Rwanda showcases reintegration camp for former FDLR fighters
Africa
16:08
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16:08 min
In tonight's edition: the UN estimates that 542 people have been killed in North Darfur in just 10 days. Also, Kenyan MP Charles Ong'ondo Were is shot dead in the streets of Nairobi. And our correspondent takes a rare look around a Rwandan rehabilitation site for militiamen.
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France 24
2 hours ago
- France 24
Relatives struggle to find last 1,000 Srebrenica victims 30 years on
When he found out that his father and three brothers had not been so lucky, his life took the "only possible turn" -- to find them. Three decades on, the 62-year-old, who was driven to become an investigator at the Bosnian Institute for Missing Persons, cannot hide his anguish that the remains of around 1,000 of the victims have yet to be found. More than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed within a matter of days in July 1995 after Bosnian Serb forces captured Srebrenica, which was supposed to have been a UN "protected zone" watched over by Dutch peacekeepers. "Over the past three years, we have searched 62 locations" hoping to discover mass graves from the slaughter -- since declared a genocide under international law -- "but we have not found a single body," Selimovic told AFP. "Those who know (where the graves are) do not want to say," he said. Selimovic spends his time searching for witnesses among the Serbs living in and around Srebrenica, often his neighbours, school friends or those he worked with before the war at the Potocari battery factory, now a genocide memorial centre. "How can they live with what they know?" he said. "I can't understand it. But it has to be said, there are people who have talked." Mass graves The last mass grave of Srebrenica victims, which held 10 bodies, was discovered in 2021 in the Dobro Polje area, 180 kilometres (111 miles) southwest of the town. More than 6,800 of the dead, some 80 percent, have been identified, said Dragana Vucetic, a forensic anthropologist at the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP). But that work has been complicated by the gruesome way the perpetrators tried to cover up their crimes. The ICMP morgue and the Bosnian Missing Persons Commission in Tuzla hold the remains of "90 cases whose genetic fingerprint has been isolated" but who have not yet been identified. There are also about 50 identified victims whose "families do not wish to validate the identification and bury them, most often because skeletal remains are incomplete", said the expert, who has worked investigating the genocide for more than two decades. Initially, the victims' bodies were thrown into mass graves near the "five mass execution sites". "A few months later, these graves were opened, and the corpses, already in the early stages of decomposition, were transported to other locations, sometimes hundreds of kilometres (miles) away," said Vucetic. Hiding the evidence The bodies were then "torn to pieces" by mechanical shovels and bulldozers and transported, often to two or three different locations, in an attempt to conceal the crime. "Only 10 percent of bodies found during exhumations were complete," said Vucetic. DNA testing has allowed some skeletons to be reconstructed, sometimes from parts found in four different mass graves. About 6,000 people were identified between 2012 and 2022, but since then the process has slowed, with only three this year so far. Mevlida Omerovic, 69, has been hoping since 2013 that more of her husband Hasib's skeleton would be found so she could lay him to rest. He was killed aged 33 with his brother Hasan. "There's just his jaw, but I have now decided to bury him" at the Srebrenica memorial centre during the commemoration of the genocide's 30th anniversary on July 11, she said. "We will know where his grave is and we will be able to go there and pray." Her brother Senad, who was 17 when he was killed, has never been found. The investigator Selimovic found the remains of his brothers and father. The last, his younger brother Sabahudin, was buried in 2023. But he has no intention of stopping looking for the others. "That's what keeps me alive. I know what it feels like when you're told your loved one has been found," he said. So he reads and re-reads testimonies and criss-crosses the area, revisiting the same places dozens of times. "We will find some (more) people," he insisted. "If other mass graves exist -- and I think they do -- we will find them." But he fears the Drina River, which flows near Srebrenica forming the border between Bosnia and Serbia, "is the biggest mass grave of all", he said.
Euronews
2 hours ago
- Euronews
Brazil and France launch push to put oceans at heart of climate plans
Brazil and France have just launched a new challenge to countries to put oceans at the centre of climate action. On Monday, at the UN Ocean Conference, the two countries called on all nations to place ocean-focused action at the heart of their national climate plans - also known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs - ahead of the UN climate summit COP30 it is hosting in November. Alongside Brazil and France, an inaugural group of eight countries, including Australia, Fiji, Kenya, Mexico, Palau, and the Republic of Seychelles, has joined the initiative. 'For Brazil, the Blue NDC Challenge represents a key opportunity to strengthen ocean-related climate action and to emphasise the essential role of ocean-based solutions in achieving emission reduction targets,' says Marina Silva, Brazil's Minister for the Environment and Climate Change. 'Through this initiative, Brazil seeks to advance international cooperation on ocean climate action in the lead-up to COP30, and to underscore the need for all countries to fully integrate the ocean into their national climate strategies.' Silva added that in its most recently submitted NDC, Brazil had explicitly included ocean-based climate actions for the first time. That includes commitments like establishing programmes for the conservation and restoration of vital marine ecosystems such as mangroves and coral reefs. 40 per cent of Brazil's territory is located at sea, and it hosts marine ecosystems of global significance - including the only coral reefs in the South Atlantic and the world's largest contiguous mangrove belt along the Amazon coast. NDCs are the centrepiece of countries' efforts to reduce emissions and limit warming to 1.5°C under the Paris Agreement. Countries remain largely off track for meeting the Paris goals, according to the most recent UN emissions gap report, with the next round of climate pledges needing to deliver a 'quantum leap in ambition' to give the world a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Nations were due to submit updated plans in February, but only 11 of the 195 Paris Agreement signatories made the formal deadline. As of early June, just 22 countries have so far delivered their enhanced NDCs. Brazil is one of only five G20 countries that have submitted updated plans alongside the US under the Biden administration, the UK, Japan and Canada. The real deadline is now September, when the plans will be tallied up before COP30. As the world prepares to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement this year, the Blue NDC challenge is aimed at highlighting the role oceans can play in enhancing these plans. 'Ocean-based climate solutions can deliver up to 35 per cent of the emissions reductions needed to keep 1.5°C within reach,' says Tom Pickerell, global director of the ocean programme at the World Resources Institute and Head of the Secretariat for the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy. 'But we are running out of time to maximise the ocean's potential. That's why countries must place the ocean at the heart of their climate strategies.' Industrial marine sectors and natural ecosystems are 'underused tools' in addressing climate change, Wavel Ramkalawan, President of the Republic of Seychelles, one of the eight inaugural countries that joined the initiative, added.
France 24
5 hours ago
- France 24
Activists to be deported after aid boat destined for Gaza was intercepted by Israel
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