Month: January 2024

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Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

The Biden administration’s push for clean energy solutions has turned a rural Washington state town into a hub for electric vehicle battery production. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya reports from Moses Lake.

Mogadishu, Somalia — The United Nations and the Somali government have launched a $1.6 billion appeal to address humanitarian challenges in Somalia. The 2024 Humanitarian Needs Action Plan seeks to provide life-saving support to over 5 million Somalis this year. 

The U.N. says climate shocks, conflict, widespread poverty and disease outbreaks continue to drive humanitarian needs in the Horn of Africa country. 

The appeal comes as Somalia struggles to deal with long dry spells followed by heavy rains and deadly flash floods. 

“In terms of the overall humanitarian situation in Somalia for 2024, World Vision sees humanitarian needs remaining high in 2024 due to recurrent shocks induced by climate change and underlying factors such as conflict and insecurity,” says Suganya Kimbrough, program development and quality assurance director for World Vision Somalia.

But “the number of people needing humanitarian assistance in 2024 has decreased to 6.9 million from 8.2 million people in 2023, according to the latest draft of the 2024 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan,” she added.

Kimbrough says funding for the U.N.’s Somalia Humanitarian Fund currently stands at only $56.6 million, leaving a significant gap between resources available and the need. 

She added that most of the funding goes to life-saving interventions because Somalia remains fragile. 

However, Kimbrough said, humanitarian organizations, including World Vision, are gradually charting long-term sustainable solutions. 

“Over the last few years, World Vision Somalia has seen a gradual shift in funding, focusing more on longer-term resilience linked to the humanitarian development peace nexus and away from short-term humanitarian responses,” she said.

“Continued investments in disaster risk management, system strengthening, social cohesion and livelihood adaptation, and including mechanisms such as crisis modifiers are all key to foster resilience and build the capacity of communities to cope with recurrent shocks,” she added.

Close to three million Somalis are living in internally displaced persons camps and largely depend on support from the government and aid agencies. 

Marya Ahmed, a mother of seven based in a camp on the outskirts of Mogadishu, says, she has have been living with all children in the camp for the last five years. She said they get just a little food and medical support, and that she really wants to leave the camp one day and start a new life. Right now, she added, she doesn’t have the means.

Analysts say whereas the annual call for international support has been critical in staving off humanitarian suffering, it hardly resolves Somalia’s food security problems. 

Ali Mohamed, a food security expert and researcher in Mogadishu, says the appeal by the Somali government and aid agencies is critical for millions of Somalis who are starving. But, he adds, we’re dealing with cyclical problems and we’re yet to find a lasting solution that will enable populations to develop the capacity to respond to shocks and sustainably generate their food.

Studies indicate that Somalia contributes only a tiny percentage of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming but suffers more than most countries from adverse climate change conditions. 

Mohamed says the situation could get worse because of dwindling global resources and dire humanitarian situations elsewhere. 

“I am worried that donors are increasingly getting fatigued with Somalia as we have witnessed recently. There have to be deliberate efforts by the government to seriously invest in food systems and fully exploit the local resources to gradually reduce foreign dependence.” 

According to the humanitarian agency OCHA, the 2023 appeal was only 43% funded, raising concerns about a similar scenario this year. 

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The United Nations’ top court on Wednesday rejected large parts of a case filed by Ukraine alleging that Russia bankrolled separatist rebels in the country’s east a decade ago and has discriminated against Crimea’s multiethnic community since its annexation of the peninsula. 

The International Court of Justice ruled Moscow violated articles of two treaties — one on terrorism financing and another on eradicating racial discrimination — but it rejected far more of Kyiv’s claims under the treaties. 

It rejected Ukraine’s request for Moscow to pay reparations for attacks in eastern Ukraine blamed on pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels, including the July 17, 2014, downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 that killed all 298 passengers and crew. 

Russia has denied any involvement in the downing of the jetliner. A Dutch domestic court convicted two Russians and a pro-Moscow Ukrainian in November 2022 for their roles in the attack and sentenced them in their absence to life imprisonment. The Netherlands and Ukraine also have sued Russia at the European Court of Human Rights over  Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. 

Court rules Russia violated order 

In another rebuke for Moscow, the world court ruled that Russia had violated one of the court’s orders by launching its full-scale invasion in Ukraine nearly two years ago. 

The leader of Ukraine’s legal team, Anton Korynevych, called the ruling “a really important day, because this is a judgment which says that the Russian Federation violated international law, in particular both conventions under which we made our application.” 

The legally binding final ruling was the first of two expected decisions from the ICJ linked to the decade-long conflict between Russia and Ukraine that exploded into all-out war almost two years ago. 

At hearings last year, a lawyer for Ukraine, David Zionts, said the pro-Russia forces in eastern Ukraine “attacked civilians as part of a campaign of intimidation and terror. Russian money and weapons fueled this campaign.” 

Another ruling expected Friday

The court, however, ruled that sending arms and other equipment didn’t constitute terrorism funding, according to the 1999 treaty. 

“The alleged supply of weapons to various armed groups operating in Ukraine and the alleged organization of training for members of those groups fall outside the material scope” of the treaty, said ICJ President Joan E. Donoghue. 

Another lawyer for Ukraine, Harold Koh, said during last year’s hearings that in the Crimean Peninsula, Russia “sought to replace the multiethnic community that had characterized Crimea before Russia’s intervention with discriminatory Russian nationalism.” 

Lawyers for Russia urged the world court to throw out the case, arguing that the actions of pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine did not amount to terrorism. 

The court found that Russia failed to investigate allegations by Ukraine of alleged terrorist acts but rejected all other claims by Kyiv of breaches of the Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. 

It also ruled that Moscow breached the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination by limiting school education in the Ukrainian language and by maintaining a ban on a Tartar representative assembly called the Mejlis. 

The court is scheduled to rule Friday on Russia’s objections to its jurisdiction in another case filed by Ukraine shortly after Russian troops invaded on February 24, 2022. It alleges Moscow launched its attack based on trumped-up genocide allegations. The court already has issued an interim order for Russia to halt the invasion, which Moscow has flouted. 

In recent weeks, the ICJ also heard a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Judges issued provisional measures last week calling on Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in the conflict. 

Moscow — President Vladimir Putin vowed Wednesday to push back Ukrainian forces to reduce the threat of attacks on Russian territory as he met with activists running his campaign ahead of the March presidential election that he’s all but certain to win.

Asked about plans for the military campaign in Ukraine, Putin said the line of contact needs to be pushed back to “such a distance from our territory that will make it safe from Western-supplied long-range artillery that Ukrainian authorities use for shelling peaceful cities.”

He added the Russian military has been doing just that, “pushing the enemy back from vital populated centers.”

“This is the main motive for our guys who are fighting and risking their lives there — to protect the Motherland, to protect our people,” he added.

Ukraine has struck inside Russia recently, including a December 30 attack on the border city of Belgorod that killed 25 people, injured over 100.

Putin also said Russian investigators concluded that Ukraine used U.S.-supplied Patriot air defense systems to shoot down a Russian military transport plane in the Belgorod region on January 24. Russian authorities said the crash killed all 74 people onboard, including 65 Ukrainian POWs heading for a swap.

Ukrainian officials didn’t deny the plane’s downing but didn’t take responsibility and called for an international investigation.

Putin said Russia wouldn’t just welcome but would “insist” on an international inquiry on what he described as a “crime” by Ukraine.

Putin, 71, who is running as an independent candidate, relies on a tight control over Russia’s political system that he has established during 24 years in power.

With prominent critics who could challenge him either jailed or living abroad and most independent media banned, his reelection in the March 15-17 presidential vote is all but assured.

“Russia has been forced to defend its interests, including by military means,” Putin told the meeting with his campaign staff, saying that even as the meeting was going on, Russian troops made new gains on the edge of the town of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.

“We are passing through a very difficult and important period in the development of our country, the strengthening of its independence and sovereignty in all vectors,” he said. “Scum that is always present is being washed away bit by bit.”

Under a constitutional reform that he engineered, Putin is eligible to seek two more six-year terms, potentially allowing him to remain in power until 2036. He is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who died in 1953.

Three other candidates who were nominated by parties represented in parliament are also running: Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, Leonid Slutsky of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and Vladislav Davankov of the New People Party.

All three parties have been largely supportive of the Kremlin’s policies. Kharitonov ran against Putin in 2004, finishing a distant second.

Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old local legislator in a town near Moscow, also is seeking to run. He has openly called for a halt to the conflict in Ukraine and starting a dialogue with the West.

Thousands of Russians across the country signed petitions in support of Nadezhdin’s candidacy, an unusual show of opposition sympathies in the rigidly controlled political landscape that raises a challenge for the Kremlin. On Wednesday, Nadezhdin submitted 105,000 signatures to the Central Election Commission, which is expected to review them over the next few days.

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

The Biden administration’s push for clean energy solutions has turned a rural Washington state town into a hub for electric vehicle battery production. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya reports from Moses Lake.

Abuja — A coalition of more than 40 civil society groups has petitioned Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, calling on him to address chronic insecurity that has only gotten worse since he assumed office last May. The petition follows a series of kidnappings in the capital, Abuja, and southwestern Ekiti state.    

According to a report this week by the civil society coalition, at least 2,400 people have been killed and close to 1,900 others kidnapped since May last year when Tinubu assumed office.

The coalition said it was deeply concerned about the deteriorating security across Nigeria and called on authorities to take “actionable steps” to fix the problem.

Auwal Rafsanjani, executive director of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Center, spoke on behalf of the coalition.

“Our country is under siege, our country has been taken over by criminals, pampered terrorists, pampered bandits and pampered political criminals, and Nigerians are being killed like ants,” he said. “Every day you wake up, its one killing after another, we cannot continue this way.”

The report comes amid a wave of violent attacks in the country, including Abuja. 

There, armed gangs have carried out brazen kidnap-for-ransom attacks in recent weeks. Two people from different families were killed as a warning to those who don’t pay. 

In southwestern Ekiti state, armed men recently kidnapped six school students and three teachers. On the same day, gunmen attacked local communities in the state and killed two traditional rulers.

Tinubu condemned the attacks and ordered security forces to capture the perpetrators.

But security analyst Chidi Omeje says government failure is the reason for the persistent problem.

“The root cause of all these things is bad governance, bad governance that engenders poverty, beings about frustration, anger in the people,” he said. “See, there’s this correlation between poverty, bad governance and [a] spike in criminality. There has to be multi-dimensional approach to it and, of course, it has to be intelligence driven.”

Last year, Tinubu vowed to fix Nigeria’s security problems if elected president.

After taking office, Tinubu retired several service chiefs and appointed new ones. Critics say that isn’t enough. 

On Tuesday, members of the National Assembly the service chiefs to discuss the state of security in the country.