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Our editors’ weekly take on humanitarian news, trends, and developments from around the globe.
On our radar
The RSF tries to cover up its Sudan slaughter
After the crime, the clean-up. Whenever the Rapid Support Forces launch their periodic genocidal attacks on civilians, they follow them up with a familiar routine: gaslighting, denial, PR stunts, deflection, and evidence-scrubbing. So it is with El Fasher, where RSF fighters have likely killed thousands after seizing the city from the army and allied groups over the weekend. Videos posted by RSF fighters show them gleefully celebrating acts of depraved violence, humiliating and taunting victims before gunning them down en masse. Now, bodies are being cleared from El Fasher’s streets (according to our sources), while RSF channels pump out footage of fighters handing aid to the city’s population. The fighter who committed the worst atrocities – Al-Fateh Abdullah Idris, known as “Abu Lulu” – has been arrested, and RSF leader Hemedti has ordered an “investigation”. None of it, of course, is remotely convincing. El Fasher is only the latest in a long line of RSF and Janjaweed crimes. What it does perhaps suggest, though, is that the group is finally feeling the heat. The massacres have focused global scrutiny on Sudan’s suffering – and the RSF’s chief patron, the United Arab Emirates, is facing growing outrage. For more on the past week’s events, read this searing piece by our contributor Ahmed Gouja – one of Darfur’s leading journalists and human rights activists.
Hurricane Melissa’s catastrophic blow to the Caribbean
Melissa, one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record, left a trail of devastation across the Caribbean, where extreme winds, flooding, and landslides killed at least 52 people and caused widespread destruction that will take some communities years to recover from. In Jamaica, which took a direct hit from Melissa’s peak sustained winds of 185 mph, the maximum category five storm caused an estimated $7.7 billion of damage, cutting off, tearing apart, and flattening entire neighbourhoods, and killing at least 19 people in the process. In Haiti, preliminary reports suggested at least 29 deaths from Melissa, with 25 people killed when residents in the small town of Petit-Goave were washed away by floodwaters after a river burst its banks. Several others were killed in a landslide near the capital, Port-au-Prince. Another four people were killed due to the impacts of the storm in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, while in Cuba 735,000 people had to be evacuated to emergency shelters but no casualties were immediately reported. Some aid groups said funding cuts had limited their ability to prepare and respond to the disaster. For instance, a spokesperson for the World Food Programme in Haiti told The New Humanitarian that the UN agency would usually have enough emergency supplies to feed 200,000 people for a month stockpiled in the country during hurricane season, but that in the southern region most affected by Melissa they only had enough for 30,000.
Bombings continue in Gaza as ceasefire stumbles on
A tenuous and partial calm has returned to the Gaza Strip after the Israeli military launched intense attacks on various parts of the enclave on 28 and 29 October, killing at least 104 people – including 66 women and children. The attacks came after the Israeli military said it was fired on by Palestinian militants in southern Gaza and amid pressure from far-right government ministers to resume the war. Hamas said it was not responsible for the attack on Israeli forces and that it was committed to the ceasefire. After the escalation, Israel said it had returned to enforcing the ceasefire, but it has continued to bomb parts of Gaza. It is continuing to demolish residential buildings in areas where its forces are still deployed, which cover over half of Gaza’s territory, and there is also increasing concern that the so-called “yellow line” that Israeli troops have withdrawn to could solidify into a new, permanent border. Israeli soldiers continue to kill Palestinians who approach or accidentally cross the line. Aid efforts also continue to face obstruction. Israel is allowing more commercial trucks into Gaza, but the entry of aid trucks is still being restricted and very few materials for desperately needed shelters are being allowed in. All this comes amid growing international concern that the ceasefire is stalling in its initial phase, leaving Gaza in a state of limbo.
Foreign aid on home soil
The money the United Kingdom government spends on asylum support at home is eating into aid funds that should be used abroad, a parliamentary committee report noted, in another examination of how big donor governments spend foreign aid on home soil. Some of the world’s biggest donor governments count domestic asylum support costs as part of their official aid budgets – obscuring the value of funding, critics say. Some countries have spent more on domestic asylum costs than they do on humanitarian aid, yet count both as aid. It has again become a public discussion point in the UK – amid more than a tinge of racism and xenophobia – as part of scrutiny on so-called “asylum seeker hotels”. Bond, a network of UK NGOs, said it underscores the need to scale up support for appropriate housing, and to stop using aid budgets on “expensive and unsuitable” asylum accommodations. The UK government said it spent 20% of its official development assistance on domestic refugee and asylum support costs in 2024.
The power of Africa’s frustrated street, in Tanzania this time
Protests have escalated in Tanzania following elections on 29 October widely viewed as a sham. Violence erupted on polling day over the exclusion from the ballot of President Samia Suluhu Hassan's two biggest challengers, and escalating government repression. The protesters defied a heavy security presence to target polling stations, police vehicles, and businesses connected to the ruling party, some chanting "We want our country back!". Hundreds of people have reportedly been shot dead, and Amnesty International has called for an investigation. Protests continued on 30 October despite an internet blackout and the deployment of soldiers to enforce a lockdown. Tanzania’s main airports were also closed, with clips posted of people surging onto the runway in Dar es Salaam. Protesters were again on the streets on 31 October, this time trying to reach State House. Hassan was initially lauded as a reformer but oversaw a crackdown on opponents that included extrajudicial killings. Her son, Abdul, has been accused of directing the most recent bout of abductions. The silence from the African Union, and regional body SADC – where several ruling parties are also under pressure – has been deafening. Yet again, as in – most recently – Madagascar, a clear case of democratic backsliding has been ignored. It leaves a frustrated citizenry with little other option than to vent their anger on the streets.
Trump steps up sabre-rattling in Latin America
The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on Colombian President Gustavo Petro for allegedly “allow[ing] drug cartels to flourish”. The leaders had already clashed over US military strikes on boats Trump says are smuggling drugs into the United States. Petro says Colombian nationals were on board some of the vessels and has labelled the US actions “murders”. The US sanctions reportedly had an immediate effect, with Petro forced to take a detour to a military base in Spain to refuel as he embarked on a three-nation tour of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar. The US began bombing boats in international waters off Venezuela in September and is now also targeting boats in the eastern Pacific. More than 60 people have been killed so far and tensions continue to escalate in the region, with the US deploying its largest warship to the Caribbean. On 31 October, two newspapers reported that the Trump administration has decided to strike military targets within Venezuela. Many believe Trump – and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio – have wider plans to try and oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Weekend read
An atrocity foretold: How the RSF siege of El Fasher turned into genocidal slaughter
Communication networks are down, but a deluge of shocking videos point to mass killings on a devastating scale.
And finally…
Influencers pose increasing risk to Indigenous peoples
Uncontacted Indigenous groups – who are aware of the outside world but actively reject contact with outsiders – have survived numerous threats throughout history. But while loggers, missionaries, and farmers have been a risk to uncontacted peoples for centuries, a new, very 21st century danger has emerged: social media influencers. Survival International, an NGO, has warned in a new report that it is monitoring growing numbers of “influencers entering territories and deliberately seeking interaction” with uncontacted tribes – potentially bringing disease and other dangers with them. India’s North Sentinel Island, where one of the world’s most isolated groups live, is increasingly targeted by social media influencers, according to the report, despite it being illegal to travel there. At least 196 uncontacted groups live self-sufficiently in remote places around the world, though 95% of them are believed to be in the Amazon. Survival International warned that around half could be wiped out in the next decade without stronger action from governments to protect them. And while influencers are the new threat, the primary risk to uncontacted groups is resource extraction, usually logging or mining.
