分类： world

A devastating maritime disaster off the coast of Southeast Asia has left around 250 people, including dozens of children, unaccounted for after an overloaded migrant trawler sank in the Andaman Sea last week, United Nations agencies for refugees and migration confirmed in a joint statement. The vessel, which departed from southern Bangladesh with the final destination of Malaysia, capsized amid heavy wind and rough sea conditions, a disaster exacerbated by the extreme overcrowding on board, according to the agencies.

The Bangladesh Coast Guard told AFP that one of its patrol vessels pulled nine survivors from the water on April 9, though the exact timing of the capsizing remains unconfirmed. One of the survivors, 40-year-old Rafiqul Islam, described his harrowing experience of drifting adrift for nearly 36 hours before rescue, saying he suffered severe burns after being exposed to oil that leaked from the sinking vessel. He told reporters that the prospect of securing stable employment in Malaysia was the key factor that convinced him to undertake the risky crossing.

This tragedy comes amid a years-long humanitarian crisis that has forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority from Myanmar, to flee their homes. Since a brutal military crackdown in 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya have crossed the border into Bangladesh, where they are hosted in sprawling refugee camps. Rohingya people are constitutionally denied citizenship in Myanmar, a Buddhist-majority nation, leaving them effectively stateless with no access to basic rights or protection in their home country.

While Bangladesh has provided refuge to the displaced population, dire living conditions in the overcrowded camps, combined with shrinking international humanitarian funding and ongoing violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, have eliminated most hope of a safe voluntary return home in the near future. These pressures have pushed growing numbers of refugees to attempt dangerous irregular sea crossings to neighboring Malaysia, which many see as a potential safe haven in the region.

Irregular migrant vessels operating this route are almost always small, severely overcrowded, and lack basic necessities including clean drinking water, sanitation, and emergency safety equipment. The crossings are consistently deadly: many vessels never reach their destination, with passengers dying of exposure, dehydration, or shipwreck. Those who do complete the crossing are often detained and deported, while many others are turned away by authorities or coastal communities in Malaysia and Indonesia. Most recently in January 2025, Malaysian authorities turned away two boats carrying approximately 300 refugees after providing only limited emergency food and water.

One Rohingya refugee based in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, the site of the world’s largest Rohingya refugee camp, previously explained to Reuters the desperate logic driving these journeys. “People are dying in the fighting, dying from hunger. So some think it’s better to die at sea than to die slowly here,” they said.

In their joint statement, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) framed the Andaman Sea disaster as a tragic symptom of a larger unresolved crisis. “This tragic incident reflects the dire consequences of protracted displacement and the absence of durable solutions for the Rohingya,” the statement read. The agencies called on the international community to immediately increase and sustain funding to support Rohingya refugees and their host communities in Bangladesh, and renewed calls for urgent action to address the root causes of displacement inside Myanmar. As Bangladesh prepares to mark its new year, the agencies said the disaster is a stark reminder of the urgent need to create conditions that allow Rohingya refugees to return to their home country voluntarily, safely, and with dignity.

Three years into Sudan’s brutal civil conflict, a new study from global humanitarian organization Islamic Relief has revealed a devastating collapse of the country’s grassroots food safety net: nearly half of all community-run lifesaving kitchens, known locally as takaaya, have shuttered their doors in just six months, driven by plummeting international support and economic spillover from the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Takaaya, operated by local Sudanese mutual aid networks, have emerged as the last line of food assistance for millions of civilians trapped by ongoing fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since the conflict erupted in April 2023. To assess the state of these critical operations, Islamic Relief conducted a large-scale survey of 844 takaaya across six Sudanese states, confirming that 354 kitchens – 42% of the total sampled – have ceased operations due to crippling shortages of funding and essential supplies.

The collapse of the community kitchen network comes as Sudan grapples with what the UN calls the world’s largest hunger crisis. Data from the survey and humanitarian agencies confirms that 21 million Sudanese – 45% of the entire population – currently face acute food insecurity, a crisis amplified by mass population displacement, deliberate attacks on agricultural lands, and blockades of key trade routes. Over the past month alone, the US-Israeli war on Iran has upended global supply chains and sent costs soaring across Sudan: fuel prices have jumped by 187% in recent weeks, adding further unsustainable pressure on already strained aid operations.

The humanitarian catastrophe is compounded by a growing humanitarian tracking crisis: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced this week that the number of people registered as missing in Sudan has surpassed 11,000, marking a 40% increase in just 12 months. To date, the conflict has displaced more than 11 million Sudanese, with many forced to flee multiple times as frontlines shift; 4 million of those displaced have sought refuge across international borders, and thousands more have been killed since fighting began.

As the conflict enters its fourth year with no sign of de-escalation, international mediators are convening a high-level conference in Berlin on Wednesday – the third anniversary of the outbreak of war – hosted by Germany, the African Union, France, the European Union, the UK and the US. Notably, neither the SAF nor the RSF have been invited to the conference, and no official delegations from the two warring parties will attend. The two sides remain deadlocked, with the RSF and its allied factions controlling Darfur in western Sudan, and the SAF holding most of the rest of the country, each backed by competing regional and international patrons. The United Arab Emirates is the primary military and financial backer of the RSF, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), with exclusive reporting from Middle East Eye last week confirming additional support from Ethiopia, operating from a military base in the country’s Benishangul-Gumuz region. The SAF, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, draws its core support from Egypt and Turkey, and has increasingly gained backing from Saudi Arabia, which is engaged in a regional rivalry with the UAE.

Humanitarian organizations, aid groups and human rights advocates have issued urgent calls to the governments gathering in Berlin, demanding two key actions: ramp up immediate support for local Sudanese aid groups, and hold parties responsible for human rights abuses accountable. “It is imperative that attending states prioritize the needs of Sudanese civilians over geopolitical interests,” said a Human Rights Watch spokesperson, echoing calls from the British Red Cross and Sudanese Red Crescent for all warring parties to strictly adhere to international humanitarian law, amid ongoing attacks on civilian infrastructure, residential areas and humanitarian workers.

Unlike large international aid operations, takaaya are rooted in local communities: most operate out of mosques, community centers or private family homes, and work hand-in-hand with Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) – grassroots mutual aid networks that have led the country’s humanitarian response from the earliest days of the war, earning Nobel Peace Prize nominations in both 2024 and 2025.

For the millions of Sudanese who rely on these kitchens, they are far more than a source of food: they are the only thing keeping many alive. Osama Abdulkafi Mubarak, a chef at a surviving takaaya, told Islamic Relief his kitchen feeds 200 to 250 families every single day. “We usually cook beans ‘foul’ for breakfast, and lentils, pasta and rice for lunch…. It depends on whatever is available on the day. It is very important, it is their main meal,” he said. Mubarak explained that the funding streams that supported kitchens early in the war have entirely dried up. “The main donors who used to pay for takaaya at the beginning of the war have stopped,” he said. “People were more enthusiastic to support. They were willing to help more, but now money is much less, and even people working on the takaaya are suffering because they also have a lot of other responsibilities, and life is tough. I personally think the situation is worse now, especially after this American, Israeli, Iranian war. The economic situation is worse. Overall, it’s worse than before.”

Mohammed Sulaiman Hilal, a community kitchen beneficiary who relies on the service for daily food, called the takaaya irreplaceable for Sudanese civilians. “Without those community kitchens, life wouldn’t have been possible; people wouldn’t have been able to come back to their areas,” he said. “Most people don’t have jobs, life is stagnated, there is no source of income, most people are fully dependent on takaaya. Without takaaya’s presence there won’t be any humans left.”

Grassroots aid groups in Sudan have long struggled to secure consistent international funding. While they received limited U.S. funding toward the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, all U.S. support was cut when USAID programs were eliminated under the second Trump administration, leaving groups almost entirely dependent on donations from the Sudanese diaspora and local community giving – streams that have now collapsed amid the country’s deep economic crisis. Rampant inflation has doubled the cost of producing a single meal, pushing most kitchens over the edge. In Khartoum, one volunteer reported that the cost of one meal has more than doubled in six months, jumping from $5 to nearly $12. In Port Sudan, volunteer Alaa saw her kitchen go from feeding 4,000 people a day to total suspension when funding ran out. “When we had to close that kitchen, it felt like abandoning my own family,” she said.

Islamic Relief’s survey found stark regional variations in kitchen closures, reflecting the uneven impact of the conflict across the country. In North Darfur, where more than half of all children suffer from acute malnutrition, 57% of surveyed kitchens have closed. In Tawila, a destination for thousands of people who fled the RSF capture of el-Fasher, young volunteer-run kitchens are often forced to close for days between the rare incoming donations. Even in Port Sudan, one of the country’s relatively more stable cities under SAF control, six out of seven surveyed kitchens have closed. The only exception is North Kordofan, a site of recent active fighting, where almost all kitchens remain open, sustained by local volunteer efforts.

Iftikhar Shaheen, global CEO of Islamic Relief, called the collapse of Sudan’s community kitchen network a collective failure of the international community. “The suffering in Sudan is a collective moral failure of the international community. Three years of war have created the world’s biggest hunger crisis, and these locally run kitchens have saved countless lives,” Shaheen said. “Their closure now is a death sentence for many vulnerable families. Heroic volunteers are doing everything they can to keep the kitchens open, but they need more support immediately.”

The scale of underfunding extends to formal UN-led aid efforts: the 2026 UN humanitarian appeal for Sudan has received only 16% of its total requested funding, while last year’s appeal received less than 40% of the amount needed to meet civilian needs.

More than 30 days have passed since award-winning international journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin was taken into custody by Kuwaiti authorities, rights campaigners have confirmed, in a case that has drawn renewed scrutiny of growing restrictions on press freedom across the Gulf region amid escalating Middle East tensions tied to the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The 41-year-old, a dual American-Kuwaiti citizen, was apprehended on March 2 during a routine trip to Kuwait to visit family members. Since his arrest, he has been held in arbitrary detention, with his legal team granted only extremely limited access to meet with him, leaving his legal status uncertain more than a month on.

While official charges have not been formally clarified by Kuwaiti officials, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has confirmed that the arrest followed a series of social media posts Shihab-Eldin published related to the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran. Among the shared content was publicly available footage of a United States fighter jet crashing at a US air base located within Kuwait’s borders. CPJ has stressed that all material the journalist shared was already accessible to the general public, and he did not publish any restricted or unapproved content.

The press freedom organization notes that the most likely charges Kuwaiti authorities will bring against Shihab-Eldin are spreading false information, endangering national security, and misusing a personal mobile device—offenses that CPJ says are routinely weaponized by Kuwaiti authorities against independent reporters and critical voices.

Shihab-Eldin’s decades-long journalistic career includes bylines at some of the world’s most prominent news outlets, including *The New York Times*, Al Jazeera English, and PBS. His work focusing on human rights and conflict in the Middle East has earned him multiple major industry awards, including a British Journalism Award and an Amnesty International Human Rights Defender Award.

His detention is not an isolated incident, CPJ emphasizes, but part of a sweeping regional crackdown on online expression that has accelerated since the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran. Like other Gulf states, Kuwait has enacted increasingly strict controls on digital speech amid rising regional tensions, in a move officials frame as an effort to limit unapproved reporting on attacks targeting the country’s infrastructure.

On the same day of Shihab-Eldin’s arrest, Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior released an official public statement urging citizens to avoid “photographing or publishing any clips or information related to missiles or relevant locations,” and confirmed that multiple people had already been taken into custody on charges of “spreading false news.”

Weeks after the arrest, Kuwait’s legislature introduced a new bill that would hand down maximum 10-year prison sentences to anyone found guilty of “disseminating news, publishing statements, or spreading false rumors related to military entities” with the alleged intent of eroding public confidence in state security institutions.

Data from the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) shows that dozens of people across the region have been arbitrarily detained since the war began, all for the act of “peacefully expressing their opinions on social media.” The rights organization reports that most of these detainees are held in unrecorded facilities run by state security forces for days at a time, with no access to contact their families or meet with legal representation.

“Governments in the region are exploiting the current war to intensify their systematic repression, targeting and suppressing all public freedoms, including the right to free expression both online and offline,” the GCHR said in a statement.

Rights group HuMena has confirmed that Shihab-Eldin is not the only high-profile detainee held in Kuwait in recent weeks; other prominent detainees include activists Farrah Alsaqqaf and Suad Al-Munayes.

Sara Qudah, CPJ’s Middle East representative, called Shihab-Eldin’s detention “emblematic” of a accelerating trend across Gulf states, where “national security is used as a convenient pretext to crack down on independent journalism and fundamental freedom of speech.”

This report was compiled based on original independent reporting from Middle East Eye, which provides unfiltered coverage of the Middle East, North Africa, and surrounding regions.

On a historic Monday that marked the first papal visit to Algeria in modern history, Pope Leo XIV wove together spiritual reflection and bold political messaging, blending calls for domestic reform with a global rebuke of exploitative power dynamics. The American-born pontiff, who traces his religious roots to the Augustinian Order founded on the teachings of the North African-born Christian thinker Saint Augustine, made history as the first leader of the Catholic Church to set foot on Algerian soil, the birthplace of his order’s namesake.

The landmark day was not without shadow: two major events dominated headlines alongside the visit: a high-profile public clash with U.S. President Donald Trump over the pontiff’s opposition to the war on Iran, and a failed double suicide bombing just 50 kilometers outside the capital Algiers that marked the first major extremist attack in the country since 2012.

Beginning his itinerary in the capital Algiers, where he was welcomed with full official honors, Pope Leo XIV first offered prayers at the iconic Martyrs’ Monument, a memorial honoring the thousands who died during Algeria’s 1954–1962 war of independence from French colonial rule. Standing at the site that carries deep national and diplomatic resonance, amid ongoing tensions that continue to strain Franco-Algerian diplomatic relations, he framed lasting peace as a project rooted in reconciliation. “Peace is only possible through forgiveness,” he told assembled guests. “The true struggle for liberation will only be definitively won when peace of hearts has been achieved.”

Moving from the memorial to a formal address before Algeria’s top political leadership, including President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and the international diplomatic corps, the pontiff turned his attention to domestic political reform. Three leading global non-governmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch, had publicly called on Pope Leo XIV in the days leading up to the visit to raise human rights concerns with Algerian officials, who have faced sustained accusations from rights defenders of cracking down on opposition since the 2019 Hirak pro-democracy movement that forced longtime authoritarian leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power. Rights groups document widespread arrests, detentions and convictions of activists, journalists and government critics in the years since the movement.

In his address, Pope Leo XIV urged Algerian authorities to embrace greater political openness and empower a free civil society, particularly for the country’s large youth population. “The true strength of a country lies in the cooperation of everyone in achieving the common good. The authorities are called upon not to dominate, but to serve the people and their development,” he said. “I therefore urge those of you who hold authority in this country not to fear this prospect and to promote a vibrant, dynamic and free civil society, in which young people, in particular, are recognised as having the capacity to contribute to broadening the horizon of hope for all.”

The pontiff also used the platform to deliver a veiled rebuke of global power politics, condemning “ongoing violations of international law and neo-colonial tendencies” in an implicit critique of Western foreign policy in the Middle East. The comment came amid an intensifying public feud with Trump, who has launched repeated attacks on Pope Leo XIV over his increasingly vocal opposition to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. On the Sunday before the visit, Trump publicly stated he was “not a fan of Pope Leo” and falsely claimed the pontiff supported nuclear proliferation. On Monday, the U.S. president doubled down, refusing to walk back his comments and labeling the pontiff “weak.”

Speaking to reporters on his flight from Rome to Algiers, Pope Leo XIV pushed back on the conflict without escalating it, saying he had “no intention of entering into a debate” with Trump and was not “afraid” of his administration. “The Church has a moral duty to speak out very clearly against war,” he said. “I don’t think the message of the Gospel should be distorted as some are doing.”

As the pontiff delivered his address in Algiers, news broke of a coordinated attack in Blida, a city located roughly 50 kilometers south of the capital. Two suicide bombers detonated their explosive devices, killing themselves: one outside the city’s central police station, and another roughly 500 meters from the first site. Four additional unexploded bombs targeting police and public spaces were successfully defused by security forces, and an unconfirmed number of civilians were injured in the incident. Algerian authorities had not issued an official statement on the attack as of Monday evening. Security analysts noted that the heavy security deployment around the pope’s visit in Algiers likely pushed attackers to shift their target to the neighboring city.

Despite the unrest, the visit proceeded as scheduled, with Pope Leo XIV traveling to Annaba, the site of ancient Hippo where Saint Augustine served as bishop, for scheduled events on Tuesday. In his welcoming remarks on Monday, Tebboune expressed Algeria’s “immense pride” in hosting the pontiff on the land of Saint Augustine, whom he called “your spiritual father and one of the most luminous minds in the history of human thought.” Catholics make up less than 0.01% of Algeria’s population, where Sunni Islam is the official state religion, with most Catholic residents being European expatriates or sub-Saharan African students. Tebboune also praised the pope’s “courageous stance” against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the humanitarian suffering unfolding across the Gulf region.

The Algeria stop is the first leg of Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural multi-nation trip to Africa, which will continue with visits to Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea before the pontiff returns to Rome on April 23.

Tensions in the strategic Strait of Hormuz have sparked urgent global calls for diplomatic de-escalation, as Pakistan leads intensive behind-the-scenes efforts to organize a second round of high-stakes negotiations between the United States and Iran. The push for renewed dialogue comes even after Washington implemented a controversial bilateral naval blockade of Iranian ports this week, a move Tehran has decried as state-sponsored piracy that risks igniting full-scale conflict across the Persian Gulf.

The first round of negotiations, held in Islamabad over the weekend, ended without a breakthrough, leaving key gaps between the two longtime adversaries over the future of Iran’s nuclear program. But speaking to Fox News on Monday, US Vice President JD Vance, who led the American delegation, struck a surprisingly optimistic note, saying the talks had made significant progress and that Washington had laid out clear terms for potential compromises with Tehran. “I really think the ball is in the Iranian court, because we put a lot on the table,” Vance said. A second senior US administration official later confirmed that ongoing work to salvage a diplomatic agreement is still moving forward.

The blockade, which officially entered into force on Monday, has already triggered sharp Iranian retaliatory threats, creating a dangerous new standoff that carries severe ramifications for the global economy. One of the world’s most critical chokepoints for global oil trade, any prolonged disruption around Hormuz could send energy prices soaring and tip the already fragile global economy into recession. On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency issued a stark warning: global crude oil demand is on track to see its steepest second-quarter decline since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, fueled in large part by uncertainty over the Gulf standoff.

In a related development that underscores rising security risks in the region, the US Naval Institute’s news service USNI News reported Tuesday that the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier strike group is rerouting its journey to the Arabian Sea along the African coast, deliberately avoiding the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The alternate path bypasses the key waterway that has seen repeated drone and missile attacks on American shipping by Yemen’s Houthi movement between 2024 and 2025.

Tehran has fiercely pushed back against the US blockade, with an Iranian military spokesman condemning any US restrictions on international shipping through the Gulf as illegal acts of piracy. The spokesman issued a stark warning: if Iranian commercial ports come under sustained blockade, no shipping lanes or ports across the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman will remain safe from retaliation.

The core sticking point in negotiations remains Iran’s nuclear program. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that any final agreement must permanently end Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, while Iranian officials have consistently reaffirmed that their country’s nuclear activities are exclusively for peaceful civilian energy and medical purposes. Trump told reporters outside the Oval Office this week that Iranian officials had already reached out to signal they are eager to reach a negotiated settlement. “I can tell you that we’ve been called by the other side. They’d like to make a deal. Very badly, very badly,” Trump said.

According to reports from The New York Times, during the Islamabad talks, US negotiators pushed for a 20-year full suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment activities, while Iran countered with a proposal for a five-year freeze on its nuclear program — an offer US officials rejected out of hand.

Pakistan, which has served as the neutral host for the talks between the two rivals, has ramped up its diplomatic outreach to bridge the remaining gaps. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif confirmed Monday that “all-out efforts are underway” to reach a deal that would end hostilities and that the current fragile ceasefire between the two sides remains intact. Multiple anonymous diplomatic sources confirmed Tuesday that US and Iranian negotiating teams could return to Islamabad as early as this week to resume discussions, just days after their first round of talks — the highest-level engagement between the two nations since 1979 — ended without agreement. “Efforts are underway to bring both parties back to the negotiating table. Of course, we want them back in Islamabad, but the venue and date are not yet final,” one source told Agence France-Presse.

Regional analysts say both sides are facing mounting pressure to step back from the brink of full-scale war. Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, noted that both Washington and Tehran appear to be searching for a face-saving “off-ramp from the war” that allows both sides to claim victory without further conflict. “This war has been extremely costly for the parties involved and far beyond,” he told Al Jazeera. “Iran has greater leverage than it did at the start of the war, but I have no doubt they would seek an end to hostilities.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has reaffirmed Tehran’s position that any future talks must proceed strictly within the framework of international law, according to Iran’s state-owned broadcaster IRIB. Russia, which has positioned itself as a potential mediator in the talks, confirmed Tuesday that its longstanding offer to take custody of Iran’s enriched uranium as part of a final nuclear deal remains on the table. “The offer still stands, but it has not yet been acted upon,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, tensions remain high along the Lebanon-Israel border. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem urged Lebanese officials on Tuesday to cancel a planned diplomatic meeting with Israeli representatives in Washington, reaffirming the group’s longstanding rejection of any direct negotiations with Israel. The call comes amid sustained Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon that have killed more than 2,000 people in the country since late February.