News Feature

The huge silos at the roundabout as you enter Syria’s Hassakeh city are decorated with giant pictures of Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the Turkey-based separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), as well as flags from the military arm of the local Kurdish-led administration. There is still some corn in the silos,...

The situation could not be more different for Ali, an Afghan asylum seeker in his mid-30s whose name has been changed to protect his identity. Ali arrived in Paris, France, after crossing Iran, Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, and Italy on foot. The journey is replete with dangers and guards at...

The experience of Afghan asylum seekers in France differs considerably depending on how they arrive in the country, reflecting a tension across Europe between rhetoric about the need to protect people from Taliban persecution and the reality of an erosion of access to asylum.  Around 2,600 Afghans who were airlifted...

Since clashes erupted between Ethiopian forces and northern rebels more than a year ago, another war has flared up online as the rivals spread false claims to control the conflict’s narrative. Digital activists have been engaged in a fierce battle to discredit their opponents, from pro-government sites claiming to promote...

Lying in his hospital bed, a bandage wrapped around his foot, Ekidor Esekon remembers little of the day he was shot. What he does recall is setting out early on an otherwise normal morning in early December, to herd cows with his cousin deep in the bush along Kenya’s border...

Despite evidence to the contrary, Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) leaders have previously denied targeting civilians and always promise to investigate the abuses committed by individual soldiers every time the matter is raised. Such was the case on Tuesday as TPLF called a ceasefire as the stepping stone to ending...

If the coronavirus pandemic had not happened, it is likely Jack Onyango would still be living alone, working in Kenya’s capital Nairobi and sending money back to his wife and children in his faraway rural home. Like so many Kenyans, he moved to Nairobi as a young man, believing that...

Authorities in Zimbabwe caught four smugglers trying to ship 26 great apes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to South Africa. In Zambia, the slaughter of animals for bushmeat skyrocketed. In Botswana, lawmakers debated whether to arm park rangers to defend themselves from poachers. In Uganda, a poacher desperate...

When a top American diplomat was sent to meet with Albert Yuma at his home in Kinshasa to make clear that the United States strongly objected to the plan, according to an interview with the diplomat, J. Peter Pham. After pulling out a bottle of Cristal Champagne, Yuma talked with...

The huge mining agency where Albert Yuma Mulimbi is chairman was nationalised and renamed under President Mobutu Sese Seko after Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960. Gécamines once had a monopoly on copper and cobalt mining and, by the 1980s, was among the top copper producers in the world....