ISIL-backed rebels kill dozens in a week of attacks in DR Congo
A week of attacks by ISIL-backed rebel group Allied Democratic Forces has killed more than 50 civilians in eastern DR Congo, according to the UN. The attacks happened while the Congolese army and Rwandan-backed M23 rebels accuse each other of violating a recently agreed peace deal.
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Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Uganda agrees deal with US to take in deported asylum seekers
Uganda has agreed to take in nationals from third countries who may not get asylum in the United States but do not wish to return to their countries of origin, Kampala's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The ministry said on Thursday that the agreement is based on the conditions that those seeking asylum do not have criminal records and that they are not unaccompanied minors, adding that details of the deal are still being worked out. US President Donald Trump aims to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, with his administration seeking to increase removals to third countries, including by sending convicted criminals to South Sudan and the southern African kingdom of Eswatini. At roughly 1.7 million, Uganda already hosts the largest refugee population in Africa, according to the United Nations, and is the latest East African country to announce such a deal with Washington, joining Rwanda and South Sudan. 'This is a temporary arrangement with conditions including that individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors will not be accepted,' Vincent Bagiire Waiswa, the ministry's permanent secretary, said in a statement. He also stated Uganda's preference that 'individuals from African countries shall be the ones transferred to Uganda'. 'The two parties are working out the detailed modalities on how the agreement shall be implemented,' he said. It was not clear if the agreement had been signed, but the ministry statement said it had been 'concluded'. The announcement comes a day after a senior Ugandan official denied media reports saying that the country had agreed to take in people deported from the US, saying it lacked the facilities to accommodate them. Foreign Affairs Minister Henry Okello Oryem told the Associated Press news agency that while Uganda has a benevolent refugee policy, there are limits. 'We are talking about cartels: people who are unwanted in their own countries. How can we integrate them into local communities in Uganda?' he asked. He said the government was in discussions about 'visas, tariffs, sanctions, and related issues, not accepting illegal aliens from the US. That would be unfair to Ugandans'. The UN's refugee agency notes that Uganda has a 'progressive refugee policy, maintaining an open-door approach to asylum'. However, the country also saw a 'significant' increase in arrivals in 2024, it said, primarily as a result of Sudan's civil war, but also unrest in South Sudan and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has taken a number of actions aimed at speeding up deportations of undocumented migrants to third countries. In July, the US deported five men with criminal backgrounds to Eswatini and sent eight more to South Sudan. Trump's administration also deported hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, where they were kept in a high-security jail with poor conditions before being returned to Venezuela. Rights experts have warned that the deportations risk breaking international law by sending people to countries where they face the risk of torture, abduction and other abuses.
Al Jazeera
a day ago
- Al Jazeera
US-led mediators ‘appalled' by humanitarian crisis in war-torn Sudan
United States-led mediators have said they are 'appalled' by the continuously deteriorating humanitarian situation in Sudan, where a brutal civil war is raging into its third year, and called for urgent action by the warring parties to protect civilians. The mediators, known as the Aligned for Advancing Lifesaving and Peace in Sudan (ALPS) Group, include the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others. 'The ALPS group urgently reiterates that international humanitarian law must be fully respected. This includes the obligations to protect civilians, including humanitarian personnel, their premises and assets, as well as to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access to all those in need,' the ALPS Group said in a statement on Wednesday. The group said it was also appalled by 'the growing number of people in situations of severe malnutrition and famine, and by the wide range of access impediments that are delaying or blocking the response in key areas'. It added that the situation was especially urgent in the North Darfur and Kordofan regions. 'Civilians continue to pay the highest price for this war,' it said. Sudan has been ravaged by violence and hunger since the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) went to war in April 2023. The country in effect is split in two, with the army controlling the north, east and centre of Sudan and the RSF dominating nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south. Nearly 25 million people in Sudan face dire hunger, with millions cut off from lifesaving aid, according to the United Nations. The UAE has been accused of championing the RSF, including by sending weapons, something it strongly denies. The plea for Sudan comes as the US faces global criticism for its support of Israel in the genocidal war on Gaza, which is also facing an Israeli-induced famine.
Al Jazeera
a day ago
- Al Jazeera
Confrontation between Tunisia's General Union, President Saied escalates
Tunisia's General Labour Union (UGTT) is poised to take on President Kais Saied in a protest scheduled for August 21. The union called for a protest against what it says are government attempts to undermine workers' rights, and the use of intimidation to curb strikes, referring to a three-day UGTT transport strike at the end of July. Since he seized power on July 25, 2021, Saied has radically undermined the role of parliament and political parties while granting himself vastly increased powers through a constitution revised according to his edicts. Yet the UGTT's ability to mobilise its hundreds of thousands of members stands as one of the few remaining counters to Saied, analysts say. 'The UGTT has always been more than just a trade union,' Hamza Meddeb of the Carnegie Institute, who has written extensively on the organisation, told Al Jazeera. 'It was established even before Tunisian independence, and played a significant role in achieving that,' he said of Tunisia's liberation from France in 1956. 'Since then, it's played both an economic role … as well as a political role, such as in 2015, when it was the principal force behind establishing the National Dialogue,' Meddeb continued, referring to a political crisis when the UGTT and three other civil society organisations helped prevent the collapse of Tunisia's post-revolutionary democracy. Inevitable confrontation Matters reached a head between UGTT and Saied on August 7 when hundreds of Saied's supporters rallied outside UGTT headquarters, accusing it of 'corruption' and 'squandering people's money' after a three-day transport strike in late July paralysed much of the country. The following night, Saied defended the anti-union protesters, repeating their calls for union 'accountability' and stressing that, contrary to claims from both the UGTT and rights groups, his supporters had not intended violence. 'There are files that must be opened because the people are demanding accountability … so that their money can be returned to them,' Saied said in a video posted on the presidency's official Facebook page. Further confrontations between the president and the union were inevitable, but many analysts point to what they say is a union weakened by internal schisms and the threat to its decades-long monopoly on union power in Tunisia. 'For the past two years, the UGTT has been silent, certainly on the political side of things,' a political analyst who remained in Tunisia told Al Jazeera, on condition of anonymity. 'Saied even revised the labour code without consulting them,' they said of the May decision to change laws that affected many of UGTT's members. 'Previously, making a decision on that scale without the UGTT would have been inconceivable,' he said. A weakened union Much of the UGTT's relatively low profile lies in an internal rupture, prompted by its decision in 2021 to extend its board's mandate from two to three terms, which is said to have splintered the union's membership and undermined it. 'There are many in the UGTT who see the 2021 decision as a coup d'etat of the union's own, which has really weakened the board's decision to do anything,' Meddeb said. 'You also can't avoid the fact that the financial situation across the country is getting much, much worse, which means that the core membership of the union – the state-dependent middle class – are also suffering, and are blaming a board they already have little faith in for that, too. 'So, when Saied calls it a 'corrupt union' … that makes sense to much of its membership,' Meddeb said. 'It's also easy, [given its long history and close relationships with all of Tunisia's past governments] for Saied to paint it as part of the country's elite that has been holding its people back,' he concluded. A rival union emerges Moves to undermine the UGTT's base are already under way. On Monday, the government announced it would halt the longstanding practice of allowing union officials to receive their government salaries while on union business, with more such moves expected. Saied is also said to be encouraging the rival Union of Tunisian Workers (UTT), which analysts such as author Hatem Nafti say could try to take advantage of any weakening of the bond between the UGTT and its membership, to boost its standing. How successful that would be in light of the UTT leadership's previous convictions on corruption charges, remained to be seen, he added. That the UTT is ready to step into any breach left by the UGTT was clear last week, when it issued a statement accusing its rivals of what it said was the 'defamation' of the president. Nafti said that the government might also seek to halt the practice of deducting UGTT membership fees from state employees' salaries at source before transferring the funds to the union, which would give UTT more hope of winning members away from UGTT. 'That Kais Saied would move against the UGTT was written from day one,' Nafti told Al Jazeera from Paris, where he now lives. 'Populism doesn't allow any mediator between the leader and the people, so firstly, he got rid of rival political parties, then civil society and the media. 'Even the television networks that support him don't show political programmes any more,' he said. 'The UGTT was the logical next step.'
