Musings From Abroad

UN asks Security Council for assistance to fight famine in Sudan

Published

4 months ago

August 7, 2024

To combat starvation that has spread to at least one location in North Darfur, top UN representatives made a plea to the Security Council on Tuesday for assistance in gaining access to humanitarian aid “across borders, across battle lines, by air, and by land” in Sudan.

Last month, the US proposed that the 15-member group take into account approving aid entry via border crossings such as Adre from Chad. Yet, Russia, which holds a veto authority over the Security Council, and Sudan’s army-aligned government declared on Tuesday that no action by the council was required.

“If there is a famine … we are ready to cooperate with you, and we will open the crossings for any humanitarian assistance. It is not the government – that I am proud to present here – that is blocking humanitarian aid,” Sudan’s U.N. Ambassador Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith Mohamed told the council.

The Zamzam camp for internally displaced persons in North Darfur is experiencing famine as a result of more than 15 months of conflict in Sudan and limitations on assistance delivery, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a worldwide hunger monitor.

Russia has expressed doubts about the findings, and Sudan’s leadership has denied them.

A power battle between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) preceded a scheduled shift to civilian administration, and this is what caused the war in Sudan to break out in mid-April of last year.

The region where Zamzam is located is the final major RSF stronghold in Darfur. No supplies have reached the large camp in months due to the RSF’s siege of the area.

“When famine happens, it means we are too late. It means we did not do enough. It means that we, the international community, have failed,” senior U.N. aid official Edem Wosornu told the Security Council on Tuesday.

Related Topics:Featured Security Council Sudan United Nations

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Musings From Abroad

Finnish court imprisons Nigeria’s Simon Ekpa for aiding terrorism

Published

4 hours ago

November 21, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Simon Ekpa, a Nigerian separatist leader based abroad, has been placed under detention by the Päijät Häme District Court in Finland on suspicion of inciting others to commit acts of terrorism.

According to the local daily, Helsingin Sanomat, the court rendered the ruling on Thursday following his arraignment by the Central Criminal Police for his involvement in the terror attacks that have afflicted the southeast area of Nigeria.

“The police suspect that the man has promoted his efforts from Finland with means that have led to violence against civilians in the region of South-Eastern Nigeria,” stated Otto Hiltunen, the crime commissioner and investigation head.

“The man has carried out his activity, among other things, on his social media channels.”

Hiltunen also informed the court that the police suspected four additional individuals in Finland of funding Ekpa’s activities.

According to the story, Ekpa is of Nigerian descent and was born in the Finnish city of Lahti.

His offence occurred between August 23, 2021, and November 18, 2024, according to court documents cited in the publication.

Ekpa is not the only person the police have arrested. In February 2023, they caught him at a private Lahtian flat, but he was freed the same day.

Through the Eastern Security Network (ESN) and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, Ekpa has continued to be outspoken on social media, raising money and agitating for a Biafran nation to secede. In the southeast part of Nigeria, both factions have been involved in acts of violence, murders, and maimings.

Since gaining formal independence in 1960, Nigeria has seen the emergence of several separatist organisations. The latest surge of calls for self-determination among different ethnic groups has been louder under its immediate previous President Muhammadu Buhari.

Musings From Abroad

Malian singer Rokia Traore arrested in Italy, to be sent to Belgium

Published

1 day ago

November 20, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

After Italy’s top court denied her appeal, well-known Malian singer, Rokia Traore, who was detained in Rome in June due to a global child custody dispute, will be sent over to Belgium in the next few days, her attorney announced on Wednesday.

The 50-year-old Traore is a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR and one of Africa’s most well-known vocalists.

“Rokia suffered an injustice. She was arrested without the Belgian criminal court hearing her voice. Now, the battle for Rokia’s rights moves to Brussels,” lawyer Maddalena Del Re said in a statement to Reuters.

The attorney also stated that in its decision late Tuesday, Italy’s Court of Cassation upheld an extradition decision from the European Court of Justice.

Under a European arrest order, Traore was taken into custody on June 20 at the Fiumicino airport in Rome. In October 2023, she was given a two-year prison sentence in Belgium related to a dispute over her daughter’s custody.

She had flown to perform outside Rome’s Colosseum, and she has been imprisoned in Civitavecchia, close to the Italian city, since her detention at Fiumicino.

Lawyer Del Re said that because a conviction was rendered without the defendant’s presence, the Belgian process goes against both international norms and Italian constitutional standards.

After she disregarded a court order to turn over her baby to her Belgian father, the singer’s divorced ex-partner, she was initially taken into custody in France in 2020 on a Belgian arrest warrant.

She disobeyed orders not to leave France until her extradition case was handled by taking a private jet to Mali months after being conditionally released. Mali is where her daughter resides.