Weekly News Wrap: Monday, March 7, 2016

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

• Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has travelled to Indonesia, defying an international warrant for his arrest, to attend an Organisation of Islamic Cooperation summit.
• South Africa’s human rights record will be reviewed for the first time by the UN Human Rights Committee.
• Africa Union peacekeeping forces (AMISOM) backed by Somali National Army troops on Sunday arrested a senior Al-Shabaab commander during a security operation in an area close to Qoryolay town in lower Shabelle of southern Somalia.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• At least nine civilians have been killed and dozens more wounded after mortar rounds and rockets were fired on a mainly Kurdish residential quarter in the northern city of Aleppo, according to the Syrian Kurdish YPG group.
• February marked the highest number of home demolitions in the occupied West Bank since the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) began recording in 2009, according to a recent statement.
• Libyan forces based in the city of Misrata have carried out air strikes against Islamic State militants in their stronghold of Sirte, a military source said on Sunday.
• The European Union may need to more than double financial aid already pledged to Turkey to help it keep millions of Syrian refugees on its soil, Germany’s European Union Commissioner Guenther Oettinger was quoted as saying on Saturday.

Asia

• China will build a second railway line connecting restive and remote Tibet with other parts of China that will link Tibetan capital Lhasa with the southwestern city of Chengdu, the government said on Saturday.
• North Korea has pledged a “sacred war of justice for reunification” including a nuclear strike against the United States, saying joint military exercises by Seoul and Washington were being carried out to prepare for an invasion.
• The European Union said on Friday that it had added 16 people and 12 companies to its sanctions list following North Korea’s latest nuclear test and rocket launch.

Europe

• In the latest humanitarian disaster to strike refugees trying to get to Europe, at least 25 people are reported to have drowned off the Turkish coast while trying to reach Greece.
• The European Union’s senior diplomat said on Friday the union disagrees with a court ruling invalidating its farm trade deal with Morocco and the accords with Rabat do not violate international law.
• Switzerland and the European Union could strike a deal on curbing immigration to the neutral Alpine country soon after Britons decide in June whether to quit the bloc, Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter said.
• Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann has urged Germany to set a clear limit on the number of asylum seekers it will accept to help stem a mass influx of refugees that is severely testing European cohesion.

Americas

• Cuba and the European Union on Friday advanced ever closer to a new bilateral agreement that would replace a unilateral policy imposed by the Europeans 20 years ago.
• The United States has nearly finished setting up an air base in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria and was proceeding with the construction of a second base for dual military and civilian use, a Kurdish website said on Sunday.
• Latin American governments have pledged to work toward ending hunger within a decade while tackling an epidemic of rising obesity in the region – itself considered a form of malnutrition.
• The United States and its allies conducted 19 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Saturday, the coalition leading the operations said.

Oceania

• With thousands of migrants arriving on the shores of Australia, the country grapples with its immigration policies.
• Australian politicians announce plans for same-sex marriage laws as hundreds of thousands turn out for gay pride parade.

UN/World

• A total of 135 people were killed in the first week of a partial truce in Syria in areas covered by the deal, a monitoring group said on Saturday, highlighting its fragile nature just days before the United Nations attempts to reconvene peace talks.
• Al Jazeera has an Inside Story posing the question: are UN reforms enough to end the UN peacekeeper sex abuse scandal?
• The United States on Friday announced it was pushing the U.N. Security Council to call for repatriation of peacekeepers if there is a pattern of sexual crimes by troops of a certain nationality or if a country fails to investigate accusations.
• U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has said he will try to restart negotiations between Western Sahara’s Polisario independence movement and Morocco to resolve their conflict and allow Sahrawi refugees to return.