Our editors’ weekly take on humanitarian news, trends, and developments from around the globe.
On our radar
How Trump’s aid freeze is hitting humanitarian responses
Frontline aid groups are scrambling as US funding freezes cascade to the ground in emergencies across the globe. From Syria to parched Somalia, from Ukraine to Myanmar’s borderlands, local NGOs and aid organisations reliant on suddenly frozen US funding are suspending programmes or stalling them. Local aid leaders describe days of chaos trying to navigate US President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order to freeze aid, vague emergency waivers that may exempt some of it, and often contradictory instructions from government counterparts. Some local aid leaders are trying to restart, days after shuttering programmes. Many others are in limbo. A few are taking a calculated risk to keep programmes running. The turmoil is a symptom of the global humanitarian system’s extreme dependence on voluntary contributions from a few mainly Western donors. Things are shifting quickly as aid leaders try to decipher often contradictory directives. Like many across the international aid sector, the US-fuelled chaos is pushing local humanitarian leaders to think beyond short-term workarounds. “We have to think about the future,” said one NGO leader in Mogadishu. “We have to come up with a strategy and change the situation.” Read more: Trump stop-work orders hit local aid and frontline communities.
M23 gains take displacement crisis in eastern Congo to a new level
After seizing Goma – the largest city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo – in a lightning offensive, the M23 rebel group, which is backed by thousands of Rwandan troops, is now closing in on other eastern cities and has pledged to march on Kinshasa. The humanitarian impact of the latest fighting has been disastrous. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced in Goma – a hub for relief operations across the east – food supplies are dwindling, and water and electricity has been badly disrupted. How did we get here? Led by Congolese Tutsi officers, the M23 began a new rebellion in late 2021, accusing Kinshasa of breaking an earlier peace accord. Rwanda extended support because it felt it was losing influence in eastern DRC to regional rivals. Kinshasa aggravated the situation by refusing to negotiate with the M23, and by outsourcing its military campaign to local militias including the FDLR, a rebel group founded in DRC by the exiled Hutu extremists behind the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Kigali used that collaboration as a pretext to entrench its support (receiving little international pushback), and mediation efforts failed. Now, the conflict is at a serious risk of repeating the devastating regional wars of the 1990s and 2000s. Read our briefing for more, and look out for upcoming reports from the ground.
Gaza ceasefire holds, as Palestinians return to north
The two-week-old ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is holding despite a continued lack of clarity and concern about what will happen once the first 42-day phase of the agreement ends. On 30 January, Hamas released eight more people it was holding in captivity from its 7 October 2023 attacks into Israel – five Thai civilians, two Israeli civilians, and one female Israeli soldier. The releases turned chaotic as Hamas paraded the captives through crowds before handing them over to the Red Cross. Israel briefly delayed the release of 110 Palestinian prisoners before receiving assurances about safety during future releases, the next one slated for 1 February. Meanwhile, nearly 400,000 people have returned to northern Gaza since 27 January when Israel began allowing Palestinians to cross the Netzarim corridor – a military road bisecting the enclave. The dramatic increase in humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza by Israel has also continued, with most of the aid consisting of food supplies. It remains unclear how Israel’s ban on UNRWA, which came into effect on 30 January, will affect humanitarian efforts. For now, the agency is continuing its activities in Gaza and the Israeli occupied West Bank.
Rebel leader becomes new Syrian president
Syria gained a new president this week in Ahmad al-Sharaa – one of a series of changes announced by the leaders of the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that overthrew President Bashar al-Assad. Al-Sharaa, who commanded HTS in early December as it took Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus in quick succession, is to lead Syria for a “transitional period”. HTS itself, along with all military factions, including the Syrian army, is to be officially dissolved. The constitution and al-Assad’s Baath party are gone too. In his first televised address since al-Assad’s ouster, al-Sharaa pledged to form an inclusive government that would lead to “free and fair elections”, also vowing to “pursue the criminals who shed Syrian blood and committed massacres and crimes”. But Syria’s war is not over: Kurdish forces are still fighting Türkiye-backed rebels in clashes in the northeast that have displaced more than 25,000 people over the past week alone. Civilians have reportedly been killed, and Human Rights Watch said a drone strike on an ambulance earlier this month, carried out by Türkiye-backed rebels, is an apparent war crime.
Trump orders expansion of Guantánamo migrant detention facility
President Trump has ordered the construction of a 30,000-bed facility to hold migrants at the notorious American naval facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba as part of his mass deportation campaign. The US base has been used to house terrorism suspects since 2002, becoming synonymous with torture and unlawful imprisonment. The US has secretively detained refugees and migrants intercepted at sea at Guantánamo Bay for decades, but the facility has not previously been used for people apprehended on US soil or at this scale. In its first weeks in office, the Trump administration has launched a campaign to round up and deport thousands of undocumented people. Stepped-up deportation flights to Latin American countries are already causing concern and controversy, with Latin American leaders saying deportees are being subjected to inhuman treatment. As a result, on 26 January, Colombia announced it would not allow US deportation flights to land, but quickly reversed course after Trump threatened steep financial penalties if it did not comply.
Sahel splinter group raises security questions
Dubbed “Sahelexit”, the decision by Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger to leave the West African regional community known as ECOWAS is now official. The three Alliance of Sahel States (AES) – sanctioned over coups that overturned their elected governments – are out. It leaves the 12 other countries in ECOWAS, one of Africa’s most economically integrated regions, rethinking the organisation’s relevance. Like ECOWAS, the new group will allow free movement between their respective territories – dismissively referred to as the “coup belt”. But it is in the field of security cooperation that the AES states will be especially missed. Jihadist insurgents are on the march. So-called Islamic State forces in the Sahel have set up in northwest Nigeria, where they are known as Lakurawa. With neighbouring Niger now pulling out of a regional Multilateral Joint Task Force, it will make countering the threat all the harder.
Weekend read
Aid in the crosshairs: Why access is growing harder in Haiti
“Our principle of impartiality is being challenged.”
Aid groups are increasingly seen as protecting the gangs, leading them to become targeted by the police and self-defence groups.
And finally…
A divisive Oscar contender
When the nominations for the 97th Academy Awards were announced last week, Emilia Pérez led the charge with 13, including Best Picture. The film – about a Mexican cartel leader who transitions into a woman and starts a charity to help victims of the drug war – has been a hit among awards bodies and critics, but its depictions of Mexico, transgender people, and the drug war have come under scrutiny, particularly in Central and South America. The initial hoopla centred around the film’s lack of authenticity: not only was it shot entirely in director Jacques Audiard’s native France, but it also stars a Spaniard (Karla Sofía Gascón), a Puerto Rican (Zoë Saldaña), and a Mexican-American (Selena Gomez) all speaking in non-Mexican accented Spanish. Over the last week, Audiard and Gascón – who made history as the first trans actress nominated for Best Actress – have found themselves immersed in fresh controversies due to racially insensitive remarks. In an interview, Audiard, who is up for Best Director, said: “Spanish is a language of modest countries, of developing countries, of the poor and migrants.” Those remarks received an instant backlash online for being both racist and classist. Days later, some of Gascón’s tweets dating back to 2016 resurfaced. In them, the former telenovela star made incendiary comments about an array of groups, notable figures, and even the Oscars themselves. Referring to Muslims in Spain, she called for a banning of the religion. The film has been praised by some as a statement against the current US administration, which re-affirmed its policy of recognising only two genders and embarked on a massive deportation effort only weeks after coming to office. Others, however, say it is tone deaf and fails to properly acknowledge and address its central topics of the drug war and transgenderism.