Controversial fences lining Bangladesh’s Rohingya refugee camps are the focus of attention after the deadly 22 March fire that uprooted more than 45,000 people – roughly five percent of the camps’ population. Rights groups say the fences “cost lives” as refugees struggled to flee the blaze. Witnesses told TNH the fences prevented some people from scrambling to safety, and slowed rescuers and fire services. Bangladeshi officials told media the fences aren’t to blame. Humanitarian NGOs are asking Bangladeshi authorities to “reconsider” the fences and, in the meantime, to ensure gates are staffed and opened 24/7. They’re also calling for the crowded camps to be “built back safer”, with more space between shelters, fire-resistant material, and better evacuation planning. Almost all the camps’ structures are made from bamboo; in the past, the government has prohibited using more permanent materials. Construction on the fences and watchtowers accelerated months ago, but aid groups, locked in an at-times tense relationship with the government, haven’t often spoken publicly on the issue. The fire disaster appears to have changed things: “This tragic event could have been less disastrous had barbed wire fencing not been erected,” said the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland.

Eritrea to withdraw troops from Ethiopia

Eritrean troops – accused of killings, rape, rights abuses, and looting – will pull out of Ethiopia, according to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who only admitted the troops were there on 23 March, after months of denial. Abiy also acknowledged rights abuses against civilians in the nearly five-month conflict in the northern Tigray region. Joint investigations between the UN and the national human rights commission – which also confirmed earlier accounts of a massacre at Axum – have been agreed in principle, while humanitarian teams will have less restrictions on movement. However, those relatively positive developments are outweighed by reports of previously unknown massacres, severe humanitarian needs, ongoing violence, forced displacement, and an escalation well beyond Tigray. The Los Angeles Times reported a January massacre at Bora, blaming Ethiopian federal troops for the killings, while Médecins Sans Frontières witnessed roadside executions by federal troops this week. Clashes continue, meanwhile, between Ethiopian and Sudanese forces at a contested border zone. And 500 kilometres south of the Tigray capital, Mekelle, killings and armed clashes involving (at least) Amhara and Oromo civilians and armed groups in locations including Ataye and Shewa Robit led to dozens of deaths and transport interruptions. 

Sex abuse at Global Fund grantee in Ghana

The Global Fund says leaders of an HIV programme it funds in Ghana demanded money and sex from beneficiaries in exchange for assistance. In an 18-page report seen by The New Humanitarian but not made public, the Global Fund said the allegations at the Ghana Network Association of People Living with HIV were first reported in 2019 and took place between 2010 and 2019. The network did not immediately respond to emails from TNH, but the report indicated the majority of executives denied the allegations. Investigators from the fund, which invests around $4 billion a year to fight infectious diseases, also found its safeguarding framework to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse was “inadequate”. Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General António Guterres released his annual report on measures being taken to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse, citing findings of an investigation by TNH and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. More than 50 women said they were sexually abused or exploited by aid workers during the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The women said most of the men were from the World Health Organization. 

Kenya’s ‘reckless’ threat to close refugee camps

This week, the Kenyan government made a new but now familiar threat to close Dadaab refugee camp, adding there would be “no room for further negotiation”. It gave the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, two weeks to draw up a plan to shut not just Dadaab but also Kakuma – home in total to almost half a million refugees. “We will continue our dialogue with the Kenyan authorities on this issue,” UNHCR said in response. The NGO Refugees International was more forthright. “These orders are reckless and cruel,” it said. The majority of the refugees – most born in Kenya – would be forced back to conflict-hit Somalia, in the middle of a drought and the coronavirus pandemic. A high court rejected an earlier government attempt, so why is it at it again? Reasons advanced so far include punishing Somalia over a worsening maritime dispute; an attempt to wring better funding from the donors; and politics. Next year is, after all, an election year, and closing the camps – which the government claims are a security threat – is a populist vote winner.

Six years and counting in Yemen

Yemen enters its seventh year of war with plenty to watch and worry about: This week, Saudi Arabia proposed a plan to end the conflict, but Houthi rebels say the peace proposal offers nothing new, and doesn’t go far enough towards lifting an air and sea blockade on parts of the country. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch reports that the Houthis have “indiscriminately fired artillery and missiles” into heavily populated areas during their offensive on the province of Marib, forcing people to flee their homes or the camps they had taken shelter in. Around 11,000 people have been forcibly displaced by the assault since the start of February, and aid groups warn that number could rise to 385,000 if the fighting moves closer to Marib city. And here’s yet another concern for civilians: While it’s hard to say without widespread testing, Yemen may well be in the midst of a second wave of COVID-19. Read this for a peek into what the devastating first wave looked and felt like in Aden.

New president, same old abuses in Burundi

In public speeches, he has called for justice and respect for the rule of law. But human rights abuses have continued unabated during the first year of Burundian President Évariste Ndayishimiye’s premiership. Abuses currently centre on the southwestern region of Rumonge, where heavy clashes between rebels and the military broke out in August 2020. Security agents have in recent months killed, tortured, and arrested more than a dozen Rumonge residents accused of supporting armed opposition groups, according to the latest report from the Burundi Human Rights Initiative (BHRI). The report focuses on the death in police custody of a 64-year-old man – Égide Sindayigaya – who was beaten with whips, jabbed with needles, and forced to lie on metal bottle camps. “The fact that state agents continue to violate the most basic human rights when dealing with suspects serves as a concrete example of how President Ndayishimiye’s public pleas are not translated into action,” the BHRI report stated. Read our latest from Burundi for more.