UN rejects plans by Sudan's paramilitary group for a rival government amid civil war
The strongly worded statement by the U.N.'s most powerful body 'unequivocally reaffirmed' its unwavering commitment to Sudan's sovereignty, independence and unity. Any steps to undermine these principles 'threaten not only the future of Sudan but also the peace and stability of the broader region,' the statement said.
The 15-member council said the announcement by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces also risks 'fragmenting the country and worsening an already dire humanitarian situation.'
Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including western Darfur. Some 40,000 people have been killed, nearly 13 million displaced and many pushed to the brink of famine, U.N. agencies say.
The RSF and their allies announced in late June that they had formed a parallel government in areas the group controls, mainly in the vast Darfur region where allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity are being investigated.
The deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said last month that the tribunal believes war crimes and crimes against humanity are taking place in Darfur, where the RSF controls all regional capitals except el-Fasher in North Darfur.
The Security Council reiterated that its priority is a resumption of talks by both parties to reach a lasting ceasefire and create conditions for a political resolution of the war, starting with a civilian-led transition that leads to a democratically elected national government.
Council members recalled their resolution adopted last year demanding that the RSF lift its siege of el-Fasher, 'where famine and extreme food insecurity conditions are at risk of spreading.' They expressed 'grave concern' at reports of a renewed RSF offensive on the besieged city.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday that a year ago, famine was declared in the Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur. The risk of famine has since spread to 17 areas in Darfur and the Kordofan region, which is adjacent to North Darfur and west of Khartoum, he said.
The U.N. World Food Program is calling for access to el-Fasher to deliver aid to people facing starvation, Dujarric said.
'As a coping mechanism, some residents of the area are reportedly surviving on animal fodder and food waste,' Dujarric said.
WFP is providing digital cash to about 250,000 people in el-Fasher to buy dwindling food left in markets, he said, but escalating hunger makes it imperative to scale up assistance now.
Sudan's foreign ministry accused the United Arab Emirates last month of sending Colombian mercenaries to fight alongside the RSF, saying the government has 'irrefutable evidence' that fighters from Colombia and some neighboring countries were sponsored and financed by Emirati authorities.
The UAE's foreign affairs ministry said the government 'categorically rejects' the allegations and denies involvement in the war by backing armed groups.
Without naming any countries, the Security Council urged all nations 'to refrain from external interference which seeks to foment conflict and instability' and to support peace efforts.
The Security Council also condemned recent attacks in Kordofan that caused a high number of civilian casualties.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
WIRED
8 hours ago
- WIRED
UN Plastics Treaty Talks Once Again End in Failure
Aug 16, 2025 7:00 AM Procedural hurdles yet again foil progress on a global agreement to end plastic pollution. This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Diplomats from around the world concluded nine days of talks in Geneva—plus a marathon overnight session that lasted into the early hours of Friday—with no agreement on a global plastics treaty. During a closing plenary that started on Friday at 6:30 am, more than 15 hours after it was originally scheduled to begin, nearly all countries opposed an updated draft of the United Nations treaty that was put forward by the negotiating committee chair, the Ecuadorian diplomat Luis Vayas Valdivieso. Many of their delegates said the text did not reflect their mandate under a UN Environment Assembly resolution to 'end plastic pollution' by addressing the 'full life cycle' of plastics. 'We are truly sad to say that we will not have a treaty to end plastic pollution here in Geneva,' the head negotiator for Norway, Andreas Bjelland Erikse, told the chair. Valdivieso wrapped up the meeting just after 9 am with the promise that they would continue at a later date. The decision ends a contentious week and a half of discussions during the 'resumed' fifth session of negotiations over a United Nations plastics treaty, which started in Geneva on August 4. Delegates had arrived in the city hoping to finalize a treaty by Thursday, having already overrun their original deadline to complete the agreement by the end of 2024. Signs of a logjam were apparent even within the first few days of the talks, however, as countries hewed to the same red lines they'd stuck to during previous negotiations. A so-called 'like-minded group' of oil-producing countries said it would not accept legally binding obligations and opposed a wide range of provisions that other nations said were essential, including controls on new plastic production, as well as mandatory disclosures and phaseouts of hazardous chemicals used in plastics. During a plenary on August 9, three observers independently told Grist that the negotiations felt like Groundhog Day , as countries reiterated familiar talking points. A norm around consensus-based decisionmaking discouraged compromise from all countries, though the like-minded group—which includes Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, among other countries—was particularly intransigent and understood it could simply block proposals rather than shift its positions. Instead of whittling down a draft of the treaty that had been prepared late last year during the previous meeting in Busan, South Korea, delegates added hundreds of suggestions to it, placing a deal further from reach. Over the course of the Geneva talks, delegates rejected two new drafts of the treaty prepared by Valdivieso: one released on Wednesday, which was so objectionable that countries said it was 'repulsive' and lacked 'any demonstrable value,' and the most recent one published just hours before Friday's 6:30 am plenary. Many expressed their preference to revert back to the Busan draft as a basis for future discussions. Despite Friday's outcome, the plastics treaty does not yet appear to be dead. Virtually all countries expressed an interest in continued negotiations—the European Union delegate Jessika Roswall said she would not accept 'a stillborn treaty'—and many used their mic time during the closing plenary to remind others of what's at stake. PICTURE Caption: Tuvalu's delegate, Pepetua Election Latasi, during a plastics treaty plenary meeting in Geneva. Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist 'We cannot ignore the gravity of the situation,' a negotiator from Madagascar said. 'Every day, our oceans and ecosystems and communities are suffering from the consequences of our inability to make decisive and unified actions.' Tuvalu's delegate, Pepetua Election Latasi, said failing to enact a treaty means that 'millions of tons of plastic waste will continue to be dumped in our oceans, affecting our ecosystem, food security, livelihoods, and culture.' Still, without a change in the negotiations' format—particularly around decisionmaking—it's unclear whether further discussions will be fruitful. The norm around 'consensus-based decisionmaking means the threat of a vote can't be used to nudge obstinate countries away from their red lines; unless decisionmaking by a majority vote is introduced, then this dynamic is unlikely to change. 'This meeting proved that consensus is dead,' said Bjorn Beeler, executive director of the International Pollutants Elimination Network, a coalition of health and environmental organizations. 'The problem is not going away.' Why is it so hard to make progress on a plastics treaty? Procedural rules for the plastics treaty negotiations say that, for substantive issues, delegates 'shall make every effort' to reach agreement by consensus. Otherwise they can vote by a two-thirds majority, but only as a 'last resort.' When delegates sought to clarify these rules during the second round of talks in 2023, there was so much disagreement that it sank several days of negotiation. The result is that delegates have defaulted to consensus for everything, fearful of broaching the subject and losing even more of their limited negotiating time. Yet consensus-based decisionmaking is also one of the main reasons that the negotiations have gone so slowly: Oil-producing countries have used these rules to their advantage to either stall or water down interim agreements at each round of negotiations, frustrating progress even when they're greatly outnumbered. Other nonprofits and advocacy groups staged several silent protests during the Geneva talks raising this same point, displaying signs reading, 'Consensus kills ambition.' Senimili Nakora, one of Fiji's delegates, said during the closing plenary that 'consensus is worth seeking if it moves us forward, not if it stalls the process.' Switzerland's negotiator, Felix Wertli, said that 'this process needs a timeout,' and that 'another similar meeting may not bring the breakthrough and ambition that is needed.' Other countries raised broader concerns about 'the process' by which negotiations had proceeded. Meetings had been 'nontransparent,' 'opaque,' and 'ambiguous,' they said during the plenary, likely referring to unclear instructions they had received from the secretariat, the bureaucratic body that organizes the negotiations. Inger Andersen, the UN Environment Programme's executive director, told reporters on Friday that it at least had been helpful to hear countries more clearly articulate their red lines. 'Everyone has to understand that this work will not stop, because plastic pollution will not stop.' PICTURE Caption: Observers sit outside the assembly hall at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, waiting into the early hours of the morning for plenary to start. Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist The plastics industry, which has opposed controlling plastic production and phasing out groups of hazardous chemicals, said it would continue to back a treaty that 'keeps plastics in the economy and out of the environment.' Marco Mensink, council secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations, said in a statement: 'While not concluding a global agreement to end plastic pollution is a missed opportunity, we will continue to support efforts to reach an agreement that works for all nations and can be implemented effectively.' Environmental groups, scientists, and frontline organizations were disappointed to leave Geneva without an ambitious treaty. They said it would have been worse, however, if countries had decided to compromise on key provisions such as human health and a 'just transition' for those most likely to be affected by changes to global recycling and waste management policies, including waste pickers. Under the circumstances, they applauded delegates for not agreeing to the final version of the chair's text. 'I'm so happy that a strong treaty was prioritized over a weak treaty,' said Jo Banner, cofounder of the US-based organization The Descendants Project, which advocates to preserve the health and culture of the descendants of enslaved Black people in of a swath of Louisiana studded by petrochemical facilities. 'It feels like our voices have been heard,' added Cheyenne Rendon, a senior policy officer for the US nonprofit Society of Native Nations, which has advocated that the treaty include specific language on Indigenous peoples' rights and the use of Indigenous science. PICTURES (x2) Caption: Protestors gather outside the Palais des Nations in Geneva, during talks for a global plastics treaty. Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist Caption: Advocacy groups call for delegates to make decisions by voting, not consensus, at plastics treaty negotiations. Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist By contrast, observers' voices were literally not heard during the final moments of the concluding plenary in Geneva. After more than two hours of statements from national delegations, Valdivieso turned the mic over to a parade of young attendees, Indigenous peoples, waste pickers, and others who had been present throughout the week and a half of talks. But only one speaker—from the Youth Plastic Action Network—was able to give a statement before the United States and Kuwait asked the chair to cut them off and conclude the meeting. It is now up to the plastics treaty secretariat to set a date and time for another round of negotiations, which are not likely to happen until next year. In the meantime, all eyes will be on the UN Environment Assembly meeting in December, where Andersen is expected to deliver a report on the negotiations' progress—or lack thereof—and which could present an opportunity for the like-minded countries to lower the ambition of the treaty's mandate: the statement spelling out what the treaty is trying to achieve. Some environmental groups fear that Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and others will try to change the mandate so that it no longer refers to the 'full life cycle' of plastics, but just plastic pollution—thus turning the treaty into a waste management agreement rather than one that addresses the full suite of plastics' harms to health and the environment, including during the material's production. Banner said she doesn't feel defeated; in fact, she's 'more passionate than ever' to keep fighting for legally binding restrictions on the amount of plastic the world makes. 'I'm planning to survive,' she added, and to do that, 'we have got to stop the production of plastic.'
10 hours ago
Over 4 years since the Taliban took Kabul, millions of Afghans have been sent back to a country in crisis
Over the course of the past four years since the Taliban took control of Kabul, plunging Afghanistan into a humanitarian crisis and stripping away women's rights, millions of Afghans who initially fled have now been expelled from Iran and Pakistan, according to the United Nations. Over 1.5 million Afghans have returned to Afghanistan so far this year, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM). 700,000 Afghan migrants have returned to Afghanistan from Iran this year as of June 2025, according to the UN. Some have never set foot in Afghanistan, while others haven't been in the country since fleeing it decades ago, said Arafat Jamal, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Afghanistan. Russia became the first country to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's official government, but other countries have not done so. Many of the returnees arrived at the Afghan border in buses 'bewildered, disoriented, and tired and hungry,' according to Jamal. Earlier this year, Iran ordered all of the estimated 2 million undocumented Afghans -- out of the estimated 6 million total Afghans in Iran -- to leave the country. Since the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June, UN agencies have seen a large increase in the number of Afghans crossing the border from Iran back into Afghanistan, Jamal said. This increase of Afghans leaving Iran came as the government of Iran intensified their campaign against Afghans, accusing many of them of espionage, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran. Pakistan has also accelerated the expulsion of Afghan refugees within its borders since April. More Afghans are expected to leave Pakistan after the government of Pakistan confirmed it won't renew Proof of Registration cards for Afghans, according to the IOM. Some experts warn that these actions constitute a violation of the principle of non-refoulement – meaning not forcing refugees or asylum seekers to return to a country where they may be subject to persecution – in possible violation of international law. In previous years, UNHCR could provide $2,000 in cash assistance to returnee Afghan families, enabling them to build autonomy and get back on their feet once they returned to their home country. In the past few months, cuts in foreign aid funding have decreased that budget to just $156 per family, 'simply enabling a person to survive for a week or two on the basic necessities,' Jamal said. Once inside Afghanistan, returnees' face difficult conditions back at home. In addition to the Taliban restricting women's rights by banning their movements outside of the home without a male guardian and by restricting their access to education past age 12, Afghanistan is also facing climate change and environmental challenges -- around a third of Afghans don't have access to basic drinking water, according to Unicef. The World Food Program reported that 3.1 million Afghans are on the brink of starvation. Zahra, a journalist living in Afghanistan who asked ABC News to use only her first name due to fear of persecution by the Taliban, said that Afghans have done their best to support returnees, despite having very few resources themselves. "Even if I have one extra pillow, I should give it to others," she told ABC News. 'It's enough if we eat lunch and skip dinner to give this meal to another.' In the last several months, international humanitarian aid funding has been slashed by previously committed allies. In April 2025, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction announced that it was cutting nearly all assistance programs to Afghanistan. Since the Taliban takeover in 2021, the U.S. had been Afghanistan's largest donor, according to SIGAR. Soon after the U.S.'s April announcement, the U.K. -- another major donor to humanitarian initiatives in the country -- reduced its aid to Afghanistan by 19%. More than 400 health facilities, 400 acute malnutrition centers, and 300 clinics for survivors of gender based violence have shut down as a result, according to the UN. Zahra said she has witnessed the devastating consequences of these facilities' closures. She said there was a pregnant woman who needed medical help but couldn't go to her local clinic, which had shuttered due to aid cuts. The expecting mother could not immediately secure a male chaperone to travel to the nearest open clinic, as mandated by the Taliban, Zahra said. As a result, according to Zahra, both the woman and her baby lost their lives. 'You just cut the aid to kill people slowly,' she told ABC News. 'It is like you're firing and shooting at humans.' Now, as millions of additional Afghans return to a country already facing multiple humanitarian crises, many international NGOs are operating with inadequate funding to address the many issues in the country. UNHCR, for example, said it has less than a quarter of the funding it needs to address the emergency situation in Afghanistan and neighboring countries. Additionally, the International Rescue Committee has had to suspend some of their education services in Afghanistan. These international bodies are calling for an increase in funding and support. "More humanitarian aid is urgently needed to protect and assist Afghans forced to flee," the UNHCR wrote on its website. 'What's happening in Afghanistan are crimes against humanity – crimes against the whole of humanity – which should shock our conscience and provoke action by all,' said Richard Bennett, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan. "It is not time to give up."
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Yahoo
41 per cent of Canadians support Mark Carney's move to recognize Palestinian state: poll
A plurality of Canadians believe Canada's move to recognize a Palestinian state is a good idea, while nearly one-third of Canadians are against it, according to recent polling. The polling by Leger for Postmedia found that 41 per cent of poll respondents support Prime Minister Mark Carney's decision to recognize a state of Palestine. In late July, Carney's office announced that if certain conditions were met, Canada would recognize such a state at the United Nations General Assembly in September. 'From a government policy perspective, I've seen governments put forward policies that have less support than that, and managed to get things through. So, I don't think this is going to be a big challenge, big issue for the government,' said Andrew Enns, Leger's executive vice-president for central Canada. The possible Canadian recognition came with some conditions that are unlikely to be met. They include commitments from the Palestinian Authority (which exercises partial control over the West Bank) to reforms including holding elections in which the Hamas terror group plays no role and to 'demilitarize the Palestinian state.' The poll found 28 per cent of Canadians believe it to be a bad idea, while 31 per cent told pollsters they did not know if it was good or bad or refused to answer. Enns said previous polling shows that awareness of the conflict between Israel and Gaza is relatively high, but people are clearly struggling to know what the right answer is around Palestinian statehood. While Leger hasn't asked poll respondents specifically about the recognition of a Palestinian state, previous polling from Innovative Research Group found, in June 2024, around 49 per cent of Canadians believed that a state should be created for Palestinians. Support for a Palestinian state is highest in Quebec, at 44 per cent, followed closely by British Columbia at 42 per cent and Ontario at 41 per cent. In Atlantic Canada, 40 per cent believe it's a good idea. The Prairie provinces are the most skeptical: just 33 per cent of those in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta believe such a move is a good one. Atlantic Canadians, at 13 per cent, are the least likely to say it's a bad idea. Twenty-five per cent of Quebecers, 28 per cent of Ontarians, 30 per cent of those in B.C. and 34 per cent of those in Manitoba and Saskatchewan also say it's a bad idea. Albertans, at 40 per cent, are the most likely to say that it's a bad idea. 'I wondered whether or not the lower support for the move by the Canadian government is maybe more tied to the politics and the fact that there's less Liberal support in Alberta and the Prairies,' said Enns. 'Maybe it's just a bit of a reaction to 'Well, if this is what the Liberal government is doing, I don't think I like it.'' Men are more likely than women (43 per cent to 38 per cent) to say it's a good idea, but they're also more likely to say it's a bad idea (36 per cent to 21 per cent); women are far more likely to have said they don't know. The youngest Canadians are also by far the most likely to support the Liberals' move to recognize a Palestinian state, with 47 per cent support among those between the ages of 18 and 34. Among the next age cohort, from 35 to 54, only 36 per cent support Carney's move, while the oldest Canadians, in the 55 and older category, support the move at a rate of 40 per cent. 'That younger cohort tends to be … little bit more engaged with the Palestinian cause,' Enns said. Liberal voters, at 60 per cent, and New Democrats, at 62 per cent, are the most supportive of the move, while just 21 per cent of Conservatives say it's a good idea. Fifty per cent of Bloc Québécois voters and 44 per cent of Green party voters support the move. In comparison, 57 per cent of Conservatives say it's a bad idea, compared to just 13 per cent of Liberal voters, nine per cent of NDP voters, 20 per cent of Bloc voters and eight per cent of Green voters. The data was collected from an online survey of 1,617 Canadian adults between Aug. 1 and Aug. 4. Data has been weighted according to age, gender, mother tongue, region, education and presence of children in the household in order to ensure a representative sample of the Canadian population. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size yields a margin of error no greater than plus or minus 2.44 per cent, 19 times out of 20. About 40% of Canadians, Americans believe lasting peace can be reached in Ukraine war: poll Canadians still supportive of letting in Ukrainian migrants fleeing war with Russia: poll Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.
