News from HART

• The HART Prize for Human Rights is still open for entries, click here for information

Burma

• Burma celebrated its 70th Union Day on Sunday, with Aung Sun Suu Kyi attending celebrations at the town of Panglong in Southern Shan State yesterday. In her speech at the event, she called on the non-signatories of the NCA to sign and join the peace talks later this month
• Authorities earlier this week sentenced a Rohingya man to death for leading raids on police border posts that sparked a deadly military crackdown in Rakhine State
• The Second 21st Panglong Conference, due to begin later this month, has been  postponed until at least mid-March due to delays in the completion of the Chin State National Dialogue, the congress of Karen National Union and a scheduled meeting between Union Peace Commission (UPC) and the Northern Alliance
• The President’s Office revealed on Wednesday the name of a third suspect involved in the assassination of U Ko Ni. The suspect is Aung Win Khaing, a former lieutenant colonel in the Burma Army, who allegedly paid his elder brother Aung Win Zaw 100 million kyats (US$73,000) to kill U Ko Ni
• The Burma Army has ceased conducting a clearance operation in northern Arakan State, which has been underway since nine policemen were killed in attacks on security posts near the Bangladesh border on Oct. 9. Almost 69,000 Muslim Rohingyas have since fled from Burma to Bangladesh amid the crackdown that sparked widespread accusations of grave human rights abuses by security forces

Nagorno-Karabakh

• Both the Latvian Foreign Minister, and the Armenian Deouty Foreign Minister, have declared their worry about the tension on the Nagorno-Karabakh border, with the latter claiming Azerbaijan could ‘trigger a war at any moment’ and the international community is left with no option but to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
• Plans are being finalised for Nagorno-Karabakh referendum on its constitution on 20^th February 2017, a move which Azerbaijan and Russia claim is illegal, reinforcing their stance that the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic itself is illegal and only a temporary occupation

South Sudan

• An official report by the UN states that South Sudan has become Africa’s worst refugee crisis’ country with more than 3.5 million people having been displaced since fighting erupted
• UN has released its 2017 South Sudan Humanitarian Needs Overview, highlighting the dire situation the country now faces, with a reported 7.5 million people needing humanitarian assistance
• The two communities in near the Doro Refugee Camp – the Uduk refugee community and the host community in Maban – now live completely separate lives since late 2016, according to aid workers based in the area
• Alongside mass inflation, food prices are rising, livestock is worth less and less. The effects of the ongoing drought are becoming bigger
• The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has facilitated a unique two-day-long peace forum in Pariang. The dialogue was the first time that the peacekeeping mission brought together representatives of both the local community and Sudanese nomads, who seasonally move in to the area in search of pasture for their animals

Sudan

• The camps for the displaced in Kass locality in South Darfur and Tawila in North Darfur are experiencing a severe shortage of health and water services, which is leading to a deterioration in the environment – there are reportedly only two health centres in the 37 camps for 187,000 displaced people amid an acute shortage in medicines and medical personnel

Timor Leste

• In response to an invitation by the Timorese authorities, the European Union has deployed an Election Observation Mission (EOM) to Timor-Leste to observe the Presidential and Parliamentary elections scheduled for 2017. Since the independence referendum in 1999, the EU has regularly accompanied electoral processes in Timor-Leste by deploying observation missions, the last in 2012.

Uganda

• The government land designated for refugees is limited and most of those areas are now occupied, according to Hillary Onek, Uganda’s Minister for Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees – Uganda currently hosts over 1 million refugees, and is applauded by the international community for its refugee policy
• Uganda has started to feel the pinch of hosting an influx of refugees amid acute funding pressures and says international support is urgently needed to help it accommodate the refugees

• The population in Uganda that needs food relief has increased from 1.3m to 1.5m and another 26 percent of the population is on the brink of falling into the fast spreading hunger, arising out of the drought that has hit the country, slowing down food and livestock production
• Ugandan will send home at least 46,000 refugees from Burundi following a request from its government.  Burundian officials maintain that the country is now safe after months of civil unrest
• Kenyan pastoralists are being forced to head into Uganda by extreme drought. They must do this to keep their animals, and their way of life, alive