DRC crisis worsens
Al Jazeera, 3/29–War is on the doorstep of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) Goma city and the region is at breaking point, activists and aid workers have said, as the United Nations sounds an alarm over the situation in the Central African country. “One Congolese person out of four faces hunger and malnutrition,” Bintou Keita, the head of the UN’s DRC peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, told the UN Security Council this week, warning of a rapidly deteriorating security situation and a humanitarian crisis reaching near catastrophic levels.
“More than 7.1 million people have been displaced in the country. That is 800,000 people more since my last briefing three months ago,” she said. Heavy fighting between the Congolese army and armed group M23 has intensified in the eastern part of the country since February…
Haiti crisis worsens as well
Washington Post, 4/5–Heavily armed gangs control 80 percent of Port-au-Prince, the United Nations has estimated,...Haiti doesn’t manufacture firearms, and the U.N. prohibits importing them, but…When they go shopping, the United States is their gun store. William O’Neill, the U.N.’s independent expert on human rights in Haiti, called conditions here “cataclysmic.” The presidency is vacant; the prime minister has announced his intention to resign; the National Assembly has gone home.
Nearly 85 percent of guns found at crime scenes in Haiti…in 2021...were traced to the United States. In the Bahamas in 2022, that figure was 98 percent.
…authorities have noted a “marked uptick” in the number and size of guns smuggled into Haiti… .50-caliber sniper rifles, a belt-fed machine gun, and a cache of other high-powered weapons bound for Haiti in 2022,...Traffickers are taking advantage of Miami’s “break-bulk” port, a miles-long stretch of the Miami River lined with freighters that carry cargo…
IDF targets medical workers
The Guardian, 4/7–Professor Nick Maynard was operating on a patient with abdomen and chest bomb injuries when an Israeli missile struck the al-Aqsa hospital’s intensive care unit in the adjacent building, forcing his medical emergency team to withdraw from Gaza days earlier than scheduled. “I’ve witnessed with my own eyes an attack by the Israel Defense Forces on the intensive care unit there,” said Maynard, who works as a surgeon in Oxford and has been traveling to Gaza since 2010.
Aid and health workers account for at least 700 of the more than 32,000 people killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza, according to the UN and the Palestinian health ministry. Of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, only 10 are partly functioning, according to the World Health Organization. “systematically” uses hospitals and medical centres to conduct terror activities.
…The UN condemned the destruction and killing at the hospital, with health workers and patients among those reportedly killed. “At this point, we are no longer discussing availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of healthcare received in dignity, but the annihilation of any infrastructure capable of providing basic first aid,” the UN human rights office said.
Asian Pacific alliance prepares for war with China
France24, 4/7–Beijing's People's Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command said it was organizing "joint naval and air combat patrols in the South China Sea". "All military activities that mess up the situation in the South China Sea and create hotspots are under control," it said in a statement, in an apparent swipe at the other drills being held in the waters. Top US officials have repeatedly declared the United States' "ironclad" commitment to defending the Philippines against an armed attack in the South China Sea…
…drills conducted Sunday by the Philippines, United States, Japan and Australia are intended to "(ensure) that all countries are free to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows," US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a joint statement. Talks between the Philippines and Japan for a defence pact that would allow the countries to deploy troops on each other's territory were "still ongoing", a spokesman for the Philippine foreign affairs department told reporters last week. Manila already has a similar agreement with Australia and the United States.
