The project includes the uninhabited Adriatic island of Sazan and several hundred hectares of the Vjosa-Narta Protected Landscape, a sensitive coastal wetland which is home to flamingos, seals and sea turtle nesting sites.

SPAK, the office of Albania’s special anti-corruption prosecutor, confirmed that it has opened an investigation into controversial changes in the area’s protected status and land ownership in 2024, which opened the door to tourism development.

The project is being spearheaded by Zvërnec South Adriatic Development, a company tied to Qatari investors as well as Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. The couple aims to develop a string of ambitious tourism projects in the region that they have dubbed the “Albanian Riviera.” (Greek Reporter, Politico, AP)

Image: Wikimedia Commons

A delegation from the Vatican—including cardinals and bishops—joined representatives of the Catholic Church in Peru to kneel before local campesinos and ask their forgiveness at a “Mass of Reparation” held May 23 at the parish of San Juan Bautista in Catacaos, Piura region. A Vatican investigation found that the Tallán indigenous communities of the parish for over a decade suffered land expropriation, physical threats and other abuses at the hands of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae. The lay society, better known as “Sodalicio,” was among the most active Catholic movements in Latin America from the early 1970s until it was suppressed by order of Pope Francis in April 2025. (Vatican News, Vatican News, OSV News, NCR)

Photo: Vatican News

The $334 million plan was adopted on April 17, foreseeing full development by 2030. The government purports to make the small town of Katzrin the Golan’s “first city,” by bringing in 3,000 new Israeli settler families. Funds are allocated for infrastructure, housing, public services, and academic facilities.

Hiba Zayadin, senior Syria researcher at HRW, discussed the international legal aspects, declaring:

Israel’s cabinet has put public money behind a war crime in Syria at the same time as it is turbocharging settlement expansion in the West Bank alongside continued impunity for violence against Palestinians there. A permanent population transfer into Syrian territory violates international norms with grave implications for long-displaced Syrians.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the transfer by an occupying power of any of its own civilian population into territory it occupies. Article 8 of the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC), defines such transfers as war crimes.

Occupied by Israel in 1967, the Golan Heights has since been declared unilaterally annexed.

HRW has documented serious abuses by Israeli forces during further expansions into southern Syria, beginning in 2024, including holding families at gunpoint, razing homes with bulldozers, and cutting off access to traditional farmlands. The occupation also bars displaced Syrians from returning to their homes, which they have a right to under customary international law.

Zayadin also drew attention to US denial of “the reality that the Golan is occupied Syrian territory.” In 2019, Donald Trump declared that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel. No other state nor international body recognizes this declaration.

The UN affirmed the Golan Heights as Syrian in UN Security Council resolution 497, which was adopted unanimously in December 1981. The resolution declares that “the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international effect.” The UN General Assembly has consistently reaffirmed this, including in a December 2025 resolution which called for Israel to withdraw from the territory.

The Golan Heights is fertile land with vital water sources feeding into the Jordan River, located about 40 miles south of Syria’s capital, Damascus. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel occupied most of the territory. The UN Secretary General reported in 2025 that there were 35 Israeli settlements, making up a population of over 31,000 Israeli settlers. Prior to 1967, approximately 140,000 Syrians lived in the Golan, while only about 20,000 members of the Druze community now remain. Syria has never ceded the territory, but has had no success in efforts to take it back.

From JURIST, April 30. Used with permission.

Photo: Freedom’s Falcon via Wikimedia Commons

The clashes, concentrated in southern Chad, are said to be driven by climate change, population growth, and an influx of weapons and support from armed groups in the neighboring Central African Republic. Researchers stated that higher temperatures, desertification, and shrinking pasturelands in the center of the country have led herders to travel longer distances and settle in southern provinces where conditions are more conducive to livestock grazing.

At the same time, Amnesty found that farmers, who face declining soil fertility and seek to expand cultivated areas, often encroach on herders’ corridors and limit access to pastures and water. Many clashes, like one in Sandana in February 2022, began with the intrusion of herders’ cattle onto an agricultural plot, leading to fighting between the groups.

The report additionally stated that conflicts are fueled by the emergence of “neo-herders”—military leaders and entrepreneurs who buy large herds. In this néo-élevage (neo-pastoralism), the herds have absentee owners, who hire workers to drive the livestock rather than sharing in the semi-nomadic way of life.

Amnesty called on Chadian authorities to take preventive and protective measures to guarantee respect for the right to life in accordance with obligations under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights and Article 4 of the African Charter on Human & Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR).

Although recently implemented consultation and negotiation mechanisms have been effective to an extent, Amnesty argued several structural limitations impede potential resolutions. The group urged officials to develop a coherent legal framework accounting for climatic and demographic realities, revive joint committees composed of both herders and farmers, and prioritize climate change adaptation plans.

As a landlocked country, Chad’s economic activity is largely centered on agricultural commodities like cotton and cattle, in addition to oil. As of 2022, agriculture supported around 88% of households nationwide. Extreme heat and flooding brought on by climate change have affected the country substantially in recent years.

From JURIST, Nov. 20. Used with permission.

Note: There is an ethnic cast to this conflict, as many of the herders and “neo-herders” are Fulani or Arab, and the southern farmers are largely of the Kodo people. The government has refered to some of the farmers involved in these clashes as “Kodo rebels” being armed through the Central African Republic. (North Africa Journal)

Herder-farmer violence has been increasingly linked to climate change across the Sahel, from Nigeria to the Horn of Africa.

See our podcast “West Africa’s forgotten wars”

Photo: European Commission/DG Echo via NASA Earth Observatory

“The organized, forced displacement of Palestinians in the refugee camps has removed nearly the entire Palestinian population from these areas,” the report stated, noting that residents of Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps have been denied the right to return nearly a year after the operations commenced.

The refugee camps in the West Bank were established following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes. Those who fled or were expelled from areas that became part of the State of Israel were housed in UN-administered camps in neighboring territories, including the West Bank and Gaza. Originally intended as temporary solutions in the absence of a mutually acceptable solution to the Israel-Palestine land disputes, the camps have persisted for over 75 years, and have become densely populated residential areas.

Israeli forces used heavy weaponry to empty the camps, giving residents abrupt orders to leave during active military operations earlier this year, HRW reported.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) maintained that the operations targeted “terrorists” and were mandated by security imperatives. In an October response to Human Rights Watch, the military stated:

The operation was based on the understanding that terrorists exploit the terrain and the densely built environment of the camps, which restricts the IDF’s freedom of action. And that Hamas plants explosive devices in houses, civilian infrastructure, and along traffic routes in order to detonate them, thus endangering the lives of security forces and local residents.

According to HRW, the Israeli military’s response left a number of gaps:

The Israeli military did not explain why the displacement of the entire population of all three camps was necessary to achieve its aims, nor whether alternatives had been considered. Rather, it stated that the “IDF has had to operate for an extended period of time, as required by operational needs and the circumstances on the ground.” The response did not answer Human Rights Watch’s questions about whether Israeli authorities had attempted to provide food, shelter, and access to medical services for the civilian population it had displaced, as required under international humanitarian law.

International humanitarian law prohibits forcible displacement of civilians in occupied territories except in specific, limited circumstances with safeguards. Human Rights Watch found Israeli forces failed to meet these requirements, including providing safe evacuation routes or humanitarian assistance to displaced residents.

The organization called for investigations by the International Criminal Court and state authorities under universal jurisdiction, and recommended targeted sanctions against Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and military commanders.

The matter may add to the cases already under investigation by the International Criminal Court, which issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders in November 2024 on charges stemming from the broader conflict.

From JURIST, Nov. 20. Used with permission.

See our report on Operation “Iron Wall,” and the genocide accusations against Israel.

Photo: Wikipedia

The protesters mostly belonged to the Munduruku indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest, who inhabit the states of Amazonas and Pará (of which Belém is the capital). They blocked access to the COP30 venue, which required the army to intervene to reinforce security. Protesters’ demands included increased representation of indigenous peoples in COP30 and the UN climate process, as well as an end to extractive activities that threaten Munduruku territories in the Tapajós and Xingu river basins.

Indigenous participants at COP30 expressed their support for the protest. A Chilean indigenous youth representing the Mapuche people, Emiliano Medina, asserted that such protests are a response to growing challenges faced by indigenous populations from miningand industrial activities, including land grabs and forced displacements.

Brazilian Environment Ministry official Ana Toni, executive director of COP30, affirmed that Brazil’s government is attentive to the concerns raised by the protesters. She emphasized that COP30 has seen an increase of 600 indigenous participants compared to the previous year’s conference in Azerbaijan. Toni stressed that selecting Belém as the venue for COP30 was intended to facilitate participation by indigenous peoples, and amplify their voices in the climate dialogue. She also stated that the Brazilian government permits diverse forms of protest and anticipates additional demonstrations during the conference.

The central themes of COP30 include strategies to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C, the submission of updated national action plans, and the evaluation of progress regarding financial commitments established at COP29, which climate activists have deemed insufficient.

In March, Transparency International urged the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to take measures to restore trust in the COP process and prevent fossil fuel lobbyists from hindering negotiations. In October, rights organizations called on Brazilian authorities to implement safeguards to ensure the protection of the rights of civil society members at the COP30, including indigenous people, who face life-threatening environmental risks due to mining and other extractive activities in their territories. Environmental activists are increasingly targeted with repressive measures worldwide, which the UN has described as a threat to both climate action and human rights.

From JURIST, Nov. 15. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Photo: Diego Herculano/UNFCCC via UN News

The Knesset approved a non-binding motion in favor of annexing the entirety of the West Bank on July 23, a symbolic move that united the increasingly fractious right-wing governing coalition. The resolution, which passed 71-13, declared that the West Bank is “an inseparable part of the Land of Israel, the historical, cultural and spiritual homeland of the Jewish people,” and that “Israel has the natural, historical and legal right to all of the territories of the Land of Israel.”

Using Israeli nomenclature for the territory, the resolution called on the government to “apply Israeli sovereignty, law, judgment and administration to all the areas of Jewish settlement of all kinds in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley.”

The motion was advanced by Likud MK Dan Illouz, Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman and Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer. Voting against were the Arab parties as well as the left-wing Democrats. The largest opposition parties, Yesh Atid and Blue & White, abstained. (ToI)

The new annexation push comes as the Israeli army escalates raids and arrests across the West Bank, with military operations reported Aug. 31 in the cities of Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus and Ramallah. Four days earlier, 58 Palestinians were injured in an IDF operation targeting Ramallah and el-Bireh. Among the casualties was a 13-year-old, who underwent surgery after being wounded in the abdomen. (Al Jazeera)

Combined with ongoing settler attacks, the military operations are disrupting the local Palestinian agricultural economy. Said Ciro Fiorillo, the Food & Agriculture Organization’s head of office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory: “As the West Bank gears up for the annual olive harvest, the message from farmers is clear: This year’s harvest season is marked by uncertainty, and livelihoods are under unprecedented risk.” According to the FAO, the combination of state policies and settler violence has prevented Palestinians from accessing tens of thousands of dunums of farmland and pasture this season. (One dunum = 1,000 square meters) (UN News)

More than 40,000 Palestinians remain displaced from January’s Operation Iron Wall, which targeted Jenin and Tulkarm refugee camps. Those who could left for the homes of extended families in villages throughout the West Bank, while others remain in makeshift shelters in the immediate areas. The displaced say they fear a second Nakba, and the population “transfer” plan now contemplated for Gaza being extended to the West Bank. (Zeteo)

Photo: delayed gratification via New Jewish Resistance

Cambodia now becomes the third country to nominate the bellicose Trump for the Peace Prize after Israel and Pakistan. Islamabad’s nomination followed Trump’s supposed involvement in the ceasefire deal with India that ended several days of mutual missile strikes in May. The problem is that India denies that the US or any other foreign power had a hand in its decision to accept a truce. (Hindustan Times)

The Thai-Cambodia truce, agreed to at July 29 talks in Malaysia, was jointly mediated by the US and China. So Xi Jinping deserves as much credit as Trump—whose main role was threatening to withhold trade deals from the two countries as long as the fighting continued.

Fighting erupted along the Thai-Cambodian border on July 24, ultimately killing at least 40 people, and displacing over 250,000. Both sides typically said the other took the first shot. Things quickly escalated as Bangkok sent F-16 fighter jets to launch air-strikes on Cambodian territory, and Thailand’s acting prime minister, Phumtham Wechayachai, warned: “If the situation escalates it could develop into war.” Cambodia accused Thailand of violating international law by using cluster munitions for attacks on its territory, while Bangkok accused Cambodia of an “inhumane attack” on a hospital in Surin province. (TNH, AP)

Thailand and Cambodia have had an almost century-long dispute over Preah Vihear, an 11th century Hindu temple, which sits along the nations’ shared border. The temple has triggered numerous border skirmishes over the years, the latest occurring when a Cambodian soldier was killed on the border in May. The new fighting followed Thailand’s prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra being suspended after a leaked phone call with Cambodian leader Hun Sen was deemed a national security threat. (Jurist)

Hun Manet is the son of current Cambodian senate president (and longtime strongman) Hun Sen, and we suspect that this perverse Nobel nomination actually emerges from the elder Hun. Under Hun Sen’s leadership, Cambodia has long been under China’s effective suzerainty, and repression has been unleashed against peasants protesting land-grabs by Chinese agbiz interests. Xi is well-assured of the stability of this relationship, and does not need buttering up. Trump, in contrast, needs to have his ego appeased to keep textiles and other export goods produced in Cambodia’s sweatshops flowing to the US without prohibitive tariffs. That’s why it’s called a Great Game.

The game is a dangerous one for the general world political climate and propaganda environment, however. Giving the Nobel Prize to Obama in 2009 was Orwellian enough. But that pales before the perversity of giving it to Trump. And indeed, Trump craves the Nobel prize precisely because Obama got it. So Cambodia is not merely appeasing Trump’s ego, but (whether intentionally or not) lubricating his dictatorial ambitions and the racist backlash that has been the motor of his entire political project.

We submit that if the Nobel committee wishes to weigh a Peace Prize in regard to this conflict, it should consider the citizen anti-war activists who have been mobilizing on either side of the border in repudiation of their own governments, under the hashtag #PeaceForCambodiaAndThailand.

Image of the contested Preah Vihear archeological site via Wikipedia

Jordan can’t claim to protect Petra’s living heritage while sidelining the community that embodies it. It should work, together with UNESCO, to uphold the rights of the Bedul and ensure their full participation in the shaping of the future of the site they’ve called home for generations.

According to the report, the government is forcibly evicting the Bedul, one of several Bedouin communities living in the Petra area in the southern part of Jordan. In targeting the community for eviction, Jordanian authorities are violating their economic, social, and cultural rights, and their rights to housing.

Residents have reported that the suspending of water services has required community members to travel to Um Sayhoun, a village three kilometers away, to access drinking water, or else collect water from a polluted stream used by local restaurants to discard waste. The cut-off has also caused damage to residents’ crops, requiring them to spend money on food they would not need to purchase otherwise.

After UNESCO designated Petra a World Heritage Site in 1985, the forced relocation of the Bedul began as a supposed measure to conserve the site’s archeological zone. The present wave of evictions started in late 2024, when authorities targeted approximately 25 families living in caves and tents on the site’s Stooh al-Nabi Harun Mountain. Residents say that the housing complex the authorities plan to relocate them to is in an isolated area with unreliable public transport, making visiting family and markets difficult.

Fares al-Braizat, chair of the Board of Commissioners of the Petra Development & Tourism Regional Authority (PDTRA), the national institution dedicated to managing the archeological zone and developing the area, portrayed the evictions as a component of a plan “to enhance the rule of law” and remove “sources of threat” to the visitors at the global tourist site.

The Bedul tribe is recognized by UNESCO as part of Petra’s living heritage. HRW urged Jordanian authorities, UN agencies, and other actors to formally recognize the Bedu as indigenous people, affording them rights in accordance with international standards.

From JURIST, July 22. Used with permission.

Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg/Wikimedia Commons

During the Security Council briefing, Khiari and the head of UN Peace Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, told ambassadors that the recent activities by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) violate the Separation of Forces Agreement between the two countries, and pose a threat to the fragile political transition in Syria. Israel and Syria signed the accord in 1974, agreeing to a ceasefire and the establishment of an area of separation in the Golan Heights. The border between the two countries is itself disputed, as Israel has occupied most of the Golan Heights since 1967 and unilaterally declared the area as annexed. Since the fall of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria in December 2024, Israel has pushed deeper into the neighboring country and occupied more territory. Israel recently declared that it would remain in southern Syria indefinitely, and has even advertised Passover “hiking tours” in the newly occupied areas.

The UN Security Council has issued multiple resolutions prohibiting the “threat or use of force in international relations.” The Security Council in 2023 called for “parties to withdraw all military forces from a disputed area or occupied territories.” In resolutions specifically applying to Syria and Israel, it has stressed that both parties must honor their international obligations to respect the terms of the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement, and to honor the ceasefire and “area of separation.”

Khaled Khiari also said in his speech to the Security Council that hundreds of IDF air-strikes across Syria—including in densely-populated cities Damascus, Hama and Homs—have been reported, with several civilian casualties confirmed. Khaled Khiari also called for Israel to respect Syria’s sovereignty, emphasizing that stabilizing the country after 14 years of conflict is vital for both Syrians and Israelis. He stated: “Syria is at a crossroads and deserves a chance to continue to work towards an inclusive political transition, where the Syrian people can overcome the conflict, revive their economy, realize their legitimate aspirations, and contribute to regional stability.”

Syria’s current political transition follows the ouster in December 2024 of the Bashar al-Assad regime, which ruled the country for over five decades and was overthrown by political and militant organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). While officially disbanded, the HTS is the current de facto authority in Syria under the leadership of interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa.

From JURIST, April 11. Used with permission.

See our last report on Israel in Syria.

Photo via Twitter