The international court of justice will rule in the next few weeks on whether the United Arab Emirates can be plausibly found “complicit in the commission of genocide” by arming the Rapid Support Forces militia in Sudan’s civil war.

The case was brought by Sudan, whose acting justice minister, Muawia Osman, told the world court in The Hague last week that the country’s “ongoing genocide would not be possible without the complicity of the UAE, including the shipment of arms to the RSF”. Sudan wants ICJ judges to force the UAE to stop its alleged support for the RSF and make “full reparations”, including compensation to victims of the war.

Responding for the UAE, Reem Ketait, a top foreign ministry official, told the court: “The idea that the UAE is somehow the driver of this reprehensible conflict in Sudan could not be further from the truth. This case is the most recent iteration of the applicant’s misuse of our international institutions as a stage from which to attack the UAE.” Sudan’s allegations were “at best misleading and at worst pure fabrications”, she said.

The case could turn on a “reservation” that the UAE entered when it signed up to the genocide convention in 2005, to the effect that it would not allow a dispute concerning its compliance with the convention to be settled by the ICJ. The UAE says the reservation precludes the ICJ from even forming a preliminary view as to whether the UAE is complicit in acts of genocide.

It would be a severe blow to the UAE, which places great store by its international reputation, if the ICJ did anything but strike the claim from the list. But at a minimum the case’s existence may serve to put further pressure on all the external partners accused of backing the warring factions to think more carefully about the support they provide.

Sudan descended into a deadly conflict in mid-April 2023 when long-simmering tensions between the military and the RSF broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions. Both sides have been accused of abuses in the course of the war.

The UK and other western countries have limited power to stop the fighting. More influence rests with regional powers such as Egypt, which has longstanding ties to the Sudanese army, and the UAE, which has long been accused of arming the RSF – allegations it denies.

On Tuesday a British-led attempt to establish a contact group to facilitate a ceasefire fell apart when Arab states refused to sign a joint communique after a conference in London.

Analysts say UAE’s interest in Sudan stems from overlapping desires to gain political influence there at the expense of Saudi Arabia, exploit its natural resources, and prevent the spread of political Islam, which UAE sees as a threat to its security.

As with many claims for measures to prevent a plausible genocide, the case, which relates specifically to the RSF’s treatment of the Masalit people in Darfur, is being heard at speed. The Sudanese government only filed its application on 5 March.

Prof Eirik Bjorge, a law professor representing Sudan, told the court: “There can be no doubt that the Masalit people is currently being subjected to genocide, and that there is serious evidence that the UAE is failing to prevent this and is complicit.”

Bjorge quoted a panel of UN experts who in January 2024 assessed as “credible” allegations that cargo planes coming from the UAE to an airport in eastern Chad were transporting weapons to the RSF. He also referenced Sudanese intelligence assessments that a field hospital built by the UAE next to the airport in September 2024 was “the primary supply and support hub for the enemy [RSF]” and that Chadian flights transporting military aid were continuing as of March of this year.

Sudan’s lawyers pointed out in court that the Biden administration had announced in January that seven RSF-owned companies in the UAE had been targeted for sanctions, at the same time as the US declared that RSF rebels had committed genocide.

The UAE told the ICJ that none of the seven entities held an active business licence in the UAE, “nor are they currently operating in the UAE”.

Sudan also cited research by Yale Humanitarian Research Lab that identified and located four heavy artillery pieces consistent with a type of Chinese-produced 155mm howitzer artillery gun, which it considered were engaged in the 12-day bombardment of Zamzam camp in December last year. The Yale lab said the UAE was “the only country” known to have bought this type of howitzer.

The UAE’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Ameirah AlHefeiti, told the court the UAE had not provided arms to either of the warring parties. Ketait said the UAE regarded the war as an entirely avoidable factional struggle and accused the Sudanese government of avoiding all UAE-backed efforts at mediation.

Alison Macdonald KC, for the UAE, said the evidence produced of UAE supply of arms was thin, recycled or entirely self-serving. She added that the next UN panel of experts report, due to be published soon, would provide “absolutely no support for the applicant’s claims” – an assertion that is likely to turn on whether the panel of experts was able to establish the content of cargo shipped from the UAE to Chad.

Plantains, cassava and fermented banana drink should be added to global healthy eating guidelines alongside the olive oil, tomatoes and red wine of the Mediterranean diet, say researchers who found the traditional diet of people living in Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro region had a positive impact on the body’s immune system.

Traditional foods enjoyed in rural villages also had a positive impact on markers of inflammation, the researchers found in a study published this month in the journal Nature Medicine.

Dr Quirijn de Mast, one of the paper’s authors, said they were now in a race against time to record and study the potential benefits of African heritage diets before they disappear as people move to cities and adopt western-style eating habits.

“Time is ticking because you see that these heritage diets are being replaced more and more by western diets,” he said. “We will lose so much interesting information [from which] we can learn – and not only for Africa.”

In previous research, the team had established that people following the traditional way of life in rural areas had a different immune-system profile to urban dwellers, with more anti-inflammatory proteins. Chronic inflammation is a key driver of many non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including rheumatoid arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease.

The new study set out to establish whether diet played a role. For a fortnight, 77 young men in their 20s and 30s were switched from heritage to western-style diets, or the reverse – with blood samples taken at the start and end, and again four weeks later.

Meals on the heritage diet menu included green plantain mixed with kidney beans, boiled chicken served with green vegetables and brown rice and beans. On the western-style menu, they included pizza, fried chicken and french fries and spaghetti served with beef stew.

Those newly adopting a western-style diet saw inflammatory markers in their blood increase and tests suggested their immune systems did not respond as well to infections. They also gained weight. By contrast, switching from a western diet to a heritage diet had a largely anti-inflammatory effect, and blood markers linked to metabolic problems fell.

In a third arm of the trial, participants following a western-style diet were asked to drink the local fermented banana beverage, known as mbege, for one week. That group also saw improvements in markers of inflammation.

For Dr Godfrey Temba, the first author of the paper and a lecturer at KCMC University in Moshi, Tanzania, the findings were not a surprise. “When we are in most of the villages, talking to elderly people [of] 80 or 90 years, they are very healthy. They don’t have any health complications [and] they tell you about consuming this type of diet and this beverage since they were 25.”

However, the diet and its benefits have not been explored and documented – unlike the traditional diets of the Mediterranean and Nordic countries, which are promoted by the World Health Organization for their beneficial effects.

Temba said: “We think this is the right time … so that [African heritage diets] can be also included in the global guidelines of diets, because they really have a health benefit – but because it’s not studied extensively, it’s not easy to convince [people] that they are healthy, because you don’t have enough data.”

The diet’s components, such as flavonoids and other polyphenols, and its impact on the gut microbiome were likely to play a part in the observed effects, De Mast said.

The study was conducted only in men for logistical reasons, but the researchers said they would expect similar findings in women, and for benefits to be maintained over time if people continued the diets.

Many African countries are facing rising rates of NCDs such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease.

De Mast, who holds positions at KCMC University and Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, said research priorities in Africa had historically been determined by countries in the global north with a focus on infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. “Research on [things like] immunology has been neglected. I hope it will change now, with the rapid rise in NCDs, because that will be a major challenge for health systems across Africa.”

Nutritional guidelines also tended to “translate what we know from the north to Africa”, he said. “I think you should have, really, region-specific recommendations based on scientific data.”

The team is now testing what impact adopting a heritage diet can have on Tanzanians living with obesity, including whether it can boost their response to vaccines, and plan to compare different regional heritage diets.

“There’s so much diversity in dietary patterns across Africa – or [even just] in Tanzania,” said De Mast. “Godfrey is in Kilimanjaro region, but 30km down the road there is the Maasai tribe and their diet is entirely different. It’s mainly animal protein based – still, traditionally, cardiovascular disease was almost absent.

“So I think this is just the beginning of research looking at these heritage diets.”

South African police have rescued an American pastor who was abducted last week while he was conducting a sermon, as kidnappings have soared over the last decade in the country.

Three unidentified suspects were killed during the “high-intensity shootout” on Tuesday in which Joshua Sullivan, a missionary from Tennessee, was rescued, the Hawks, the police unit that deals with serious crime in South Africa, said in a statement.

Kidnappings in the country have more than trebled in the past decade, according to police statistics, with 17,061 recorded in the year to March 2024. South Africa, one of the world’s most unequal countries, also has one of the world’s highest murder rates, with more than 27,000 that year, 50% higher than a decade earlier.

Sullivan was seized on Thursday night while he was preaching at the Fellowship Baptist church, where he had been a missionary since 2018 in the township of Motherwell outside the city of Gqeberha in Eastern Cape province.

Four gunmen stormed the church, stealing two mobile phones from congregation members before taking Sullivan. A few hours later, his truck was found abandoned.

The kidnappers were eventually tracked to a house in KwaMagxaki, about a 20-minute drive from the church, across the Swartkops River. Suspects inside a vehicle opened fire while attempting to flee, the police said.

The Hawks statement said: “The victim was found inside the same vehicle from which the suspects had launched their attack. Miraculously unharmed, he was immediately assessed by medical personnel and is currently in an excellent condition.”

Sullivan’s mother, Tonya Morton Rinker, said in a Facebook post: “My Baby is free! Joshua was rescued earlier today!! He is home with Meagan and the kids … Thank you for your support and prayers.”

An earlier post by Rinker described Sullivan as a “big-hearted gentle giant”. It said the 34-year-old had first travelled to South Africa with his wife, Meagan, for six months in 2015, before returning as “church-planting” missionaries and becoming fluent in Xhosa, the most common language in the Eastern Cape. The couple have four children and have “taken in two Xhosa children”.

A report by the Institute of Security Studies, a local thinktank, found 44% of kidnappings were during vehicle hijackings to extort money quickly. Another 22% were tied to robberies, while only 5% were for ransom. It was not immediately clear what the motive for Sullivan’s kidnapping was.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

A conference convened by the UK in London on the second anniversary of Sudan’s civil war must map out a “pathway to end the suffering and the appalling disregard for human life” in the country, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said.

The one-day conference is being co-hosted by the UK, France, Germany, the EU and the African Union, and attended by ministers from 14 other countries, as well as representatives from bodies including the UN. Officials have said it does not constitute an attempt at mediation or aid-pledging, but instead intends to build greater political coherence about Sudan’s future among the many countries that have claimed a stake in the country.

In a measure of the expanding, intractable and externally fuelled nature of the war, Lammy chose not to invite any of the principal Sudanese actors or members of civilian society. The conference’s objectives are set modestly at seeking agreement on an African Union-led international contact group, and renewed commitments to end restrictions on aid.

The war, which erupted in April 2023, stemmed from a power struggle between the army – led by Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan – and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The aim in the communique to set up a contact group is intended to persuade Middle Eastern states to focus on diplomacy rather than strengthening the warring factions. Behind-the-scenes talks at the conference between diplomats from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates were under way to agree neutral wording that satisfied both parties.

The UAE has long been accused by Sudan and others of arming the RSF – which it strenuously denies – while Egypt has maintained close ties with the Sudanese army.

Sudan’s government has criticised the conference organisers for excluding it from the meeting while inviting the UAE.

The UAE minister for political affairs, Lana Nusseibeh, who is attending the conference, said atrocities were being committed by both sides, and condemned the recent RSF attacks on refugee camps. She called for an unconditional ceasefire, the end to unconscionable obstruction of humanitarian aid, and a transition to an independent civilian-led government.

Both the army and the RSF have been accused of committing atrocities in the course of the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 13 million, and pushed large parts of the country into famine.

Two refugee camps in Darfur, the site of a genocide in the 2000s, were captured in the past few days by the RSF as it seeks to take El Fasher, the only major population centre in Darfur out of its control.

Lammy also announced an extra £120m in humanitarian aid from the depleted UK Foreign Office aid budget, enough to help deliver food to 650,000 Sudanese people. The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, released a further €125m (£105m) for Sudan and neighbouring states.

At a separate event on Tuesday morning, aid and human rights groups called on the international community to punish the vast array of countries accused of either directly or indirectly sending arms to the warring parties in breach of a UN arms embargo.

“The international community will have utterly failed if we have a conference today including those actively involved in the conflict and nothing comes from it again,” said Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch. “We need a coalition of states with the UK and the co-hosts at the front ready to say we are galvanising the necessary political momentum to protect civilians on the ground.

“It is necessary that it is made clear that this cannot continue. The international community cannot sleepwalk into another genocide. They have international obligations to protect and respect international law.”

Kate Ferguson, a co-director of Protection Approaches, said: “The conference is a test of the kind of foreign secretary Lammy will be in a world full of chaos, crisis and violence, and where the US leadership is lacking.” She added: “Lammy needs to be unambiguous about the UK’s position, and unapologetic. The conference must confront and seek immediately to halt the unfolding genocide in Darfur.”

Lammy’s desire to raise Sudan’s profile is genuine, officials insisted, pointing out that he has visited the region and finds more time in his diary for the issue than any of his predecessors. However, such is the diplomatic sensitivity in the UK around its relations with some of the key regional actors that no press conference is being held, foregoing the chance to highlight what is routinely described as the world’s forgotten war.

Officials argue that if the meeting brings greater coherence of policy between western powers, and the multilateral institutions, that in turn could put some pressure on the regional bloc of actors with the real leverage to do more for peace.

However, neither side seems interested in discussing peace, and some fear the country is heading for a form of partition based around the current areas of control.

The meeting comes against the backdrop of US cuts to its aid programme.

Kate Phillips-Barrasso, a vice-president of global policy at the aid group Mercy Corps, said the nature of the US cuts meant it was hard to know how badly Sudan had been affected, but in her agency’s case, a lifeline for 220,000 people had been cut.

France has expelled 12 Algerian consular and diplomatic officials and recalled its ambassador in Algiers, the French presidency said on Tuesday, in a retaliatory measure as a spat escalates between the two countries.

“The Algerian authorities are responsible for the sudden degradation of our bilateral relations,” President Emmanuel Macron’s office said.

Algiers has been protesting against France’s detention of an Algerian consular agent suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of an Algerian opposition activist. France later said Algeria had expelled 12 of its diplomatic staff.

France’s relations with its former colony have long been complicated, but took a turn for the worse last year when Macron supported Morocco’s position over that of Algeria over the disputed Western Sahara region.

Last week the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, had said that ties between the two countries were returning to normal.

The activist and influencer Amir Boukhors is a critic of the Algerian president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and has more than 1 million subscribers on TikTok, where he posts as Amir DZ.

He has lived in France since 2016 and was granted political asylum in 2023. Algeria has issued nine international arrest warrants against him on accusations of fraud and terrorism, but France refuses to extradite him.

In April 2024, Boukhors was snatched outside his home in Val-de-Marne, south of Paris, telling France 2 television in a later interview that he was handcuffed and bundled into a car by four men wearing police armbands. He claimed he was drugged and held in a “container” for more than 24 hours before being released at 3am. “I fell into a trap,” he said.

Three men were arrested and put under investigation on Friday for the “kidnap, holding and arbitrary detention” of Boukhors. France’s national anti-terrorist prosecutor confirmed that one of the men arrested worked for the Algerian consulate at Créteil, south-east of Paris.

Algeria has denied the official’s involvement in the kidnapping.

In a separate source of tension between the countries, Macron has also called on Algeria to release Boualem Sansal, a 75-year-old writer sentenced to five years in prison for “undermining the integrity” of the country.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report.

A conference convened by the UK in London on the second anniversary of Sudan’s civil war must map out a “pathway to end the suffering and the appalling disregard for human life” in the country, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said.

The one-day conference is being co-hosted by the UK, France, Germany, the EU and the African Union, and attended by ministers from 14 other countries, as well as representatives from bodies including the UN. Officials have said it does not constitute an attempt at mediation or aid-pledging, but instead intends to build greater political coherence about Sudan’s future among the many countries that have claimed a stake in the country.

In a measure of the expanding, intractable and externally fuelled nature of the war, Lammy chose not to invite any of the principal Sudanese actors or members of civilian society. The conference’s objectives are set modestly at seeking agreement on an African Union-led international contact group, and renewed commitments to end restrictions on aid.

The war, which erupted in April 2023, stemmed from a power struggle between the army – led by Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan – and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The aim in the communique to set up a contact group is intended to persuade Middle Eastern states to focus on diplomacy rather than strengthening the warring factions. Behind-the-scenes talks at the conference between diplomats from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates were under way to agree neutral wording that satisfied both parties.

The UAE has long been accused by Sudan and others of arming the RSF – which it strenuously denies – while Egypt has maintained close ties with the Sudanese army.

Sudan’s government has criticised the conference organisers for excluding it from the meeting while inviting the UAE.

The UAE minister for political affairs, Lana Nusseibeh, who is attending the conference, said atrocities were being committed by both sides, and condemned the recent RSF attacks on refugee camps. She called for an unconditional ceasefire, the end to unconscionable obstruction of humanitarian aid, and a transition to an independent civilian-led government.

Both the army and the RSF have been accused of committing atrocities in the course of the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 13 million, and pushed large parts of the country into famine.

Two refugee camps in Darfur, the site of a genocide in the 2000s, were captured in the past few days by the RSF as it seeks to take El Fasher, the only major population centre in Darfur out of its control.

Lammy also announced an extra £120m in humanitarian aid from the depleted UK Foreign Office aid budget, enough to help deliver food to 650,000 Sudanese people. The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, released a further €125m (£105m) for Sudan and neighbouring states.

At a separate event on Tuesday morning, aid and human rights groups called on the international community to punish the vast array of countries accused of either directly or indirectly sending arms to the warring parties in breach of a UN arms embargo.

“The international community will have utterly failed if we have a conference today including those actively involved in the conflict and nothing comes from it again,” said Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch. “We need a coalition of states with the UK and the co-hosts at the front ready to say we are galvanising the necessary political momentum to protect civilians on the ground.

“It is necessary that it is made clear that this cannot continue. The international community cannot sleepwalk into another genocide. They have international obligations to protect and respect international law.”

Kate Ferguson, a co-director of Protection Approaches, said: “The conference is a test of the kind of foreign secretary Lammy will be in a world full of chaos, crisis and violence, and where the US leadership is lacking.” She added: “Lammy needs to be unambiguous about the UK’s position, and unapologetic. The conference must confront and seek immediately to halt the unfolding genocide in Darfur.”

Lammy’s desire to raise Sudan’s profile is genuine, officials insisted, pointing out that he has visited the region and finds more time in his diary for the issue than any of his predecessors. However, such is the diplomatic sensitivity in the UK around its relations with some of the key regional actors that no press conference is being held, foregoing the chance to highlight what is routinely described as the world’s forgotten war.

Officials argue that if the meeting brings greater coherence of policy between western powers, and the multilateral institutions, that in turn could put some pressure on the regional bloc of actors with the real leverage to do more for peace.

However, neither side seems interested in discussing peace, and some fear the country is heading for a form of partition based around the current areas of control.

The meeting comes against the backdrop of US cuts to its aid programme.

Kate Phillips-Barrasso, a vice-president of global policy at the aid group Mercy Corps, said the nature of the US cuts meant it was hard to know how badly Sudan had been affected, but in her agency’s case, a lifeline for 220,000 people had been cut.

Sudan’s information blackout has left relatives of those in Sudan’s Zamzam refugee camp struggling for news of their safety after it was overrun by militiamen at the weekend.

As leaders across the globe prepared to meet for peace talks in London to pressure the backers of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army to agree a ceasefire, the RSF launched a deadly assault that led to it seizing Zamzam after weeks of tightening its siege.

Campaigners said the dearth of information on the violence, which has reportedly killed hundreds of civilians, highlighted the need for the talks to prioritise restoring communications to allow communities under attack to warn each other, to give better access to healthcare and to facilitate human rights documentation.

Altahir Hashim, whose family was living in Zamzam, said: “Zamzam as an IDP [internally displaced persons] camp no longer exists. The RSF has completely overrun the camp – killing, raping, burning and committing all kinds of atrocities. The communications are really bad and I haven’t been able to speak to my family.”

On Friday, nine medical workers from the aid organisation Relief International were killed when the RSF raided Zamzam, while the Sudanese American Physicians Association (Sapa), said the manager of a children’s health centre was also killed.

The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said its team at Tawila, another displacement camp near El Fasher, has seen about 10,000 people arrive in 48 hours suffering from dehydration and exhaustion.

For two decades Zamzam has hosted people displaced during the 2000s in attacks by the army and the Janjaweed militias – who were later formalised into the RSF – but its population has grown to about 700,000 during the current civil war as people have fled other parts of the Darfur region.

Hashim is part of a group of Darfuris abroad who have raised funds to buy and airdrop satellite phones into Darfur as well as walkie-talkies to allow local communication during emergencies.

He said the communications blackout also made it difficult for people to receive money sent from relatives abroad through mobile banking systems.

The limited information that has emerged from Zamzam has often relied on satellite communications – whether through imagery, phones or the Starlink service, which uses satellites rather than land-based communication towers to provide internet.

But these services can be unreliable and are costly, meaning that while they are used by some activists in Darfur, others remain unable to be contacted.

One video shared by the group North Darfur Observatory for Human Rights showed people fleeing Zamzam with their belongings strapped to camels and donkeys.

Often the main source of information from Darfur has come from videos recorded by RSF fighters themselves of the atrocities and some have emerged showing their fighters entering Zamzam on pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns with burning buildings in the background.

Shayna Lewis, from the US-based organisation Preventing & Ending Mass Atrocities (Paema).“We have reports of civilians being hunted and executed in the streets of Zamzam, but we are unable to consistently communicate with people as the networks are off and the internet can only be accessed through Starlink access points. Starlink access is sporadic, expensive and can be turned off by the belligerents at will.”

Paema said the talks in London should prioritise restoring communications as a way to quickly relieve suffering in Sudan.

Sapa, which operates medical facilities in El Fasher, said the last message it received from its teams in Zamzam on Sunday afternoon was: “Zamzam under the control of the RSF.”

Khalid Mishain, of the Sudanese human rights group Youth Citizens Observers Network, said they had lost contact with their observers in the area since the attack. He said the communications blackout had been a impediment to human rights documentation throughout the conflict.

“People have to write the information down, keep it with them and then secretly move to areas where there is communications and send it to us,” said Mishain.

“We have civilians suffering and no one knows about it, and those who report on it have to risk their life because of the communications blackout.”

Sudan is suffering from the largest humanitarian crisis globally and its civilians are continuing to pay the price for inaction by the international community, NGOs and the UN have said, as the country’s civil war enters its third year.

Two years to the day since fighting erupted in Khartoum between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, hundreds of people were feared to have died in RSF attacks on refugee camps in the western Darfur region in the latest apparent atrocity of a war marked by its brutality and wide-scale humanitarian impact.

The consequences for Sudan’s 51 million people have been devastating. Tens of thousands are reportedly dead. Hundreds of thousands face famine. Almost 13 million people have been displaced, 4 million of those to neighbouring countries.

“Sudan is now worse off than ever before,” said Elise Nalbandian, Oxfam’s regional advocacy manager. “The largest humanitarian crisis, largest displacement crisis, largest hunger crisis … It’s breaking all sorts of wrong records.”

There were “massive-scale” violations of international humanitarian law in the conflict, said Daniel O’Malley, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Sudan. “All of the civilian population, irrespective of where they are in the country, have basically been trapped between one, two or more parties. And they have been bearing the brunt of everything. The sheer numbers are just mind-boggling.”

Last month, Sudan’s military recaptured the highly symbolic presidential palace in Khartoum and it has retaken most of the capital. But in much of the country, the conflict rages on. Sources cited by the UN reported that more than 400 people had been killed in recent attacks by the RSF in Darfur, where the group is trying to seize El Fasher, the last state capital in the region not under its control.

Since late last week, the RSF has launched ground and aerial assaults on El Fasher itself and the nearby Zamzam and Abu Shouk displacement camps. A UN spokesperson told Agence France-Presse that the UN’s rights office had verified 148 killings and received reports from “credible sources” that the total number of dead exceeded 400.

Reuters reported that data from the UN’s International Organization for Migration suggested that up to 400,000 people had been displaced from the Zamzam camp alone since the weekend.

In a statement the UN rights chief, Volker Türk, said the “large-scale attacks … made starkly clear the cost of inaction by the international community, despite my repeated warnings of heightened risk for civilians in the area”.

He added: “The attacks have exacerbated an already dire protection and humanitarian crisis in a city that has endured a devastating RSF siege since May last year.”

El Fasher is one of several areas of Darfur where a famine, affecting about 637,000 people, has been declared. Almost half the 50-million population of Sudan – 24.6 million people – do not have enough food.

The UK is hosting ministers from 20 countries in London on Tuesday in an attempt to restart stalled peace talks. However, diplomatic efforts have often been sidelined by other crises, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Leni Kinzli, the World Food Programme’s head of communications for Sudan, said the other conflicts, as well as a lack of access for journalists, and Sudan’s relative international isolation since the days of the regime of the ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir all meant Sudan was not getting the attention it needed.

“We don’t see the level of international attention on Sudan as we do for other crises,” she said. “There should not be a competition between crises. But unfortunately we’re seeing with everything going on in the world, other conflicts, other humanitarian crises and other things making headlines, that unfortunately Sudan is – I wouldn’t even call it forgotten – it’s ignored.”

The origins of the war can be traced to late 2018, when popular protests broke out against the Sudanese dictator Bashir. Sudan’s army leader, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, allied with the RSF chief, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a former warlord known as Hemedti, to oust Bashir in a coup in April 2019.

They then allied again in 2021 to depose a civilian government meant to transition Sudan to a democracy. However, Hemedti had long coveted ultimate power for himself, and the friction between the two spiralled into full-on war less than two years later.

The RSF, a paramilitary force that grew out of the Janjaweed Arab militias accused of committing genocide in the Darfur region in the mid-2000s, made rapid gains in the first weeks and months, as the fighting spread beyond Khartoum.

In Darfur thousands of people died in the first year of the war, in well-documented attacks by the RSF and allied militias on non-Arab Masalit and other ethnic groups. Masalit refugees who had fled west to Chad recounted women and girls being targeted for gang rapes and boys shot in the street. Militia fighters said they would force women to have “Arab babies”, according to a UN report released in November 2024.

The RSF and the army have both been accused of committing war crimes in the course of the conflict.

In January of this year the US formally declared that the RSF had committed genocide, marking the second time in less than 30 years that genocide had been perpetrated in Sudan.

The United Arab Emirates has been accused of fuelling the conflict by arming the RSF. Emirati passports allegedly found on the battlefield last year point to potential covert boots on the ground. The UAE has denied all involvement in the war.

Pressure is mounting on the United Arab Emirates over its presence at a crucial conference in London aimed at stopping the war in Sudan after a leaked confidential UN report raised fresh questions over the UAE’s role in the devastating conflict.

The UAE has been accused of secretly supplying weapons to Sudanese paramilitaries via neighbouring Chad, a charge it has steadfastly denied.

However an internal report – marked highly confidential and seen by the Guardian – detected “multiple” flights from the UAE in which transport planes made apparently deliberate attempts to avoid detection as they flew into bases in Chad where arms smuggling across the border into Sudan has been monitored.

The allegations raise complications for the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, who controversially invited the UAE alongside 19 other states for Sudan peace talks at Lancaster House on 15 April.

The date marks the second anniversary of a civil war that has caused the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, displacing more than 12 million people.

A senior diplomat, who is familiar with the leaked report but requested anonymity, said: “The UK needs to explain how it is responding to massacres of children and aid workers while hosting the UAE at its London conference.”

The 14-page report – completed last November and sent to the Sudan sanctions committee of the UN Security Council – was written by a panel of five UN experts who “documented a consistent pattern of Ilyushin Il-76TD cargo flights originating from the United Arab Emirates” into Chad, from where they identified at least three overland routes potentially used for transporting weapons into neighbouring Sudan.

They found that the cargo flights from airports in the UAE to Chad were so regular that, in effect, they had created a “new regional air bridge”.

They noted that flights demonstrated peculiarities, with planes often disappearing for “crucial segments” of their journey, a pattern that the experts said “raised questions of possible covert operations”.

However, the experts added that they could not identify what the planes were carrying or locate any evidence that the planes were transporting weapons.

The findings of numerous cargo flights from the UAE to Chad are not mentioned in the final report of the UN expert panel on Sudan, due to be published in a few days. No reference is made to the Emirates in the expert’s final 39-page report except in relation to peace talks.

Questions over the UAE’s alleged role in backing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) arrive after a weekend that saw its fighters kill more than 200 civilians in a wave of violence against vulnerable ethnic groups in displacement camps and around the city of El Fasher, the last major city still held by the Sudanese army in Darfur, the vast western region of Sudan.

“It will be shameful if the conference does not deliver concrete civilian protection in the context of ongoing genocide,” said the diplomat.

In January the US formally declared that the RSF had committed genocide in Sudan.

The UAE states that it is committed to bringing “lasting peace“ to Sudan.

In their November update, the UN experts, investigating the possible smuggling of weapons from Chad into Darfur in possible violation of an arms embargo, identified at least 24 Ilyushin Il-76TD cargo flights landed at Amdjarass airport in Chad last year.

The flights, they noted, coincided with an escalation of fighting in El Fasher, in particular a “surge in drone activity primarily by the RSF for combat and intelligence” whose arrival in Sudan, said the experts, marked “a new technological phase in the conduct of hostilities”.

Some of the flights identified in the report were linked to operators previously connected to “military logistics and illicit arms transfers”. Two of them, said the experts, had previously been flagged for violations of the arms embargo.

Experts also examined “regular departures” into Chad from two UAE airports – in Ras Al-Khaimah emirate and Al Ain in Abu Dhabi emirate – and found that the flights frequently disappeared from radars during crucial moments.

On one occasion, the report describes how a flight “left Ras Al-Khaimah, vanished mid-flight, and later surfaced in N’Djamena [capital of Chad] before returning to Abu Dhabi”.

Crucially, however, the UN experts said they could not prove that the planes were carrying weapons because the “flights lacked evidence regarding the specific content being transported”.

Four of the five UN experts said that although the flights “marked an important new trend”, what they managed to uncover “failed to meet evidentiary standards regarding evidence of arms transfers”.

For instance, although residents of the South Darfur city of Nyala reported “cargo plane activity and informants attributed it to RSF logistical operations, further triangulated evidence to confirm the nature of the cargo transported was absent”.

Therefore, the experts said, it was “premature to infer that these flights were part of an arms transfer network”. They also added that the fact that several of the flights and cargo operators were linked to military logistics and past arms violations “did not provide proof of current arms transfers”.

It added: “Additionally, patterns and anomalies in flight paths, such as mid-flight radar disappearances and unrecorded take-offs, raised concerns but did not offer verified evidence directly linking these flights to arms shipments.”

It said “closing these investigative gaps was crucial”.

The revelations come days after the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague heard a case brought by Sudan accusing the UAE of being “complicit in the genocide” during the war. The ICJ has heard claims that the RSF is responsible for serious human rights violations including mass killings, rape and forced displacement in West Darfur.

The UAE has said the case is a cynical publicity stunt and a “platform to launch false attacks against the UAE”.

A UAE source pointed out that the confidential UN expert report contained the disclaimer that four of the five panel members felt that “allegations of an airbridge from the UAE to Sudan via Chad failed to meet the evidentiary standards required to establish a clear link between the documented flights and the alleged transfer of arms”.

A UAE statement added that the imminent final report from the Sudan expert panel did not reference the Emirates in relation to any flights “because the allegations against us failed to meet the panel’s evidentiary threshold. The record speaks for itself.”

It added that they had been told by the UN security council’s Sudan sanctions committee that the final report “did not make any negative findings” against them.

“The latest UN panel of experts report makes clear that there is not substantiated evidence that the UAE has provided any support to RSF, or has any involvement in the conflict,” said the statement.

Sudan’s information blackout has left relatives of those in Sudan’s Zamzam refugee camp struggling for news of their safety after it was overrun by militiamen at the weekend.

As leaders across the globe prepared to meet for peace talks in London to pressure the backers of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army to agree a ceasefire, the RSF launched a deadly assault that led to it seizing Zamzam after weeks of tightening its siege.

Campaigners said the dearth of information on the violence, which has reportedly killed hundreds of civilians, highlighted the need for the talks to prioritise restoring communications to allow communities under attack to warn each other, to give better access to healthcare and to facilitate human rights documentation.

Altahir Hashim, whose family was living in Zamzam, said: “Zamzam as an IDP [internally displaced persons] camp no longer exists. The RSF has completely overrun the camp – killing, raping, burning and committing all kinds of atrocities. The communications are really bad and I haven’t been able to speak to my family.”

On Friday, nine medical workers from the aid organisation Relief International were killed when the RSF raided Zamzam, while the Sudanese American Physicians Association (Sapa), said the manager of a children’s health centre was also killed.

The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said its team at Tawila, another displacement camp near El Fasher, has seen about 10,000 people arrive in 48 hours suffering from dehydration and exhaustion.

For two decades Zamzam has hosted people displaced during the 2000s in attacks by the army and the Janjaweed militias – who were later formalised into the RSF – but its population has grown to about 700,000 during the current civil war as people have fled other parts of the Darfur region.

Hashim is part of a group of Darfuris abroad who have raised funds to buy and airdrop satellite phones into Darfur as well as walkie-talkies to allow local communication during emergencies.

He said the communications blackout also made it difficult for people to receive money sent from relatives abroad through mobile banking systems.

The limited information that has emerged from Zamzam has often relied on satellite communications – whether through imagery, phones or the Starlink service, which uses satellites rather than land-based communication towers to provide internet.

But these services can be unreliable and are costly, meaning that while they are used by some activists in Darfur, others remain unable to be contacted.

One video shared by the group North Darfur Observatory for Human Rights showed people fleeing Zamzam with their belongings strapped to camels and donkeys.

Often the main source of information from Darfur has come from videos recorded by RSF fighters themselves of the atrocities and some have emerged showing their fighters entering Zamzam on pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns with burning buildings in the background.

Shayna Lewis, from the US-based organisation Preventing & Ending Mass Atrocities (Paema).“We have reports of civilians being hunted and executed in the streets of Zamzam, but we are unable to consistently communicate with people as the networks are off and the internet can only be accessed through Starlink access points. Starlink access is sporadic, expensive and can be turned off by the belligerents at will.”

Paema said the talks in London should prioritise restoring communications as a way to quickly relieve suffering in Sudan.

Sapa, which operates medical facilities in El Fasher, said the last message it received from its teams in Zamzam on Sunday afternoon was: “Zamzam under the control of the RSF.”

Khalid Mishain, of the Sudanese human rights group Youth Citizens Observers Network, said they had lost contact with their observers in the area since the attack. He said the communications blackout had been a impediment to human rights documentation throughout the conflict.

“People have to write the information down, keep it with them and then secretly move to areas where there is communications and send it to us,” said Mishain.

“We have civilians suffering and no one knows about it, and those who report on it have to risk their life because of the communications blackout.”

France is considering its response after Algeria ordered the expulsion of 12 embassy staff over the arrest of an Algerian consulate official in Paris over alleged involvement in the kidnap of a TikTok influencer.

Algiers has given the French representatives 48 hours to leave the country in a move that has stretched already strained relations between the two countries to breaking point. The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, has warned that if the expulsions go ahead Paris would be forced to respond immediately.

The influencer, Amir Boukhors, 41, is a critic of the Algerian president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and has more than a million subscribers on TikTok where he posts as Amir DZ. He has lived in France since 2016 and was granted political asylum in 2023. Algeria has issued nine international arrest warrants against him on accusations of fraud and terrorism but France refuses to extradite him.

In April 2024, Boukhors was snatched outside his home in the Val-de-Marne, south of Paris, telling France 2 television in a later interview that he was handcuffed and bundled into a car by four men wearing police armbands. He claimed he was drugged and held in a “container” for more than 24 hours before being released at 3am. “I fell into a trap,” he said.

Three men were arrested and put under investigation on Friday for the “kidnap, holding and arbitrary detention” of Boukhors. France’s national anti-terrorist prosecutor confirmed that one of the men arrested works for the Algerian consulate at Créteil, south-east of Paris.

Algeria’s ordering of the expulsion of French embassy staff came a week after Barrot concluded an official visit to Algeria where he met Tebboune.

“I ask the Algerian authorities to stop these expulsion measures that have no link to an ongoing legal case,” he said on Monday. “If the decision to expel our staff is maintained we will have no other choice than to respond immediately.”

AFP reported that among the embassy staff ordered to leave the country were a number of members attached to France’s interior ministry whose minister, Bruno Retailleau, has taken a hard line against the former French colony.

Bilateral relations between Paris and Algiers have been tense since last July when France supported a Moroccan plan to grant autonomy to the western Sahara against Algerian-backed insurgents who want full independence for the disputed territory. Paris has accused Algeria of refusing to take back its nationals ordered to leave France and considered a security threat. In retaliation, France has threatened to slash the number of visas given to Algerians.

Emmanuel Macron has also called on Algeria to release writer Boualem Sansal, 75, sentenced to five years in prison for “undermining the integrity” of the country.

Algeria has denied the official’s involvement in Boukhors’ kidnapping and after his arrest summoned France’s ambassador, Stéphane Romatet, to express its displeasure at the consular official being arrested “in the public street … without any notification via diplomatic channels”.

The Algerian foreign ministry said in a statement: “This new development is unacceptable and unspeakable and will cause great damage to Algerian-French relations.” It warned Algeria would not “let this situation go without consequences”.

The UN’s trade and development arm, Unctad, is calling on Donald Trump to exempt the world’s poorest and smallest countries from “reciprocal” tariffs, or risk “serious economic harm”.

In a report published on Monday, Unctad identifies 28 nations the US president singled out for a higher tariff rate than the 10% baseline – despite each accounting for less than 0.1% of the US trade deficit.

These include Laos, which is expected to face a 48% tariff; Mauritius, on 40%; and Myanmar, to be hit with 45%, despite trying to recover from a devastating earthquake.

The White House shocked many developing countries with the punitive tariff rates announced this month.

Trump claimed rival economies had “looted, pillaged, raped, plundered” the US with unfair trade practices, and he wanted to create a level playing field.

Unctad said many of the countries targeted with high tariff rates were unlikely to be a threat to the world’s largest economy, given their small size and modest levels of exports.

The White House last week put the higher tariff rates on pause for 90 days, after unleashing chaos on world financial markets, leaving a 10% levy in place across the board.

But the administration’s formal position remains that the “reciprocal” tariff rates will come into force, subject to negotiations.

“The current 90-day pause presents an opportunity to reassess how small and vulnerable economies – including the least developed countries – are treated,” Unctad said.

“This is a critical moment to consider exempting them from tariffs that offer little to no advantage for US trade policy but risk causing serious economic harm.”

Unctad’s analysis said many of these economies were so small that they were likely to generate little demand for US exports, even if they lowered tariffs, as the White House appears to be demanding.

Malawi, facing 18% tariffs, bought just $27m of US exports last year; Mozambique, which faces 16% tariffs, $150m; Cambodia, set for 49% tariffs, $322m.

Unctad’s experts added that 36 of these small and poor countries were likely to generate less than 1% of total US tariff revenue, even if the US did not cut imports from them as the tariffs took effect.

Part of the logic of the tariff policy is meant to be to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. But for several tiny countries, their key exports are agricultural commodities, for which the US is unlikely to be able to find substitutes elsewhere – let alone develop a domestic industry.

Unctad highlighted the $150m in vanilla imported from Madagascar, close to $800m in cocoa from Ivory Coast and $200m in cocoa from Ghana.

With Madagascar set to face 47% tariffs, for example, the report said the main impact on the US was likely to be higher prices for consumers.

Some of the countries hit by the 10% tariffs – and due to face higher rates when the pause is over – were previously beneficiaries of a US policy called the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

The scheme had been in place since 2000 and gave sub-Saharan African countries tariff-free access to US markets in order to encourage economic development. As many as 32 countries were eligible, before Trump’s announcement appeared to tear up the scheme.

Financial markets and manufacturers in developing countries are continuing to wrestle with the changeable nature of US trade policy.

Trump sowed fresh confusion over the weekend by appearing to revisit an announcement made on Friday, that some hi-tech goods, including laptops, would be exempt from tariffs.

In a post on his social media site Truth Social on Sunday, the president said no one was getting “off the hook”, and the administration would be investigating the “whole electronics supply chain”.

Paramilitaries in Sudan have murdered more than 200 civilians in a wave of attacks in refugee camps and around the city of El Fasher, the last big city still in the hands of the Sudanese army in the Darfur region.

The deaths include at least 56 civilians killed by the Rapid Support Forces over two days of attacks in Um Kadadah, a town they seized on the road to El Fasher.

The violence is some of the worst in the Darfur region since the civil war between the army and the paramilitary forces began almost exactly two years ago.

The UN said killings were continuing at two large displacement camps, including of the entire medical staff of Relief International, which was operating the only remaining clinic inside Zamzam camp. RSF forces were said to be burning buildings throughout Zamzam on Sunday, claiming they were seeking Sudanese government fighters hiding in the camps.

The US has sanctioned both sides in the war, saying the RSF has “committed genocide” in Darfur and that the army has attacked civilians.

The conflict has essentially divided Sudan in two, with the army holding sway in the north and east, while the RSF controls most of Darfur and parts of the south.

The war has killed tens of thousands, uprooted more than 12 million and created what the International Rescue Committee described as “the biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded”.

The deaths at the weekend put extra pressure on the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, to deliver a decisive response on the issue of civilian protection when he convenes a ministerial conference on Sudan in London on Tuesday. The conference of 20 countries and organisations will inevitably shine a spotlight on the United Arab Emirates, past backers of the RSF, to issue an unambiguous statement of condemnation.

The attacks on Um Kadadah, about 180km (112 miles) east of El Fasher, came one day after RSF fighters said they took the town from army forces. The victims appeared to be targeted because of their ethnicity.

Lammy tweeted: “Shocking reports are emerging from El Fasher, Darfur, where indiscriminate RSF attacks have killed civilians, including aid workers. This gives added urgency to Tuesday’s Sudan Conference in London with international partners. All sides must commit to protection of civilians.”

The UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, said she was “appalled and gravely alarmed by reports emerging from Zamzam and Abu Shouk displacement camps as well as El Fasher town in North Darfur”. The two camps protect as many as 700,000 civilians displaced by previous violence and famine.

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab said it had observed that “arson attacks have burned multiple structures and significant areas of the Zamzam camp in the centre, south, and south-east portions of the camp”.

The UN reported the RSF had launched coordinated ground and air attacks on the camps and El Fasher from multiple directions on 11 April, triggering intense clashes and resulting in catastrophic consequences for civilians.

The UN said more than 100 people, including more than 20 children, are feared dead, including nine Relief International personnel. The Sudanese army said more than 70 had been killed in El Fasher alone. The precise death toll is unverifiable due to deliberate internet shutdowns implemented by the RSF.

Last month the army recaptured the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, about 1,000km (600 miles) to the east.

Adam Regal, a spokesperson of the General Coordination for Refugees and Displaced in Darfur, said Zamzam and Abou Shouk remained under artillery shelling and an assault by RSF armed vehicles on Sunday.

Relief International said of the loss of its staff: “We understand this was a targeted attack on all health infrastructure in the region to prevent access to healthcare for internally displaced people. We are horrified that one of our clinics was also part of this attack – along with other health facilities in El Fasher.”

Both the Biden and Trump administrations in the US have said the RSF has “committed genocide” in Darfur, and that the army has attacked civilians. The Sudanese government last week took the UAE to the international court of justice, the UN’s top court, claiming the UAE is complicit in genocide.

Kate Ferguson, the co-director of Protection Approaches, said “it appears that the RSF is attacking Zamzam, Abu Shouk and El Fasher simultaneously for the first time, including a ground assault on Zamzam. This is a significant escalation in violence against civilians in the North Darfur region and requires immediate diplomatic response”.

She said she feared such “a coordinated military effort by the RSF would represent the beginning of the assault we have all so long feared – including further acts of genocide and crimes against humanity – and should trigger all emergency diplomatic and other responses.”

She added: “In hosting the conference on Tuesday, Lammy holds the heavy responsibility of securing a collective response to the appalling atrocities committed yesterday and this weekend. It is a tough but rare opportunity to bring international commitment to protect civilians in Sudan from strong words to resolute action. This means sincerely confronting those backing and enabling atrocity crimes, and establishing a serious senior coalition willing to advance at pace the political and technical solutions necessary to halt genocide, crimes against humanity, war and famine.”

An estimated 1 million Gabonese citizens head to the polls on Saturday to vote in the country’s first presidential election since an August 2023 coup ended the 55-year Bongo family dynasty. For Brice Nguema, the junta leader turned civilian head of state, it could be a chance to cement his democratic credentials.

Last November, 860,000 registered voters approved a referendum for a new constitution with two seven-year presidential terms and an amnesty for participants in the removal of Ali Bongo, who had succeeded his father in 2009. Officials are yet to release data on the updated voters’ register but previously said they expected an additional 300,000 new registrations, including from those who have recently come of age.

Observer missions are already in place, including that of an eight-person Commonwealth team led by Danny Faure, a former president of Seychelles.

Four independents are in the race for president but analysts say the favourite is Nguema. Since coming to power, 50-year-old Nguema has styled himself as an anti-corruption crusader who had to resort to a coup to end an unpopular family dynasty, despite also being a cousin to Bongo. In October 2023, he made headlines for reportedly refusing to draw a salary for the presidency.

Those announcements drew plaudits in the oil-rich central African state where a third of the 2.3 million people live in poverty.

“Gabonese tell themselves that someone who works with this much ardour is trying to transform things,” Joseph Tonda, a sociologist at Omar Bongo University in Libreville, told Reuters news agency earlier this month.

But like his cousin, Nguema has maintained close ties with France even in the face of high anti-French sentiments in the region. And a 2020 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) revealed multimillion-dollar assets abroad, believed to be the proceeds of embezzlement during his time in the presidential guard.

His closest challenger is the ex-prime minister Alain Claude Bilie By Nze, who was in government until the coup. Nze, who has campaigned as a pragmatic veteran seeking to create jobs and reduce the size of government, has also tried to dissociate himself from the old guard.

Other candidates include the former tax official Joseph Lapensée Essingone and Stéphane Germain Iloko, previously a member of the former ruling Gabonese Democratic party (PDG).

The coup, one of a string of military takeovers in west and central Africa between 2020 and 2023, was well received in Gabon, with many citizens trooping to the streets of Port Gentil and Libreville, its two biggest cities.

But there are concerns that Nguema may also be using the same Bongo playbook of muzzling dissent.

In particular, the Union for Democracy and Social Integration (UDIS) party – once allied with the former ruling party – has accused the administration of targeting its exiled leader, Hervé Patrick Opiangah, who is the subject of a criminal investigation for alleged incest and undermining state security.

Opiangah, 54, a former mining minister, has proclaimed his innocence and filed a complaint with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Edmond Ngadi, a UDIS spokesperson who has called the matter a “state conspiracy”, said Opiangah was being targeted for mobilising for people to vote no during the 16 November referendum.

“This is a blatant violation of human rights … he is a Gabonese citizen who simply asks to return to his country safely to be able to secure his family, secure his businesses and also participate in the life of his country,” Ngadi said.

Zimbabwe has started to make compensation payments to white former farm owners, 25 years after Robert Mugabe’s government began confiscating land.

The government paid $3.1m (£2.3m) to a “first batch” of 378 farms, the ministry of finance said in a statement on Wednesday, the first payout under a 2020 agreement to pay $3.5bn in compensation.

The remainder of the $311m due to this group of farmers will be paid in US dollar-denominated treasury bonds with two- to 10-year maturities and interest of 2%. That is much lower than the current yield on a two-year US treasury bond of about 3.8%.

Zimbabwe’s finance minister, Mthuli Ncube, said: “The payments will continue. We are very serious about this.”

Mugabe’s government seized more than 4,000 mostly white-owned farms, often violently, from about the year 2000 to redistribute to black people in what it claimed was restitution for the dispossession of British colonial rule.

However, Mugabe and his cronies took nearly 40% of the 14m hectares (about 35m acres) confiscated for themselves, according to a 2010 investigation by a local news outlet, ZimOnline. Agricultural production, which had accounted for 40% of exports, plunged and the economy collapsed, with hyperinflation reaching a staggering 500bn% in 2008.

Zimbabwe cannot borrow from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as it has been in arrears since 2000 and 2001, respectively. Government debt was $21bn late last year, about half of which was arrears and penalties.

The compensation payments to the displaced farmers are one of the requirements of international lenders to start a debt restructuring process with Zimbabwe, including a new IMF programme.

Andrew Pascoe, who signed the 2020 compensation deal while head of the Commercial Farmers’ Union, confirmed the first payments had been received on 24 March and thanked Zimbabwe’s government, in comments included in the ministry of finance statement. He said: “We are extremely grateful.”

However, Tony Hawkins, a retired University of Zimbabwe economics professor, called the payments a “publicity stunt”, noting that the US could block an IMF programme. A US law “restricts US support for multilateral financing to Zimbabwe until Zimbabwe makes concrete governance and economic reforms”, according to the US state department.

Of using government bonds to pay farmers, Hawkins said: “We continue to accumulate arrears because we are unable to service our foreign debt, so we can’t really afford to take on new debt commitments … It’s derisory, the more you look at it.”

About 1,000 former farmers had signed up for compensation, said Harry Orphanides, one of Pascoe’s co-negotiators. He said: “Look, it’s not a perfect deal. But there was no other alternative.”

Northern India has been experiencing early extreme heat this week as temperatures topped 40C (104F), including in the capital, New Delhi.

Hot weather across the north-west of the country peaked on Tuesday as Barmer, a city in the state of Rajasthan, reached 46.4C – more than 6C above the average maximum in April.

New Delhi rose to 40.3C on Wednesday, surpassing 40C for the first time this year. Farther south, Jaipur exceeded 40C for five consecutive days from Sunday, with a maximum temperature of 43C recorded on Wednesday, almost 5C above the average April high.

The unusually high temperatures came a week after the Indian meteorology bureau said most parts of the country would experience an intense heatwave this summer, with two to four more such days than normal.

The extreme early heat this week triggered severe thunderstorms across Bihar, including in Patna. At least 19 people have died in the past two days amid frequent lightning, significant hail and strong winds.

There was extensive damage to crops – including wheat, mango and lychee – weeks before the harvest. Stormy conditions are likely to persist across Bihar until Saturday, owing to a low-pressure system over the west-central Bay of Bengal.

Meanwhile, parts of east Africa are experiencing higher-than-average temperatures, which could approach the April record.

In Mali, the national meteorological agency issued an extreme weather warning covering the entire country from Wednesday to Sunday. Maximum temperatures are expected to reach 40-47C for at least three consecutive days.

This is comparable to average temperatures during the height of summer in June and July, whereas April averages tend to be 38-40C. People have been advised to stay indoors during the hottest hours, wear light-coloured clothing, eat foods with high quantities of liquid and drink plenty of water.

The musician turned opposition leader Bobi Wine has said he will stand again against Uganda’s authoritarian leader, Yoweri Museveni, in next year’s presidential elections. Despite being jailed, attacked, shot, and facing threats of violence, including from Museveni’s son, Wine said he felt he had little choice but to try to advance the hope for change that was energising Ugandans, especially the young.

“We cannot just give the election to General Museveni,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian.

The leader of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party, Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, said he expected the January 2026 election, in which Museveni has said he will stand for what would be his seventh term in office, to be bloody.

But, with 80% of the Ugandan population under the age of 35, Wine believes change can come.

“Young people are so hopeful because they see the possibility,” he said. “Ultimately the good will of the people is what is important for this election and for our campaign. They know if you are not given freedom, you don’t have a life.

“I think I stir a lot of hope because I don’t shut my big mouth, and that’s a big challenge to the regime.”

Museveni, now in his eighties, has held power in Uganda since 1986, one of the world’s longest standing national leaders.

In 2021, Africa Elections Watch observers said the election was conducted with “irregularities”, while the US state department called it “fundamentally flawed”. During that campaign, Wine was imprisoned and faced attacks and death threats.

“I am worried about what is ahead, of course,” said Wine. “Thinking about how brutal it is going to be, it’s going to be terrible. We are already seeing signs it will be more brutal. Last month, we had a byelection and one of my MPs died. Died after being tortured by the regime. Journalists were very badly beaten and observers from the US embassy had to leave the field.”

Among the enemies Wine and his NUP party have made is Museveni’s son, 50-year-old Muhoozi Kainerugaba. He was made chief of defence forces by his father and is also chair of the Patriotic League of Uganda, which lobbies heavily for him to succeed the presidency. Kainerugaba has made vicious public threats to Wine on his social media accounts, including saying he was keeping a bullet specially for him.

“More reason to stand up,” said Wine.

“I am convinced that if the world stands firm with us, 2026 could be a turning point. If the world leaders do not stand on the side of oppression, but help; if they criticise and distance themselves from the absence of human rights and democracy.

“I get the feeling right now that the international community is more concerned with diplomacy rather than democracy; more concerned with business than rights and freedom.”

Asked about the impact of Donald Trump’s populist presidency on Uganda, including the huge aid cuts and disinterest in peacekeeping or humanitarian concerns, he said: “We are now in a situation where there is less concern for Africa. If lifesaving aid is cut then how will aid for democracy fare?

“Aid cuts are going to impact Uganda very negatively. But also much aid is diverted to support this corrupt regime. The aid that was helping in the health sector is not there any more, so we are going to have less medicines and more bullets,” he said.

“We have always been asking for targeted sanctions on those in the regime and asking the US not to send their taxpayers’ money to be spent on things that can be used against our people. The guns that kill our people are American guns. The soldiers who torture our people are trained in America.

“So we want America and other world powers not to be partners in crime, but to call out General Museveni for the absence of human rights.

“I believe foreign aid, in many ways, is lost in patronage and corruption, only to have the burden of repayment on next generations. The aid we need is in sticking to values. If we have a good democracy and human rights, that will bring leaders who will stamp down on corruption.

“We lose two-thirds of our annual revenue to corruption – 10tn Ugandan shillings ($2.5bn) stolen every year. That figure comes from the inspector general of government, so it could be more. He could be giving us a low figure. Whichever way, it is huge,” he said.

“Our debt burden is heavy, it will take us 97 years to pay back and of course we have new predators. But I believe it is fixable. We have human resources, we have a young, energised population. We are endowed with natural wealth and resources. If corruption is stamped out, we can make every sector work that could rise us from poverty and indebtedness.”

Wine’s wife, the author Barbie Itungo Kyagulanyi, was a linchpin in Wine’s first parliamentary campaign in 2017 and joined him on the presidential campaign trail in 2020 with her own manifesto for women’s rights.

Their struggle was documented in the Oscar-nominated film Bobi Wine: The People’s President, which was released after the 2021 campaign.

Kyagulanyi was held under an illegal house arrest with her husband in 2021. But she is “energised” for 2026 he says.

“Those who are fighting for freedom, I’m afraid they don’t decide [to do it], they don’t apply. It happens to them,” he said. “For me, I would like to be making music not risking my life, but there is no choice.

“While I am here speaking to you, I don’t know if I’ll be in jail next week. If I am still alive and not in jail by the end of this year, then I’m going to run for presidency, again.”

The British government is bringing together foreign ministers from nearly 20 countries and organisations in an attempt to establish a group that can drive the warring factions in Sudan closer towards peace.

The conference at Lancaster House in London on 15 April comes on the second anniversary of the start of a civil war that has led to the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, but has been persistently left at the bottom of the global list of diplomatic priorities. Half of Sudan’s population are judged to be desperately short of food, with 11 million people internally displaced.

The initiative holds risks for the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, since it may require him to place pressure on some of the UK’s Middle Eastern allies to make good on their promises no longer to arm the warring parties.

The UK along with Germany and France, which are co-hosting the conference, have not invited to London the two warring parties, the Sudanese Armed Forces or the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that has attacked non-Arabic groups in Darfur.

The two sides are judged to be a long way from seeking peace and it is thought diplomatic energy is best placed on securing a consensus among rival external backers that a ceasefire must be demanded and impunity for war crimes will end.

Sudan’s foreign minister, Ali Youssef, has written to Lammy to protest against his exclusion. Youssef also criticised invitations to the conference for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Chad and Kenya, which he termed “stakeholders in the war”.

Sudan’s government has accused the UAE, a close UK ally, of complicity in genocide by covertly arming the RSF, headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti. The UAE has condemned as a publicity stunt the Sudanese government’s decision to take on 10 April its claim of UAE complicity to the international court of justice, saying Abu Dhabi helped the RSF commit genocide against the Masalit tribe in West Darfur.

The Sudanese government, itself backed by another UK ally Saudi Arabia as well as Egypt, has also been accused of war crimes. Both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF have formally been accused by the UN of using starvation as a weapon of war.

A harsh spotlight is also very likely to fall in London on the impact of USAID cuts on the provision of humanitarian aid in Sudan as well as the withdrawal of funding from academic groups that have been monitoring war crimes and the build-up of famine.

NGOs such as Human Rights Watch are also urging the ministerial conference to emphasise the importance of civilian protection, independent of a ceasefire.

At an event previewing the conference, Kate Ferguson, the co-director of the NGO Protection Approaches, said: “The conference comes at a critical moment for civilians in Sudan as areas of control under various armed forces rapidly evolve and civilians face an increasing spectrum of varied attack.”

She added: “A new vehicle is needed to take forward civilian protection. This is a moment here to create something new that is desperately needed – whether that is a coalition of conscience or a contact group.”

Ferguson added that “citizens were facing an unimaginable triple threat of armed conflict, identity-based atrocity crimes and humanitarian catastrophe”.

Shayna Lewis from Avaaz said: “The solution that can yield the greatest impact for civilian protection is the restoration of telecommunication networks. More than 25 million people are cut off from the internet and cannot send texts or make phone calls. This is the equivalent of half of England’s population being cut off from the outside world and that explains why it is so difficult for the media to cover Sudan.”

Amazon, Microsoft and Google are operating datacentres that use vast amounts of water in some of the world’s driest areas and are building many more, an investigation by SourceMaterial and the Guardian has found.

With Donald Trump pledging to support them, the three technology giants are planning hundreds of datacentres in the US and across the globe, with a potentially huge impact on populations already living with water scarcity.

“The question of water is going to become crucial,” said Lorena Jaume-Palasí, founder of the Ethical Tech Society. “Resilience from a resource perspective is going to be very difficult for those communities.”

Efforts by Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, to mitigate its water use have sparked opposition from inside the company, SourceMaterial’s investigation found, with one of its own sustainability experts warning that its plans are “not ethical”.

In response to questions from SourceMaterial and the Guardian, spokespeople for Amazon and Google defended their developments, saying they always take water scarcity into account. Microsoft declined to provide a comment.

Datacentres, vast warehouses containing networked servers used for the remote storage and processing of data, as well as by information technology companies to train AI models such as ChatGPT, use water for cooling. SourceMaterial’s analysis identified 38 active datacentres owned by the big three tech firms in parts of the world already facing water scarcity, as well as 24 more under development.

Datacentres’ locations are often industry secrets. But by using local news reports and industry sources Baxtel and Data Center Map, SourceMaterial compiled a map of 632 datacentres – either active or under development – owned by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

It shows that those companies’ plans involve a 78% increase in the number of datacentres they own worldwide as cloud computing and AI cause a surge in the world’s demand for storage, with construction planned in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

In parts of the world where water is plentiful, datacentres’ high water usage is less problematic, but in 2023 Microsoft said that 42% of its water came from “areas with water stress”, while Google said 15% of its water consumption was in areas with “high water scarcity”. Amazon did not report a figure.

Now these companies plan to expand their activities in some of the world’s most arid regions, SourceMaterial and the Guardian’s analysis found.

“It’s no coincidence they are building in dry areas,” as datacentres have to be built inland, where low humidity reduces the risk of metal corrosion, while seawater also causes corrosion if used for cooling, Jaume-Palasí said.

‘Your cloud is drying my river’

Amazon’s three proposed new datacentres in the Aragon region of northern Spain – each next to an existing Amazon datacentre – are licensed to use an estimated 755,720 cubic metres of water a year, roughly enough to irrigate 233 hectares (576 acres) of corn, one of the region’s main crops.

In practice, the water usage will be even higher as that figure doesn’t take into account water used to generate the electricity that will power the new installations, said Aaron Wemhoff, an energy efficiency specialist at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

Between them, Amazon’s new datacentres in the Aragon region are predicted to use more electricity than the entire region currently consumes. Meanwhile, Amazon in December asked the regional government for permission to increase water consumption at its three existing datacentres by 48%.

Opponents have accused the company of being undemocratic by trying to rush through its application over the Christmas period. More water is needed because “climate change will lead to an increase in global temperatures and the frequency of extreme weather events, including heat waves”, Amazon wrote in its application.

“They’re using too much water. They’re using too much energy,” said Aurora Gómez of the campaign group Tu Nube Seca Mi Río – Spanish for “Your cloud is drying my river” – which has called for a moratorium on new datacentres in Spain due to water scarcity.

Spain has seen rising numbers of heat-related deaths in extreme weather events linked by scientists to the climate crisis. Last month, Aragon’s government asked for EU aid to tackle its drought.

Farmer Chechu Sánchez said he’s worried the datacentres will use up water he needs for his crops.

“These datacentres use water that comes from northern Aragon, where I am,” he said. “They consume water – where do they take it from? They take it from you, of course.”

With 75% of the country already at risk of desertification, the combination of the climate crisis and datacentre expansion is “bringing Spain to the verge of ecological collapse”, Jaume-Palasí said.

Asked about the decision to approve more datacentres, a spokesperson for the Aragonese government said they wouldn’t compromise the region’s water resources because their impact is “imperceptible”.

Water offsetting

Amazon doesn’t provide overall figures for the water its datacentres use worldwide. But it does claim that it will be “water positive” by 2030, offsetting its consumption by providing water to communities and ecosystems in areas of scarcity elsewhere.

Amazon says it is currently offsetting 41% of its water usage in areas it deems unsustainable. But it’s an approach that has already caused controversy inside the company.

“I raised the issue in all the right places that this is not ethical,” said Nathan Wangusi, a former water sustainability manager at Amazon. “I disagreed quite a lot with that principle coming from a pure sustainability background.”

Microsoft and Google have also pledged to become “water positive” by 2030 through water offsetting, as well as finding ways to use water more efficiently.

Water offsetting can’t work in the same way as carbon offsetting, where a tonne of pollutants removed from the atmosphere can cancel out a tonne emitted elsewhere, said Wemhoff, the Villanova University specialist. Improving access to water in one area does nothing to help the community that has lost access to it far away.

“Carbon is a global problem – water is more localised,” he said.

Amazon should pursue water accessibility projects “because it’s the right thing to do”, not to offset the company’s usage and make claims about being “water positive”, Wangusi said.

In March, Amazon announced that it would use AI to help farmers in Aragon use water more efficiently.

But that is “a deliberate strategy of obfuscation” that distracts from the company’s request to raise water consumption, said Gómez, the campaigner.

Amazon said its approach shouldn’t be described as offsetting because the projects are in communities where the company operates.

“We know that water is a precious resource, and we’re committed to doing our part to help solve this challenge,” said Harry Staight, an Amazon spokesperson. “It’s important to remember many of our facilities do not require the ongoing use of water to cool operations.”

‘Extreme drought’

Amazon is by far the biggest owner of datacentres in the world by dint of its Amazon Web Services cloud division, but Google and Microsoft are catching up.

In the US, which boasts the largest number of datacentres in the world, Google is the most likely to build in dry areas, SourceMaterial’s data shows. It has seven active datacentres in parts of the US facing water scarcity and is building six more.

“We have to be very, very protective around the growth of large water users,” said Jenn Duff, a council member in Mesa, Arizona, a fast-growing datacentre hub. In January, Meta, the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, opened a $1bn datacentre in the city, and Google is developing two more.

The surrounding Maricopa county, where Microsoft also has two active datacentres, is facing “extreme drought”, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In June 2023, Arizona state officials revoked construction permits for some new homes there due to a lack of groundwater.

Drought has not halted Google’s plans for a second Mesa datacentre, while its first centre has a permit to use 5.5m cubic metres of water a year – about the same quantity used by 23,000 ordinary Arizonans.

“Is the increase in tax revenue and the relatively paltry number of jobs worth the water?” said Kathryn Sorensen, an Arizona State University professor and a former director of Mesa’s water department. “It is incumbent on city councils to think very carefully and examine the trade-offs.”

Google said it won’t use the full amount of water in its Mesa permit as it plans to use an air cooling system.

“Cooling systems are a hyperlocal decision – informed by our data-driven strategy called ‘climate-conscious cooling’ that balances the availability of carbon-free energy and responsibly sourced water to minimise climate impact both today and in the future,” said Google spokesperson Chris Mussett.

Stargate

In January at the White House, Trump announced “Project Stargate”, which he called “the largest AI infrastructure project in history”.

Starting in Texas, the $500bn joint venture between OpenAI, the American software company Oracle, Japan-based SoftBank and Emirati investment firm MGX will finance datacentres across the US.

The day before the Stargate announcement, Trump’s inauguration date, the Chinese company DeepSeek launched its own AI model, claiming it had used far less computing power – and therefore less water – than its western rivals.

More recently, Bloomberg has reported that Microsoft is pulling back on some of its plans for new datacentres around the world. Microsoft has also published plans for a “zero water” datacentre, and Google has said it will incorporate air cooling to reduce water use – though it isn’t yet clear how its systems will work

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Jaume-Palasí. “Most datacentres right now are going from air cooling to water cooling because liquid is more efficient when you try to cool down high-density racks, which are the ones that are mostly being used for AI.”

And while the Trump administration has pledged to fast-track new energy projects to power these new datacentres, it has so far said nothing about the water they could use up.

“Neither people nor data can live without water,” said Gómez. “But human life is essential and data isn’t.”

Additional reporting by Eleanor Gunn

The family of a Kenyan woman who was allegedly killed by British soldiers have said their 13-year fight for justice has taken a “heavy toll”, and that they have been offered “too many empty promises” after a meeting with the defence secretary.

Agnes Wanjiru was 21 when she disappeared in March 2012. She was last seen in the company of British soldiers in a bar in a hotel in Nanyuki, a town in eastern Kenya where the British army has a military base, BATUK.

Her body was found two months later, stuffed inside a septic tank at the Lion’s Court hotel. Six years ago, an inquest in Kenya found she had been murdered by one or more British soldiers.

In 2021, a suspect was named by several soldiers who at the time were attached to the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, with one providing startling testimony in which he claimed that the killer, a fellow soldier, had confessed to him on the night and shown him Wanjiru’s body in the septic tank.

In a new statement, prosecutors in Kenya said that after the conclusion of police investigations, a file had been submitted for consideration.

“The DPP [director of public prosecutions] has constituted a team of senior prosecutors to conduct a comprehensive review of the file,” the statement said. “The DPP acknowledges the significant time that has elapsed in this matter and remains fully committed to ensuring justice for the family of Agnes Wanjiru.”

On a visit to Kenya on Monday, John Healey met Wanjiru’s family and emphasised his “determination to see a resolution” to the case, promising the UK’s “full support” for the investigation.

As shadow defence secretary, Healey had previously called for more to be done to “pursue justice for Agnes and her family”. Kenyan prosecutors have already flown to the UK to interview witnesses and potential suspects, but no charges have been brought.

Last year, the British army announced an investigation into the wider behaviour of troops stationed at BATUK, after what the Ministry of Defence described as “alarming allegations of unacceptable behaviour by service personnel deployed to Kenya”.

Healey said he planned to discuss Wanjiru’s murder later on Monday in a meeting with William Ruto, the president of Kenya, adding: “I will emphasise the need to accelerate progress in this case.

“It was deeply humbling to meet the family of Agnes Wanjiru today. In the 13 years since her death, they have shown such strength in their long fight for justice. I reiterated my determination to see a resolution to the still-unresolved case.

“Our government will continue to do everything we can to help the family secure the justice they deserve.”

After the meeting with Healey, Wanjiru’s family said: “The death of our beloved Agnes has had a profound and devastating impact on our family.

“It was not only the shock of losing Agnes at such a young age, but also the horrific circumstances in which her body was found and all the trauma and struggle our family has been put through in trying to seek justice and accountability for her death that has taken a very heavy toll on all of us.

“We are grateful to the secretary of state for defence for agreeing to meet with us, but we have waited for too many years and been offered too many empty promises.

“We hope that our meeting with the secretary of state marks the beginning of the UK government and Ministry of Defence taking decisive action to ensure that what happened to Agnes is properly investigated in Kenya and in the UK and to make sure that what happened to Agnes never happens again.

“We expect the UK and Kenyan governments to act and bring closure to this matter.”

Washington is revoking all visas for South Sudanese passport holders and blocking new arrivals, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Saturday, complaining the African nation is not accepting its nationals expelled from the US.

The state department “is taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and prevent further issuance to prevent entry”, Rubio said in a statement.

It was the first such measure singling out all passport holders from a particular country since Donald Trump returned to the White House on 20 January, having campaigned on an anti-immigration platform.

Rubio accused the transitional government in Juba of “taking advantage of the United States”, saying that “every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country … seeks to remove them.”

Washington “will be prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation”, Rubio added.

The world’s newest country and also one of the poorest, South Sudan is currently prey to tensions between political leaders.

Some observers fear a renewal of the civil war that killed 400,000 people between 2013 and 2018.

South Sudanese nationals had been granted “temporary protected status” (TPS) by the administration of Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, with the designation set to expire on 3 May 2025.

The US grants TPS, which shields people against deportation, to foreign citizens who cannot safely return home because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions.

There were about 133 South Sudanese in the US under the TPS program, with another 140 eligible to apply, the Department of Homeland Security said in September 2023.

But the Trump White House has begun overturning TPS designations, revoking protection in January from more than 600,000 Venezuelans.

A federal judge this week put that decision on hold after calling into question the government’s claims that the majority of Venezuelans in the US were criminals.

According to the Pew Research Center, as of March 2024 there were 1.2 million people eligible for or receiving TPS in the US, with Venezuelans making up the largest group.

The Trump administration’s singling out of South Sudan also comes after growing numbers of Africans attempted to enter the US via its southern border – an alternative to risky routes into Europe.

Washington is revoking all visas for South Sudanese passport holders and blocking new arrivals, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Saturday, complaining the African nation is not accepting its nationals expelled from the US.

The state department “is taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and prevent further issuance to prevent entry”, Rubio said in a statement.

It was the first such measure singling out all passport holders from a particular country since Donald Trump returned to the White House on 20 January, having campaigned on an anti-immigration platform.

Rubio accused the transitional government in Juba of “taking advantage of the United States”, saying that “every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country … seeks to remove them.”

Washington “will be prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation”, Rubio added.

The world’s newest country and also one of the poorest, South Sudan is currently prey to tensions between political leaders.

Some observers fear a renewal of the civil war that killed 400,000 people between 2013 and 2018.

South Sudanese nationals had been granted “temporary protected status” (TPS) by the administration of Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, with the designation set to expire on 3 May 2025.

The US grants TPS, which shields people against deportation, to foreign citizens who cannot safely return home because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions.

There were about 133 South Sudanese in the US under the TPS program, with another 140 eligible to apply, the Department of Homeland Security said in September 2023.

But the Trump White House has begun overturning TPS designations, revoking protection in January from more than 600,000 Venezuelans.

A federal judge this week put that decision on hold after calling into question the government’s claims that the majority of Venezuelans in the US were criminals.

According to the Pew Research Center, as of March 2024 there were 1.2 million people eligible for or receiving TPS in the US, with Venezuelans making up the largest group.

The Trump administration’s singling out of South Sudan also comes after growing numbers of Africans attempted to enter the US via its southern border – an alternative to risky routes into Europe.

Washington is revoking all visas for South Sudanese passport holders and blocking new arrivals, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Saturday, complaining the African nation is not accepting its nationals expelled from the US.

The state department “is taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and prevent further issuance to prevent entry”, Rubio said in a statement.

It was the first such measure singling out all passport holders from a particular country since Donald Trump returned to the White House on 20 January, having campaigned on an anti-immigration platform.

Rubio accused the transitional government in Juba of “taking advantage of the United States”, saying that “every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country … seeks to remove them.”

Washington “will be prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation”, Rubio added.

The world’s newest country and also one of the poorest, South Sudan is currently prey to tensions between political leaders.

Some observers fear a renewal of the civil war that killed 400,000 people between 2013 and 2018.

South Sudanese nationals had been granted “temporary protected status” (TPS) by the administration of Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, with the designation set to expire on 3 May 2025.

The US grants TPS, which shields people against deportation, to foreign citizens who cannot safely return home because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions.

There were about 133 South Sudanese in the US under the TPS program, with another 140 eligible to apply, the Department of Homeland Security said in September 2023.

But the Trump White House has begun overturning TPS designations, revoking protection in January from more than 600,000 Venezuelans.

A federal judge this week put that decision on hold after calling into question the government’s claims that the majority of Venezuelans in the US were criminals.

According to the Pew Research Center, as of March 2024 there were 1.2 million people eligible for or receiving TPS in the US, with Venezuelans making up the largest group.

The Trump administration’s singling out of South Sudan also comes after growing numbers of Africans attempted to enter the US via its southern border – an alternative to risky routes into Europe.

World leaders should be ashamed of their neglect of people whose lives were “hanging by a thread” at a time of surging violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the international charity leader Jan Egeland has said.

In a stinging attack on aid cuts and the “nationalistic winds” blowing across Europe and the US, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s head told the Guardian how people were living out in the open, in overcrowded, unsanitary displacement encampments around the city of Goma, where 1.2 million people have had to flee from their homes as the M23 rebels advanced through the DRC’s North and South Kivu provinces.

“The level of global neglect experienced by civilians in eastern DRC should shame world leaders,” he said, adding that European countries and others had ignored the suffering for years.

“We hope that a Europe and the US, which is very self-centred, where nationalistic winds are blowing, where aid is being cut and international solidarity is not what it was, will open their eyes to the immense suffering that is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” said Egeland, who has just returned from a visit to the area.

“[I saw] overflowing latrines, 25 people sleeping in a classroom where they have to drag their few belongings out every morning because the classroom is used for school, then every afternoon return to the classroom to sleep overnight. It’s really subhuman,” he said.

Eastern DRC has long suffered from violence, and the camps in Goma, capital of North Kivu province, host people who have been displaced for years.

However, conditions have deteriorated since the M23 rebellion launched in 2022. The Rwandan-backed group has managed to seize large parts of eastern DRC, including Goma and other key towns, since January.

Egeland said the humanitarian situation had been complicated by M23 forcing displaced people to leave the camps, often giving them only 72 hours to move on. Many people had returned to their homes, where there was relative safety now that the M23 had taken control.

He warned, however, that a political settlement was needed now as well as aid, especially in the form of cash, to ensure displaced people could buy food and rebuild their homes and livelihoods in places devastated by years of conflict.

Egeland said charities were struggling because they often had still not been paid for work done last year because of President Donald Trump’s freezing of US aid spending in January, and even projects that had been approved by Washington had not yet received money.

He said that while support from Norway, which had fast-tracked pre-existing pledges, had allowed the NRC to continue working, other humanitarian organisations were struggling.

“At a time of enormous needs – because of the recent increase in fighting – and of opportunity [to help] the many who can return, the money is not coming in,” he said. “It means people are not helped, they linger in camps with worsening conditions, that children cannot go to school.”

The guitarist and singer Amadou Bagayoko of the Malian music duo Amadou & Mariam has died aged 70 after an illness, his family said, paying tribute to the Grammy-nominated blind musician.

Amadou and his wife, Mariam Doumbia, formed a group whose blend of traditional Malian music with rock guitars and western blues sold millions of albums across the world.

Among other achievements the couple, who met at the institute for the young blind in the Malian capital, Bamako, composed the official song for the 2006 football World Cup in Germany and played at the closing ceremony concert for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

“He had been ill for a while,” Amadou’s son-in-law Youssouf Fadiga told Agence-France Presse.

Their France-based manager, Yannick Tardy, who had spoken to Mariam by phone, said Amadou had been taken to a clinic after feeling fatigue, and had died later that day.

Confirming the musician’s death to AFP, the Malian culture minister, Mamou Daffé, said he felt “dismay” at the loss.

After meeting in 1976, when Amadou was 21 and Mariam 18, the pair discovered they had similar tastes in music.

They began touring together from the 1980s, mixing traditional west African instruments such as the kora and balafon with the Pink Floyd and James Brown records from their youth.

They sang songs to raise awareness of the problems facing their peers living with blindness and disabilities.

A few decades later their 2004 album, Dimanche à Bamako (Sunday in Bamako), brought them worldwide success backed up by the title track.

Amadou and Mariam became one of Africa’s best-selling pairs, playing alongside the likes of Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz and the Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour – a childhood idol.

They played at festivals including Glastonbury, shared bills with Coldplay, U2 and Stevie Wonder and played for Barack Obama at the concert marking the US president’s Nobel Peace prize award.

“There were many musicians, many artists there. And Barack Obama came to meet us,” Amadou told AFP in a 2024 interview.

“We talked a bit. Barack Obama told us that he liked our music. Malian music, too. We were very, very happy,” Mariam added.

Besides a Grammy nomination in 2010, Amadou & Mariam won prizes at the BBC radio awards and France’s Victoires de la Musique.

Amadou Bagayoko is survived by three children.

The day after Donald Trump announced sweeping global tariffs, Lesotho’s garment workers feared for their jobs.

Last year, Lesotho sent about 20% of its $1.1bn (£845m) of exports to the US, most of it clothing under a continent-wide trade agreement meant to help African countries’ development via tariff-free exports, as well as diamonds.

Now, all that is at risk, after the US president imposed a 50% tariff on the impoverished landlocked country, which he claimed last month “nobody had ever heard of”.

Makhotso Moeti moved to Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, from the rural centre of the tiny mountainous kingdom entirely surrounded by South Africa. “Factory work is the only job I’ve known for many years,” said Moeti, who attaches labels to Gap clothing. “If the factories shut down, I won’t have many options left. I’ll be forced to return home to the very poverty I thought I had escaped when I moved to the city.”

On Wednesday, Trump unveiled what he claimed were “reciprocal” tariffs, overturning decades of global trade policy.

The tariff rates, which are due to come into force on 9 April, range from 10% to 50% and were calculated with what economists labelled an “idiotic” formula, penalising countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US relative to their imports from the US.

Dr Ratjomose Machema, a lecturer in economics at the National University of Lesotho, said: “I don’t understand how this is a reciprocal tariff because we really don’t charge that much in tariffs.”

Lesotho, which has a population of 2.3 million, was hit with the highest rate. In Africa, it was followed by Madagascar, a vanilla exporter, with a tariff of 47%; Botswana, a diamond producer, on 37%; oil-rich Angola with 32%; and the continent’s most industrialised economy, South Africa, on 30%.

Like the hard-hit, south-east Asian economies, the poor majority in these countries cannot afford expensive American products. In recent decades, China has overtaken western countries to become the largest trading partner of most African countries.

According to the African Growth and Opportunities Act (Agoa) US data portal, Lesotho exported $237m of goods last year to the US and imported $2.8m, mostly clothing and diamonds. Agoa, which has allowed tariff-free access to the US market for thousands of product types since 2000, created a thriving garment industry, accounting for about 20% of GDP.

There are about 30,000 garment workers in Lesotho, mostly women, with 12,000 making clothes for US brands including Levi’s, Calvin Klein and Walmart in Chinese- and Taiwanese-owned factories. While most of the jobs pay the monthly minimum wage of $146-$163, they are still highly sought after in the poor, largely informal economy.

In Madagascar, which has a population of about 32 million, Agoa has also nurtured a significant garment sector, which employs about 180,000 people in a country where GDP per head is just $575. In 2024, the island nation exported $733m of goods to the US, with clothing the top export, followed by vanilla.

Ketakandriana Rafitoson, a political science researcher at the Catholic University of Madagascar, said: “The textile and apparel sector is really a cornerstone of Madagascar’s economy … [Tariffs] will have a drastic effect on the country.”

The future of Agoa, which will expire in September if it isn’t renewed by the US Congress, was already looking precarious before Trump’s announcement.

Lesotho’s trade minister, Mokhethi Shelile, said officials, who had been preparing to travel to the US to ask for an Agoa extension, would argue that the tariff calculations didn’t include digital services from US companies such as Android and Microsoft.

He added: “That being said, we recognise that we cannot rely solely on the American market.”

A fact sheet published by the White House to accompany Trump’s tariff announcement said: “Today’s action simply asks other countries to treat us like we treat them. It’s the golden rule for our golden age.”

In Lesotho, Nthabiseng Khalele, a garment worker sheltering from the rain after a long day in the factory, said: “My hope and wish is that our prime minister could somehow reach out to President Trump and ask him to at least show some compassion for Lesotho. If we lose our jobs here, I’m almost certain that many of us will end up sleeping on empty stomachs.”

Meta faces a $2.4bn (£1.8bn) lawsuit accusing the Facebook owner of inflaming violence in Ethiopia after the Kenyan high court said a legal case against the US tech group could go ahead.

The case brought by two Ethiopian nationals calls on Facebook to alter its algorithm to stop promoting hateful material and incitement to violence, as well as hiring more content moderators in Africa. It is also seeking a $2.4bn “restitution fund” for victims of hate and violence incited on Facebook.

One of the claimants is the son of Prof Meareg Amare Abrha, who was murdered at his home in Ethiopia after his address and threatening posts were published on Facebook in 2021 during a civil war in the country. Another claimant is Fisseha Tekle, a former researcher at Amnesty International who published reports on violence committed during the conflict in Tigray in northern Ethiopia and received death threats on Facebook.

Meta has argued that courts in Kenya, where Facebook’s Ethiopia moderators were based at the time, did not have jurisdiction over the case. The Kenyan high court in Nairobi ruled on Thursday that the case fell within the jurisdiction of the country’s courts.

Abrham Meareg, the son of Meareg, said: “I am grateful for the court’s decision today. It is disgraceful that Meta would argue that they should not be subject to the rule of law in Kenya. African lives matter.”

Tekle said he cannot return home to Ethiopia because of Meta’s failure to make Facebook safe. “Meta cannot undo the damage it has done, but it can radically change how it moderates dangerous content across all its platforms to make sure no one else has to go through what I have,” he said. “I look forward to this matter now being heard by the court in full.”

The case, supported by non-profit organisations including Foxglove and Amnesty International, also demands a formal apology from Meta for the murder of Meareg. The Katiba Institute, a Kenya-based NGO focusing on the Kenyan constitution, is the third claimant in the case.

In 2022 an analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Observer found that Facebook was letting users post content inciting violence through hate and misinformation, despite being aware that it was fuelling tensions in Tigray.

Meta rejected the claims at the time, saying it had “invested in safety and security measures” to tackle hate and inflammatory language along with “aggressive steps to stop the spread of misinformation” in Ethiopia.

In January the company said it was removing factcheckers and “dramatically” reducing the amount of censorship on the platform, although it would continue to tackle illegal and high severity violations.

Meta said it did not comment on ongoing legal matters.

The World Bank is embarking on a multimillion-dollar programme in response to alleged human rights abuses against Tanzanian herders during a flagship tourism project it funded for seven years.

Allegations made by pastoralist communities living in and around Ruaha national park include violent evictions, sexual assaults, killings, forced disappearances and large-scale cattle seizures from herders committed by rangers working for the Tanzanian national park authority (Tanapa).

The pastoralists say most of the incidents took place after the bank approved $150m (£116m) for the Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (Regrow) project September in 2017, aimed at developing tourism in four protected areas in southern Tanzania in a bid to take pressure off heavily touristed northern areas such as Ngorongoro and the Serengeti.

In 2023, two individuals wrote to the bank accusing some Tanapa employees of “extreme cruelty” during cattle seizures and having engaged in “extrajudicial killings” and the “disappearance” of community members.

The Oakland Institute, a US-based thinktank that is advising the communities, and which alerted the World Bank to abuses in April 2023, says Ruaha doubled in size from 1m to more than 2m hectares (2.5m to 5m acres) during the project’s lifetime – a claim the bank denies. It says the expansion took place a decade earlier. Oakland claims 84,000 people from at least 28 villages were affected by the expansion plan.

This week, the bank published a 70-page report following its own investigation, which found “critical failures in the planning and supervision of this project and that these have resulted in serious harm”. The report, published on 2 April, notes that “the project should have recognised that enhancing Tanapa’s capacity to manage the park could potentially increase the likelihood of conflict with communities trying to access the park.”

Anna Bjerde, World Bank managing director of operations, said, “We regret that the Regrow project preparation and supervision did not sufficiently account for project risks, resulting in inadequate mitigation measures to address adverse impacts. This oversight led to the bank overlooking critical information during implementation.”

The report includes recommendations aimed at redressing harms done and details a $2.8m project that will support alternative livelihoods for communities inside and around the park. It will also help fund a Tanzanian NGO that provides legal advice to victims of crime who want to pursue justice through the courts.

A second, much bigger project, understood to be worth $110, will fund alternative livelihoods across the entire country, including Ruaha.

The total investment, thought to be the largest amount the bank has ever allocated to addressing breaches of its policies, is a reflection of the serious nature of the allegations.

The bank had already suspended Regrow funding in April 2024 after its own investigation found the Tanzanian government had violated the bank’s resettlement policy and failed to create a system to report violent incidents or claim redress. The project was cancelled altogether in November 2024. A spokesperson said the bank “remains deeply concerned about the serious nature of the reports of incidents of violence and continues to focus on the wellbeing of affected communities”.

By the time the project was suspended the bank had already disbursed $125m of the $150m allocated to Regrow.

The Oakland Institute estimates that economic damages for farmers and pastoralists affected by livelihood restrictions, run into tens of millions of dollars.

Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute, said the “scathing” investigation “confirmed the bank’s grave wrongdoing which devastated the lives of communities. Pastoralists and farms who refused to be silenced amid widespread government repression, are now vindicated.”

She added that the bank’s response was “beyond shameful”.

“Suggesting that tens of thousands of people forced out of their land can survive with ‘alternative livelihoods’ such as clean cooking and microfinance is a slap in the face of the victims.”

Inspection panel chair Ibrahim Pam said critical lessons from the Regrow case will be applied to all conservation projects that require resettlement and restrict access to parks, especially those implemented by a law enforcement agency.

Regrow was given the go ahead in 2017. The Oakland Institute described its cancellation by the government in 2024 as a landmark victory, but said communities “remain under siege – still facing evictions, crippling livelihood restrictions and human rights abuses”.

In one village near the southern border of Ruaha, the brother of a young man who was killed three years ago while herding cattle in an area adjacent to the park, said: “It feels like it was yesterday. He had a wife, a family. Now the wife has to look after the child by herself.” He did not want to give his name for fear of reprisal.

Another community member whose husband was allegedly killed by Tanapa staff said: “I feel bad whenever I remember what happened to my husband. We used to talk often. We were friends. I was pregnant with his child when he died. He never saw his daughter. Now I just live in fear of these [Tanapa-employed] people.”

The Oakland Institute said the affected communities reject the bank’s recommendations, and have delivered a list of demands that includes “reverting park boundaries to the 1998 borders they accepted, reparations for livelihood restrictions, the resumption of suspended basic services, and justice for victims of ranger abuse and violence.

“Villagers are determined to continue the struggle for their rights to land and life until the bank finally takes responsibility and remedies the harms it caused.”

The bank has said it has no authority to pay compensation directly.

Wildlife-based tourism is a major component of Tanzania’s economy, contributing more than one quarter of the country’s foreign exchange earnings in 2019. The bank has said any future community resettlement will be the government’s decision.

Developing nations in south-east Asia, including war-torn and earthquake-hit Myanmar, and several African nations are among the trading partners facing the highest tariffs set by Donald Trump.

Upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war, the US president announced a raft of tariffs on Wednesday that he said were designed to stop the US economy from being “cheated”.

“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history,” said Trump on Wednesday. “It’s our declaration of economic independence.”

He hailed the moment as “liberation day”, but the tariffs are likely to be met with loud protests from some of the world’s weakest economies. One expert said Trump was likely to be targeting countries that receive investment from China, regardless of the situation in that country. Chinese manufacturers have previously relocated to countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia not only due to lower operating costs, but also to avoid tariffs.

The tariffs comes as many countries in south-east Asia are already grappling with the fallout from the cuts to USAid, which provides humanitarian assistance to a region vulnerable to natural disasters and support for pro-democracy activists battling repressive regimes.

Cambodia, a developing economy where 17.8% of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is the worst-hit country in the region with a tariff rate of 49%. More than half of the country’s factories are reportedly Chinese-owned, with the countries exports dominated by garments and footwear.

In second place is the landlocked south-east Asian nation of Laos, a country heavily bombed by the US during the cold war, with 48%. According to the ADB, Laos has a poverty rate of 18.3%.

Not far behind is Vietnam with 46% and Myanmar, a nation reeling from a devastating earthquake on Friday, and years of civil war following a 2021 military coup, with 44%.

Indonesia, the biggest economy in south-east Asia, faces with a 32% tariff rate, while Thailand, the second-largest, has been hit with a rate of 36%.

Major US rival and trading partner China has been hit with a 34% reciprocal tariff, on top of the 20% levy already imposed.

Dr Siwage Dharma Negara, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said the tariffs on south-east Asian nations were really intended to hurt China.

“The administration thinks that by targeting these countries they can target Chinese investment in countries like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia. By targeting their products maybe it will affect Chinese exports and the economy,” he said.

“The real target is China but the real impact on those countries will be quite significant because this investment creates jobs and export revenue.”

Tariffs on countries such as Indonesia, he said, would be counterproductive for the US, and the detail of how they would be applied remained unclear.

“Some garments and footwear [companies], some are American brands like Nike, or Adidas, US companies that have factories in Indonesia. Will they face the same tariffs as well?” he said.

Stephen Olson, a former US trade negotiator, said countries in south-east Asia would be forced to reconsider their relationships with Washington. “A closer tilt towards China could be the result. It’s hard to have constructive, productive relations with a country that has just dropped a ton of bricks on your head,” said Olson, a visiting senior fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.

“The world’s largest importer has now essentially hung a sign on its border saying: closed for business’,” he added. “We are now faced with two plausible scenarios: Either the impacted trade partners hold firm and retaliate in the hope that Trump will be forced to back down, or they look to cut deals with Trump in order to avoid the tariffs. It is unlikely that either scenario will end well.”

Other nations among the hardest hit are several nations in Africa, including Lesotho – a country that Trump claimed “nobody has ever heard of” – with 50%, Madagascar with 47% and Botswana with 37%. Lesotho, a small mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa, has the second-highest level of HIV infection of the world, with almost one in four adults HIV-positive.

In south Asia, Sri Lanka is facing a 44% tariff. In Europe, Serbia faces a 37% rate.

In addition to the reciprocal tariffs on a few dozen countries, Trump will impose a 10% universal tariff on all imported goods. That tariff will go into effect on 5 April, while the reciprocal tariffs will begin on 9 April.

The US president has justified the changes by saying they are retribution for countries that have long “cheated” America, and the levies will bring jobs back to the US.

But economists have warned the sweeping changes will raise costs, threaten jobs, slow growth and isolate the US from a system of global trade it pioneered, and furthered over several decades.

“This is how you sabotage the world’s economic engine while claiming to supercharge it,” said Nigel Green, the CEO of global financial advisory deVere Group.

“The reality is stark: these tariffs will push prices higher on thousands of everyday goods – from phones to food – and that will fuel inflation at a time when it is already uncomfortably persistent.”