Abortion-rights activists and anti-abortion demonstrators rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, 2 April 2025. (Keystone/AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

❝Anti-rights groups: why we need a smarter politics of naming. As movements working to undermine universal human rights protections become more influential, the language used to call out these “anti-rights” groups also needs closer scrutiny, or else risks being self-defeating, writes Nicolas Agostini, human rights advocate and researcher.

👳🏾HISTORIC JUSTICE. The annual-four day gathering of the UN’s Permanent Forum of People of African Descent kicks off tomorrow at the Palais. On the agenda, countries will discuss progress and gaps in action taken 25 years after the adoption of the Durban Declaration aimed at combatting racism and racial discrimination.

Reparations. The forum, now in its fifth year, has advocated for a ‘global reparations agenda’ aimed at compensating Africa and people of African descent for colonial legacies, slavery, apartheid and genocide between the 16th and 19th centuries.

It has also been critical of risks of propagating racism through artificial intelligence models.

UN resolution. The meeting comes just three weeks after the UN General Assembly adopted a Ghanian-sponsored resolution recognising the trafficking and slavery of Africans as the “gravest crime against humanity”.

It urged countries to take steps such as formal apologies and reparatory justice. Only three states – the US, Israel and Argentina – vetoed it.

Exit. In January, president Donald Trump announced the US was withdrawing from the forum, together with another 65 bodies listed in a sweeping executive order, seemingly aimed at signalling its detachment from multilateral organisations. US officials claimed the organisation promoted unconstitutional “victim-based social policies”, and called it “racist”.

However, the forum’s inclusion in the list appears symbolic, as the US has neither participated since 2025, nor does it finance it.

🇸🇩THREE YEARS OF WAR. Wednesday marks three years since the start of the conflict between the government-controlled Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, triggering the “largest hunger and displacement crisis on the planet”, according to the UN.

At a press briefing for journalists at the Palais on Friday, Marie-Helène Verney, the UN refugee agency’s representative in Khartoum, reported that aerial bombardments and drone attacks have recently increased, targeting civilian infrastructure without any warnings.

Impact. Fourteen million Sudanese, or a quarter of the population, have been displaced since 2023, with four million forced to flee to neighbouring countries that are already stretched to provide assistance to them.

Verney said that human rights and international humanitarian law violations have continued including sexual violence, killings, arbitrary arrests and forced recruitment.

Healthcare services have also been severely impacted, with 90 per cent of hospitals destroyed.

The Food and Agriculture Organization says that Sudan has gone from being an agriculture powerhouse to its food production collapsing, generating “high acute” food insecurity. Food imports and emergency food distribution have meanwhile been disrupted by the war in the Middle East.

Read more of our reporting on the war in Sudan

— Paula Dupraz-Dobias