Weekly News Wrap: Monday, June 6, 2016

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

Africa

• Chad’s ex-ruler Hissene Habre has been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison at a landmark trial in Senegal.
• Ivory Coast’s former first lady Simone Gbagbo goes on trial on Tuesday for crimes against humanity, but rights groups acting as plaintiffs in the case have pulled out saying the proceedings are flawed.
• United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the Security Council to add just over 2,500 peacekeepers to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, which has been hit by a series of deadly attacks, according to a new U.N. report.
• A commander believed to have orchestrated the 2015 deadly attack on Kenya’s Garissa University has been killed in a special forces raid in southern Somalia, a top local official said.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• The bodies of 133 migrants have washed up on the shore at the western Libyan city of Zuwara in recent days, the Red Crescent said on Sunday.
• Nearly 50 air strikes hit rebel-held areas in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo on Sunday in some of the heaviest recent raids by Russian and Syrian government aircraft, residents and a monitoring group said.
• The United Nations has said it will ask permission from the Syrian government on Sunday to airdrop or airlift humanitarian aid to besieged areas.

Asia

• China aims to speed up the signing of extradition treaties with countries where corruption suspects have fled to, a senior official wrote in state media, as Beijing steps up its overseas hunt for citizens suspected of corruption.
• Taiwan’s new defense minister said on Monday the island would not recognize any air defense zone declared by China over the South China Sea, as the island’s top security agency warned such a move could usher in a wave of regional tension.
• Vietnam and South Korea are looking seriously at buying refurbished Lockheed Martin Corp P-3 and S-3 maritime surveillance planes to counter China’s military buildup and repeated North Korean missile launches, the company said.
• At least five people were killed on Sunday when Tliban gunmen attacked a courthouse in eastern Afghanistan, an attack the insurgent group said was in retaliation for the government execution of six militants in May.

Europe

• Lawyers have filed an application to the European Court of Human Rights to halt the deportation of a homosexual Syrian refugee who was denied asylum in Greece, a German advocacy group said on Friday.
• Migrants who try to enter Europe illegally by boat should be denied the chance to apply for asylum and be sent back, Austria’s foreign minister said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday.
• A British exit from the European Union would not end the idea of a unified Europe and should not be seen as a “horror scenario”, European Parliament Vice President Alexander Lambsdorff said in a German radio interview.

Americas

• China has already made its position clear about its foreign minister berating a Canadian journalist who asked a question about human rights, China’s Foreign Ministry said, after Canada issued a complaint about the minister’s behavior.
• Puerto Rico has taken the first steps toward opening a commercial office in Cuba, Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said on Saturday, on the sidelines of a Caribbean summit in Havana.
• Gang violence is forcing thousands of Hondurans to leave their homes every month to seek safety in other neighborhoods and provinces of the Central American nation, a problem that is invisible but growing, says the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR).

Oceania

• One of Australia’s leading human rights organisations has spoken out in support of the retention of a mural in Darwin’s central business district that depicts the West Papuan Morning Star flag.

UN/World

• UN Secretary-General and other speakers in Security Council voice concern over evolution of sexual violence into ‘tactic of terrorism’; (see report here [.pdf]).
• United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon slammed the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen for killing and maiming children by adding it to an annual blacklist of states and armed groups that violate children’s rights during conflict.
• The international community must work together together to tackle the alarming growth of environmental crime, a leading UN official has told Al Jazeera.