• North Korean authorities’ response to Covid-19 crisis extremely concerning;
  • Clashes erupt in Libya’s capital Tripoli;
  • Young student murdered in Nigeria for exercising right to free speech;
  • Buffalo shooting underscores yet again need to address white supremacist violence;  
  • Older people face unique risks in armed conflicts;
  • UN experts stress need to better protect LGBT people fleeing persecution.
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The admission by North Korean officials that an unspecified “fever” was spreading “explosively” in the country, infecting more than 1.2 million people and killing 50, was unprecedented. Yet, while the government is right to finally acknowledge Covid-19’s spread in the reclusive country, the news overall is extremely concerning. Authorities reacted by declaring a “maximum emergency” and ordered a countrywide lockdown, isolating “each working unit, production unit and residential unit from each other.” Already, North Korea, which is ruled by the authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un, is one of the most repressive countries in the world. In 2021, Kim’s government responded to the Covid-19 pandemic with deepened isolation and repression, exacerbating the effects of the crisis. North Koreans have had almost no access to Covid-19 vaccines, and many citizens are chronically malnourished, leaving them with compromised immune systems. Medicines of any kind are scarce in the country, and the healthcare infrastructure is extremely fragile. It’s hard to really know how bad the humanitarian situation is, as virtually all international aid providers pulled out of the country during earlier lockdowns. But the current nationwide lockdown can be expected to hamper the agricultural harvest, already impacted by drought. North Koreans are facing a uniquely acute catastrophe. The world should not turn away. 

Clashes erupted between rival armed groups in Libya’s capital Tripoli shortly after designate Prime Minister Fathi Bashagha arrived to wrest control of the capital. Bashagha had been installed by Libya's dysfunctional House of Representatives when it approved a new Government of National Stability (GNS) in March, effectively creating a second authority to compete with the UN-brokered Government of National Unity (GNU) that has been in power since March 2021. Bashagha, a former interior minister, had been operating from other parts of the country while the incumbent GNU Prime Minister, Abdelhamid Dabeiba, who was appointed in 2020 through a UN brokered process, refused to cede, vowing to only hand over power after national elections. Parliamentary and presidential elections had originally been slated for December last year, but were indefinitely delayed amid disputes among major factions and prominent candidates over the legal and constitutional basis for holding them. This is not the first time multiple authorities vie for control in Tripoli. Intermittent fighting, armed conflicts and systematic and wide spread human rights violations by armed groups and militias, have marked a brutal decade for Libyans since the 2011 uprising that saw the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule. Renewed fighting in the capital risks plunging Libya back into prolonged conflict after two years of comparative calm since the signing of the ceasefire agreement between parties in October 2020. 

A female student who was accused of blasphemy has been gruesomely murdered in Nigeria’s northwestern Sokoto state. Having sent a WhatsApp voice note to her classmates that some deemed to be insulting to the Prophet Muhammed, Deborah Samuel was hunted down by unidentified assailants and killed. Blasphemy accusations often trigger mob violence in the country whose population is roughly split between the Christian majority south and Muslim majority north. While the constitution guarantees the right to freedom of expression, thought, and conscience, the country’s criminal law makes it an offense to insult religion.  Some states, including Sokoto, where Sharia, or Islamic law is applicable, criminalize blasphemy. Efforts by authorities to identify and arrest those involved in her murder have been met with protests, which have further stoked religious tensions across the predominantly Muslim state. 

A gunman who killed 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, planned further attacks after the mass shooting on Saturday, Buffalo's police chief told US media. The 18-year old white gunman drove more than 320km (200 miles) to carry out the attack which targeted a majority Black neighborhood already subjected to centuries of segregation and systemic racism.  While facilitated by easy access to guns the massacre appears to have been fuelled by white supremacist ideology. The gunman live-streamed his violent rampage and left a so-called "manifesto" online which “details his extremist beliefs and is packed with cherry-picked statistics, conspiracy theories and internet memes” along with straightforward admissions that he is a fascist and a white supremacist, writes Mike Wendling of the BBC. Although the gunman had spent a day and a half in hospital undergoing a mental health evaluation last year after he wrote that he wanted to commit a murder/suicide in a high school project, no alert came up when the gun store owner who sold him the semi-automatic used in the attack ran the attacker's name through a government background check system. Of the 13 people shot, 11 were black. It is high time US officials address and ensure repair for white supremacist violence and discrimination against Black people and the legacy of enslavement.  

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory – first fought from 1988 to 1994, and then during another escalation in late 2020 – has caused decades of misery for older people, Amnesty International said in two reports published today. The reports highlight the unique risks older people face in armed conflicts. “Often the last to flee, they also suffer the consequences of war for decades on end,” said Laura Mills, Researcher on Older People with Amnesty International’s Crisis Response team. While physical disabilities and health problems make it difficult for some to flee, others choose not to leave because they had strong attachments to their homes, or are reluctant to abandon land or livestock, the reports find. Those who did flee have languished in displacement ever since, further entrenching feelings of helplessness and isolation. The impact of war on older people has never been more visible than in the conflict in Ukraine, where older people, especially women, are suffering a similar fate. They have become the group most likely to be left behind and alone because of their lack of mobility, bereavement or a reluctance to leave familiar surroundings, The Guardian reports. The situation for older people is particularly acute in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions where a survey of more than 1,500 over-60s conducted in March revealed the scale of the problem: 99% do not want to leave their homes; 91% need help to get food; 91% are also experiencing extreme cold, with no heating due to electricity cuts; 75% need basic hygiene items; and 34% need urgent medication for chronic illness. Yet, older people are often the last to receive help in humanitarian crises.  

A group of UN and regional human rights experts urged governments to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender diverse (LGBT) persons fleeing persecution are protected against violence and treated with dignity on the occasion of the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. Often already highly vulnerable and marginalized due to stigmatization, discrimination and criminalization LGBT persons are particularly at risk when crossing borders. At all stages of their journey, the experts’ statement says, they may be “at particular risk of violence, abuse and exploitation from numerous actors, including though not limited to immigration and security authorities, traffickers, and smugglers.” The group urges states, businesses, and humanitarian and civil society organizations to invest in developing human rights-based policies and programs for the protection of displaced LGBT individuals and to “ensure LGBT persons can live free from violence and discrimination in their communities, by implementing laws and public policies that can transform the vicious spiral of abuse which forces them to seek protection elsewhere in the first place.” 

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