All eyes this week have been trained on the ongoing drama in the Middle East, as Iran’s missile attack in response to Israeli military strikes against Hezbollah militia and leadership in Lebanon inaugurates a perilous expansion of the conflict.
That focus on the fate of Israel, its hostages in Gaza and the people of Gaza and south Lebanon means that little attention is being paid to other continuing crises around the world. But some other notable arenas of global suffering and vulnerability, of course, remain worth attending to.
Civil war and famine in Sudan
In a press statement released on Oct. 3, the Sudan expert for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Radhouane Nouicer, called for the warring Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces to take immediate measures to protect civilians in greater Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, amid an escalation of hostilities and reports of summary executions.
“The ongoing battle in greater Khartoum echoes the horror of the initial period of the conflict in April 2023, and could result in a large number of civilian casualties among people trapped next to strategic locations, serious human rights violations and massive displacement,” Mr. Nouicer warned.
On Sept. 25 the S.A.F. launched a major offensive, including airstrikes and shelling of R.S.F. positions, to retake Khartoum districts under the control of the R.S.F. According to the United Nations, the offensive has resulted in dozens of civilian casualties and extensive damage to civilian infrastructure. In addition, reports have surfaced of the summary execution by S.A.F. or allied militia of as many as 70 young men, some ostensibly for looting.
Videos circulating on social media “have shown the bodies of young men, purportedly killed based on suspicion of affiliation or collaboration with the R.S.F,” Mr. Noucier said. “This is beyond despicable and contravenes all human rights norms and standards.”
As infrastructure and social services break down because of the conflict, collateral deaths are beginning to emerge. The Sudan Ministry of Health reported last month that more than 500 Sudanese had died in an outbreak of cholera that has now reached 10 of Sudan’s 18 states.
More than 20,000 Sudanese have died (some estimates report more than 150,000) since the S.A.F.-R.S.F. conflict began in April 2023. More than 10 million people have been displaced by the fighting and other crises that have created in Sudan what may be the world’s worst, and worst-addressed, humanitarian crisis.
Haiti hunger crisis
Kenyan and Jamaican security forces may have finally arrived to counter rampaging gangs, but the security and economic crisis is far from over in Haiti. While the Haitian community is in the news because of controversy stoked by Trump running mate Senator JD Vance, related to their presence in Springfield, Ohio, the suffering back in Haiti shows no sign of relenting.
Gang violence has continued and Haiti faces an escalating humanitarian crisis even as Mr. Trump speaks of deporting Haitians with temporary protected status in the United States back to the embattled island. Gangs control 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and much of the countryside.
Over 700,000 people, more than half of whom are children, are now internally displaced across Haiti, according to a new report by the International Organization for Migration—a 22 percent increase in the number of internally displaced people since June. Renewed gang violence has forced more than 110,000 people to flee their homes over the last seven months.
“The sharp rise in displacement underscores the urgent need for a sustained humanitarian response,” said Grégoire Goodstein, I.O.M. chief in Haiti. “We call on the international community to step up its support for Haiti’s displaced populations and the host communities that continue to show remarkable resilience in the face of these challenges.”
Nearly half the population—48 percent, about 5 million people—endure high levels of acute food insecurity, according to the most recent analysis from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (I.P.C.) program. Nearly 6,000 people in Haiti are starving to death as agricultural and food delivery systems grind to a halt and food costs escalate beyond the reach of Haiti’s poorest people.
Galloping inflation in Haiti means that food now accounts for about 70 percent of household spending. According to the I.P.C. update: “Farmers are also unable to sell their produce due to the blocking of various roads linking the metropolitan area to the regions. The Haitian people are still suffering from the residual effects of various climatic shocks such as the impact of Hurricane Matthew and the 2021 earthquake as well as periodic droughts.”
The report notes that Haiti’s “rapidly declining economy is trending towards a fifth consecutive year of depression as the country experiences another year of negative growth in 2024 due to the tense security context.”
The I.P.C. predicts that the situation is not likely to improve in 2025, “as humanitarian food assistance is not expected to meet the needs of the population.”
Adding to the nation’s woes, its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, announced on Oct. 2 that it would start deportations of Haitians living illegally in the country, planning to expel up to 10,000 a week. The Associated Press reports that in 2023, the Dominican Republic deported more than 174,000 people, and in the first half of the year, it has expelled at least 67,000 more.
Political detainees in Myanmar tortured by military
As widespread civil conflict continues in Myanmar, almost three years after a military junta terminated a brief experiment with democratic rule, a recent U.N. report offers a small profile in collective national suffering.
According to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 5,350 civilians have been killed and more than 3.3 million displaced since the military seized power in February 2021. The latest report finds that civilian casualties from military air and artillery strikes have been up sharply over the last six months. And after years of violence and social and economic disruption, more than half the population is living below the poverty line “mainly due to violence perpetrated by the national armed forces.”
The United Nations reports that 27,400 people have been arrested. Those numbers have been spiking since the implementation of mandatory conscription last February. Myanmar’s young people “are fleeing abroad to escape being forced to serve in or fight for the military.”
The Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw, seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. Since then, “credible sources indicate that at least 1,853 people have died in custody, including 88 children and 125 women,” the U.N. report concludes. “Many of these individuals have been verified as dying after being subjected to abusive interrogation, other ill-treatment in detention, or denial of access to adequate healthcare.”
According to the human rights report, torture in military custody is pervasive. The office reports many cases of sexual violence against detainees. People detained by the military have been suspended from the ceiling; forced to kneel or crawl on hard or sharp objects; beaten with iron poles, bamboo sticks, batons, rifle butts, leather strips, electric wires and motorcycle chains. The United Nations charges that detainees have also endured “asphyxiation, mock executions; electrocution and burning with tasers, lighters, cigarettes, and boiling water; spraying of methylated substances on open wounds; cutting of body parts and pulling of fingernails.”
On Sept. 27, the main group coordinating opposition to military rule in Myanmar rejected a surprise offer from the nation’s ruling generals to hold talks toward a political solution to the civil war.
Nay Phone Latt, a spokesperson for the opposition’s National Unity Government, told The Associated Press that a joint statement issued earlier this year by opposition groups has already paved the way for a negotiated political solution if the army agrees to its conditions.
Padoh Saw Kalae Say, a spokesperson of the Karen National Union, which represents the Karen ethnic minority in Myanmar, said the K.N.U. will likewise not accept the military’s offer.
The Tatmadaw’s “Offer to resolve political issues in political means,” published in the Global New Light of Myanmar and other state-run newspapers, follows a year of unprecedented battlefield defeats at the hands of a number of powerful ethnic militias, especially in the northeast along the border with China and in the western state of Rakhine. The ranks of those militias were swelled by thousands of young people who have decided that peaceful resistance is no longer possible to end military rule in Myanmar. Hundreds of armed guerrilla groups, collectively called the People’s Defense Forces, were also formed in the struggle to restore democracy after the army takeover.
The opposition’s political road map earlier this year offering talks was signed by the National Unity Government and three major ethnic armed organizations—the Chin National Front, the Karenni National Progressive Party and the Karen National Union, all of which are engaged in active combat against the military government.
The objectives of the coalition of resistance include terminating the military’s involvement in politics, placing all armed forces under the command of an elected civilian government, promulgating a new constitution embodying federalism and democratic values, establishing a new federal democratic union and instituting a system of transitional justice.
With reporting from The Associated Press.
The Weekly Dispatch takes a deep dive into breaking events and issues of significance around our world and our nation today, providing the background readers need to make better sense of the headlines speeding past us each week. For more news and analysis from around the world, visit Dispatches.
More from America
- ‘Nobody wants to stay in this hell’: The moral call of Haiti
- Racism, migration and exploitation: the bitter history of Haitian workers in the D.R.
- Catholic aid workers confront humanitarian crisis in Sudan as world looks away
- An outspoken bishop is bringing hope to Catholics under attack in Myanmar
A deeper dive
- Report on Human Rights situation in Myanmar
- Report on the internal displacement situation in Haiti
- HAITI: Armed gang violence, economic decline push half of the population into high levels of acute food insecurity
- Sudan: UN expert calls for urgent protection of civilians in Khartoum amid alarming reports of summary executions
