where they were deported from], there is often a tendency to demonise foreigners, particularly those from sub-Saharan Africa.”

Libya has long been a destination for those seeking work, with people from Niger, Mali and Chad migrating into southern Libya to work in sectors such as agriculture, construction and retail. Others migrate to the country to earn money to travel to the coast and join a smuggler’s boat to Europe.

A spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said it believed more groups of migrants were coming from Libya and that it was “ready to support IOM, particularly in identifying and supporting individuals who may be in need of international protection”.

Mozambique’s opposition leader, Venâncio Mondlane, has returned to the country from self-imposed exile, saying he was ready for talks with the government after claiming October’s elections were stolen from him.

In large dark sunglasses, Mondlane dropped to his knees as he exited the arrivals door of Maputo’s international airport and appeared to be praying. He spoke to journalists outside, wearing a fake flower garland, before his car edged through crowds of cheering supporters.

Mozambique has been beset by protests since the 9 October presidential and parliamentary votes, which Mondlane and his allied party Podemos said they had won. More than 280 people have been killed by security forces, according to the Centre for Public Integrity, a local monitoring group.

“I had to break this narrative that I was absent because of my own will,” Mondlane told reporters in comments that were also broadcast live on his Facebook page. “So I’m here present, I’m here in the flesh, I’m here to say that if they want to negotiate, if you want to talk to me, if you want to sit down for a discussion, I’m here.”

The charismatic populist said he had also returned to witness what he labelled a “silent genocide” of his supporters and to defend himself against charges that he was culpable for damage caused during the protests.

Daniel Chapo, the candidate for Frelimo, the party that has ruled Mozambique since independence from Portugal in 1975, is due to be sworn in as president on 15 January.

On 23 December, the country’s top court declared Chapo secured 65.2% of the vote, which triggered another wave of protests by supporters of Mondlane, who the court said won 24.2% of the vote.

Election observers have said there was evidence of vote rigging, but some analysts have cautioned that Frelimo may still have won without any manipulation.

The outgoing president, Felipe Nyusi, called for talks with Mondlane in November and said in December that they had spoken by phone.

Mondlane previously said he had left Mozambique for an undisclosed location for fear of being assassinated. On 19 October, two of his allies, Elvino Dias, a lawyer, and Paulo Guambe, a film-maker and Podemos official, were shot dead by unknown attackers.

No one has been arrested for the killings, which human rights researchers say fits a pattern of targeted killings of opposition figures without anyone being brought to justice.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Manase Madia, 50, shows his Mozambican identity card. Once a sign of pride, he does not know what to believe in any more. Over the past few weeks he has seen houses being burned down, and shops and businesses looted, including his own. He now fears for his family, which has scattered in fear.

At a community ground where officials are processing new arrivals before being transferred to a shelter, Madia is one of about 13,000 people who have crossed into Malawi in the past two months, seeking refuge from post-election violence in Mozambique. The arrival of the refugees, albeit in smaller numbers, is reminiscent for people here of the civil war when almost a million Mozambicans sought refuge in the neighbouring southern African nation in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Protests and violent uprisings have continued in Mozambique since the 11 October election, which saw Daniel Chapo, the candidate for the ruling Frelimo party, declared the winner over Venâncio Mondlane, of the opposition Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique.

In December, Mozambique’s constitutional council upheld the earlier decision, sparking fresh violence. While political members were targeted initially, the protests have metamorphosed into criminality and looting with businesspeople and those who are well off, like Madia, being targeted by marauding gangs.

Madia, who hid in the bush after being tipped off that he was a target, managed to leave the country on a motorbike with his wife and one of his 12 children. He says the violence has disturbed thousands of families in his community and he believes people are being targeted for their money or possessions, no matter what their ideological or political leaning.

“At first it was party members who were getting their houses broken into,” he says. “Then some people informed me that I was being targeted and people were planning to come during the evening. They came in hundreds in our community carrying pangas [machetes] and were signalling by whistling while shouting the name of the opposition leader. I fuelled my motorcycle and whisked my family away to my relatives,” says Madia, whose shop was destroyed, and goats and sheep stolen.

He says some of his relatives and adult children are still hiding in the bush without any way to travel to safety. He knows of many in his hometown of Morrumbala in a similar predicament, he adds.

“My brother called me to say the situation has worsened and we should not think about returning anytime soon,” he says. “The people doing violence are our neighbours and they know us very well.”

The Guardian spoke to a dozen people who said how they had made the 30-mile (50km) journey to Malawi with just the clothes on their back and with no food or possessions.

Malawians have been welcoming the refugees, with whom many share a language, despite the country battling one of the worst food shortages in its history after a severe drought. The president has declared a state of disaster and called for international support.

Malawi, a landlocked country, depends on Mozambique’s ports for fuel. The violence and roadblocks further exacerbated fuel shortages, with people having to camp out and sleep in queues at petrol stations.

The district council – with support from Malawi’s Department of Disaster Management Affairs and charities such as the UN refugee agency, UNCHR – is erecting tents to host the thousands of refugees who are now at three centres, including one at a primary school.

At one of the centres, Judith Fukizi, who works for Restoring Family Links, an International Red Cross initiative, is busy making calls, helping to locate members of the same family who have become separated or fled to different areas.

“The ones that approached us said they fled to different locations. Others were attacked at night and they don’t know where their relatives fled. It’s mostly children being separated from their parents.

“The decision of who joins who lies with the people. Some just want to know the welfare and whereabouts of their loved ones,” Fukizi says.

Hilda Katema Kausiwa, operations manager in the refugee department at Malawi’s Ministry of Homeland Security, says they are carrying out a joint assessment with UN agencies and the International Red Cross after receiving reports of refugees arriving due to political conflicts.

“We are looking into issues of hygiene and sanitation where these people are camping. We have also seen some health concerns because other people are coming with health issues.

“We have monitored a number of children who are malnutritioned, so we are working with stakeholders and the district health team to enhance health-screening and ensure all the persons of concern have access to health facilities,” she says, while commending the chiefs and local people who had generously received the refugees.

About 46 hectares (113 acres) of land have been granted to build a settlement and facilities for the refugees. UNHCR, the Red Cross and other organisations have sent tents.

Kausiwa said: “So far, the response has been good. But we are still advocating for additional resources to ensure that we meet the needs of this population. There are issues of food that are critical. As the population continues to grow, we need continued support.

“We know that the times are hard, but we just want to ensure those that we register or screen are genuine asylum seekers that are fleeing persecution and that they should get the relevant support.

“We’re also appealing for continued monitoring of the points of entry to enhance security,” she says, adding they are also planning for public health emergencies, such as mpox.

Mike Dansa, chair of Nsanje civil society organisations, says they are engaged in humanitarian aid, disaster response, food security and health initiatives.

“The influx of asylum seekers is putting significant pressure on local resources and services,” he says. “We are advocating for comprehensive support that addresses not only the basic needs of displaced individuals but also the wellbeing of the host communities who have shown incredible solidarity during these challenging times.

“This situation highlights the critical need for strengthened humanitarian systems, increased resource allocation and sustainable interventions to address the immediate and long-term impacts of displacement,” he adds.

The United States has formally declared that Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces have committed genocide during the country’s ongoing civil war, marking the second time in less than 30 years that genocide has been perpetrated in Sudan.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, announced the determination on Tuesday while imposing sanctions on the RSF commander Mohammad Hamdan Daglo – known as Hemedti – for his role in what he described as “systematic atrocities”, many perpetrated in west Darfur.

While both the RSF and rival Sudanese Armed Forces have been accused of committing war crimes during the civil war which broke out in 2023, and which has claimed tens of thousands of lives, Blinken detailed a pattern of systematic ethnic violence in which RSF had killed civilians as they tried to flee, and blocked access to essential supplies.

Blinken said that the state department had conducted months of deliberation over the genocide designation. “Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan,” he said.

Blinken’s announcement on Tuesday has come amid heightened global scrutiny of US positions on international conflicts. Just days earlier, Blinken had dismissed suggestions that events in Gaza constituted genocide, responding: “No, it’s not” in an interview with the New York Times.

A paramilitary force that emerged out of the notorious Janjaweed militias that committed atrocities in Darfur in the 2000s, the RSF was deployed by the former Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019 to crack down on pro-democracy protesters during Sudan’s revolution that saw Bashir’s fall in 2019.

In 2023, an uneasy alliance between Hemedti and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the Sudanese army general who became head of the country’s ruling transitional council, broke down, triggering a devastating civil war between the RSF against Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces, and ensuing famine.

Some of the most serious allegations relating to Hemedti and the RSF have once again focused on Darfur, where where up to 15,000 people died in well documented RSF attacks on El Geneina in west Darfur in 2023 targeting the non-Arab Masalit and other ethnic groups.

In his statement Blinken said: “I also determined that members of the RSF and allied Arab militias had committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

“The RSF and RSF-aligned militias have continued to direct attacks against civilians. The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys – even infants – on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.

“Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies. Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan.

“The United States is committed to holding accountable those responsible for these atrocities. We are today sanctioning RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, known as Hemedti, for his role in systematic atrocities committed against the Sudanese people. We are also sanctioning seven RSF-owned companies located in the United Arab Emirates and one individual for their roles in procuring weapons for the RSF.”

The latest genocide determination follows the US declaration in 2004 that the RSF’s forerunner had committed in Darfur in the early 2000s.

The treasury department simultaneously announced sweeping sanctions against Hemedti and eight connected entities, including UAE-based companies accused of providing weapons and financial support to his forces.

The measures include visa restrictions that will bar Hemedti and his family from entering the United States, specifically citing “gross violations of human rights in Darfur, namely the mass rape of civilians by RSF soldiers under his control”.

The war between RSF and the Sudan Armed Forces, which has so far killed tens of thousands and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, including perpetuating a mass famine for hundreds of thousands and forcing 12 million people from their homes, according to UN estimates. The SAF was not implicated in US sanctions or in the genocide determination.

Last month, rights activists reported at least 127 people, mostly civilians, were killed by barrel bombs and shelling from both sides. On Sunday, an airstrike which targeted a market area for the third time in less than a month, left more than 30 wounded, with five in critical condition, according to local volunteer rescue workers.

Among the sanctioned entities is Capital Tap Holding, a UAE-based company that allegedly channeled money and military equipment to the RSF. Its owner, Abu Dharr Abdul Nabi Habiballa Ahmmed, and several related companies were also targeted for helping the paramilitary group evade previous sanctions.

The genocide determination, which follows earlier findings of war crimes and crimes against humanity, could pave the way for additional international action against the RSF and its supporters.

The United States has formally declared that Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces have committed genocide during the country’s ongoing civil war, marking the second time in less than 30 years that genocide has been perpetrated in Sudan.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, announced the determination on Tuesday while imposing sanctions on the RSF commander Mohammad Hamdan Daglo – known as Hemedti – for his role in what he described as “systematic atrocities”, many perpetrated in west Darfur.

While both the RSF and rival Sudanese Armed Forces have been accused of committing war crimes during the civil war which broke out in 2023, and which has claimed tens of thousands of lives, Blinken detailed a pattern of systematic ethnic violence in which RSF had killed civilians as they tried to flee, and blocked access to essential supplies.

Blinken said that the state department had conducted months of deliberation over the genocide designation. “Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan,” he said.

Blinken’s announcement on Tuesday has come amid heightened global scrutiny of US positions on international conflicts. Just days earlier, Blinken had dismissed suggestions that events in Gaza constituted genocide, responding: “No, it’s not” in an interview with the New York Times.

A paramilitary force that emerged out of the notorious Janjaweed militias that committed atrocities in Darfur in the 2000s, the RSF was deployed by the former Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019 to crack down on pro-democracy protesters during Sudan’s revolution that saw Bashir’s fall in 2019.

In 2023, an uneasy alliance between Hemedti and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the Sudanese army general who became head of the country’s ruling transitional council, broke down, triggering a devastating civil war between the RSF against Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces, and ensuing famine.

Some of the most serious allegations relating to Hemedti and the RSF have once again focused on Darfur, where where up to 15,000 people died in well documented RSF attacks on El Geneina in west Darfur in 2023 targeting the non-Arab Masalit and other ethnic groups.

In his statement Blinken said: “I also determined that members of the RSF and allied Arab militias had committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

“The RSF and RSF-aligned militias have continued to direct attacks against civilians. The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys – even infants – on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.

“Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies. Based on this information, I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan.

“The United States is committed to holding accountable those responsible for these atrocities. We are today sanctioning RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, known as Hemedti, for his role in systematic atrocities committed against the Sudanese people. We are also sanctioning seven RSF-owned companies located in the United Arab Emirates and one individual for their roles in procuring weapons for the RSF.”

The latest genocide determination follows the US declaration in 2004 that the RSF’s forerunner had committed in Darfur in the early 2000s.

The treasury department simultaneously announced sweeping sanctions against Hemedti and eight connected entities, including UAE-based companies accused of providing weapons and financial support to his forces.

The measures include visa restrictions that will bar Hemedti and his family from entering the United States, specifically citing “gross violations of human rights in Darfur, namely the mass rape of civilians by RSF soldiers under his control”.

The war between RSF and the Sudan Armed Forces, which has so far killed tens of thousands and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, including perpetuating a mass famine for hundreds of thousands and forcing 12 million people from their homes, according to UN estimates. The SAF was not implicated in US sanctions or in the genocide determination.

Last month, rights activists reported at least 127 people, mostly civilians, were killed by barrel bombs and shelling from both sides. On Sunday, an airstrike which targeted a market area for the third time in less than a month, left more than 30 wounded, with five in critical condition, according to local volunteer rescue workers.

Among the sanctioned entities is Capital Tap Holding, a UAE-based company that allegedly channeled money and military equipment to the RSF. Its owner, Abu Dharr Abdul Nabi Habiballa Ahmmed, and several related companies were also targeted for helping the paramilitary group evade previous sanctions.

The genocide determination, which follows earlier findings of war crimes and crimes against humanity, could pave the way for additional international action against the RSF and its supporters.

The UK cut health aid to some of the world’s vulnerable countries at the same time as recruiting thousands of their nurses, in a “double whammy” for fragile health systems, new analysis has found.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which carried out the research, said Labour had a “duty to fix” aid cuts imposed by the previous government, and to work on increasing the UK’s domestic supply of nurses.

Between 2020 and 2023, direct UK aid for health-related projects in “red list” countries – those with the most severe workforce shortages – fell by nearly 63%, from £484m to £181m.

Spending on projects designed to strengthen the healthcare workforce in those countries fell by 83%, from £24m to £4m.

At the same time, the number of nurses from these countries on the UK’s national register rose sharply. There were 11,386 registered in September 2020, and 32,543 in September 2024.

The Conservative government under Boris Johnson pushed through a £4bn cut to the foreign aid budget, reducing spending from 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) to 0.5%. In last October’s budget, Labour kept government spending at this reduced figure.

Prof Nicola Ranger, RCN general secretary and chief executive, said: “Cuts to aid may have been the previous government’s idea, but it is now this government’s duty to fix it.

“By maintaining the aid target at a lowly 0.5% of GNI, the UK is failing to uphold its international duties, effectively worsening chronic nursing workforce shortages in some of the most under-resourced healthcare systems in the world.

“The prime minister promised ‘change’ on being elected and that must include undoing the damage done to aid budgets by restoring spending to 0.7%,” she said.

An abrupt halt to UK funding for one project in 2021 meant ambulances in Sierra Leone were left without fuel and patients could not get to hospital for emergency treatment. “There is no question that there were fatalities as a result,” said a UK health worker involved in the programme.

Ranger said: “Recruiting heavily from the same countries from which we have deprived aid is a double whammy for some of the world’s most fragile healthcare systems. But it is also a damning indictment of successive governments’ unwillingness to properly fund and grow our own domestic nursing profession.”

The 55 countries on the World Health Organization’s “red list” (formally known as the health workforce support and safeguards list), include Ghana, Nigeria, Nepal, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Somalia.

Other countries are not supposed to actively recruit from red-list countries, although staff from those countries are free to apply for vacancies elsewhere.

The RCN analysis also found the proportion of health-related spending within the UK’s total aid budget declined from 16.7% in 2020 to 7.6% in 2023.

The analysis looks only at bilateral aid – directly between two countries. Some red-list countries will also have received support from the UK through multilateral organisations such as the Global Fund and the World Health Organization.

A government spokesperson said: “The UK remains one of the most generous donors among the G7 and we are committed to restoring development spending to 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) as soon as fiscal circumstances allow.

“We are working to address the global shortage of healthcare workers through our leading multilateral health investments. UK support to the World Bank and Global Financing Facility generates further investment in the global health workforce.”

The spokesperson said a code of practice governing international recruitment of health and social-care staff ensured it was “ethical and sustainable”.

A huge cleanup operation is taking place after a fire devastated one of the world’s biggest secondhand clothes markets.

Thousands of traders’ stalls were destroyed in the blaze that started at about 10pm on 1 January and consumed large sections of Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana’s capital.

The Ghana national fire service (GNFS) deployed 13 tenders to combat the flames. Goods worth millions of Ghanaian cedi have been destroyed, the GNFS said.

“This is devastating,” said Alex King Nartey, a GNFS spokesperson. “We’ve not recorded severe casualties, but the economic loss is enormous.

“Preliminary investigations suggest faulty electrical connections might have sparked the blaze, although we are not ruling out arson,” Nartey told AFP.

As much as two-thirds of the market has been destroyed and there are estimates that 8,000 people have been affected, though this number is expected to rise.

Alhassan Fatawu owned a stall where he used bits of material from secondhand clothes to make and sell his own designs, and was notified in the early hours of Thursday morning that the market was on fire.

“The man who runs the neighbouring stall called me and said everything had burned. I started panicking,” he said. He went to see the damage for himself at about 9am.

“I found burnt stalls. There were still parts burning,” he said. “I couldn’t salvage a thing [from my stall]. Everything has gone. Now my daily bread has been cut. I used my stall at Kantamanto to sustain myself.”

Before the fire, Kantamanto was a sprawling complex of thousands of stalls crammed with clothes from brands including H&M, Levi Strauss, Tesco, Primark, New Look and more. About 30,000 people depend on the market for their livelihood.

According to the Or Foundation, which campaigns against textile waste in Ghana, 15m secondhand garments from countries in the global north such as the UK, the US and China arrive at the market every week. The Kantamanto community is responsible for recirculating 25m pieces of secondhand clothing every month through resale, reuse, repair and remanufacturing.

The market is a vibrant hub of creativity and a necessary alternative to fast fashion. The fire has left many families in distress after catastrophic losses for retailers, upcyclers and other market members, as merchandise, shops, tools and equipment have been destroyed.

Yayra Agbofah, co-founder of the Revival, a community-led organisation creating awareness, art and jobs with textile waste arriving in Ghana, lost storage space in the blaze. He was at the market on Friday morning along with hundreds of others, clearing the debris. All that remained of many stalls were blackened and charred piles of clothes and ash.

“The goal is to rebuild in a week,” he said. “People have to return to work because they don’t have anything.”

He added: “There has been no information about what the government is going to do. We have to take things into our own hands and rebuild our market.

“The traders have lost everything. A lot are in debt. This is their livelihood. There are no other alternatives. We have to find ways to get our feet back and start work. The only option is to build back and start from scratch. It’s a devastating situation.”

Twenty people are missing after falling into the sea from a tilting boat after it started to take in water in rough seas about 20 miles off the coast of Libya, according to survivors.

Carrying 27 passengers, the six-metre boat had left Zuwara in Libya at 10pm on Monday. Despite the waves, seven people managed to continue the journey on the rickety vessel before being found by an Italian police patrol boat on Tuesday night close to the southern island of Lampedusa.

It was initially believed that the vessel had capsized close to Lampedusa, and so an overnight search and rescue operation was carried out by the Italian police and coastguard in the area of sea south-west of the island.

But according to witness statements from six adult survivors reported by the Italian press, the boat started to take in water about five hours after its departure from Libya and tilted, creating panic and causing 20 passengers to fall overboard.

The witnesses, who included two people from Syria, two from Egypt and two from Sudan, said five women and three children were among those who fell overboard. They said the sea was rough and the winds strong. The seventh survivor was an eight-year-old boy from Syria. All have been taken to Porto Empedocle in Sicily.

According to the news agency Ansa, Italian authorities have ceased the search and reported the incident to their Libyan and Maltese counterparts.

In a separate incident on Monday, two people including a five-year-old child died and 17 survived after the vessel they were on broke down off the northern Tunisian coastline during an attempt to reach Europe.

According to Alarm Phone, an organisation that runs a hotline for people in distress at sea, three boats have capsized off Tunisia since Tuesday.

“So many people have needlessly died and disappeared,” the organisation wrote on X. “What a horrible way to start the new year. Our condolences to the relatives and friends of the dead.”