Today in Focus and News Links for 23 February 2025 : Tom McDermott

 

Monday,23 February 2026

Today in Focus

Private military contractors — UNICEF Innocenti's latest working paper examines the role PMCs play in violations against children in armed conflicts. The paper is particularly timely, published as the Human Rights Council opens its 61st session in Geneva today — a session that includes a full-day meeting on children's rights with a specific focus on violations in armed conflicts. It also comes shortly after Vanessa Frazier, the newly appointed UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, took up her position. 

The Innocenti findings complement a November 2025 report to the General Assembly by the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, which warned that PMCs and related actors are increasingly deployed as proxies and enablers of violence in both conflict and peacetime settings — describing their spread as "a direct attack on the international order." 

Innocenti's paper is likely to attract significant attention — both supportive and critical — from governments that are expanding their use of PMCs in active conflict zones. Case studies include the Wagner Group's role in Mali and the Central African Republic, Blackwater's actions in Iraq, DynCorp's involvement in Bosnia, and the use of US military contractors under the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

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Follow-up: Yesterday's 'Today in Focus' - Displacement, Cholera, and Conflict discussed the cholera situation in South Sudan in light of the recent military push into Jonglei Province. Following the government's order on 25 January for the UN and NGOs to leave three counties in Jonglei State, MSF withdrew its critical staff while UNMISS (the UN peacekeeping force) remained in place. The situation then turned deadly: three national humanitarian workers were killed between 7 and 16 February — a national implementing partner for UNICEF, a nurse working for IMA World Health, and a WFP contractor.

On 15 February the government authorized NGOs to resume travel to restricted areas, though operations remained severely limited in practice. Despite the constraints, MSF succeeded in establishing a 30-bed Cholera Treatment Centre, and WHO supplies reached health partners across the region for the first time in weeks — a critical step given the scale of the cholera outbreak. Bravo MSF!

A coalition of nine embassies and the EU condemned the killings and called on the government to ensure accountability and protect humanitarian workers — echoing a similar joint condemnation weeks earlier following an armed attack on a Nile river barge carrying WFP food. UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher arrived in Juba on 20 February for a five-day mission, underscoring the gravity with which the international community views both the attacks on aid workers and the risk of wider conflict.

The government appears so consumed by the deepening personal and political rift between President Salva Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar that the security of humanitarian workers and continuity of aid operations have become secondary concerns. Sustained pressure from donor governments and regional actors is urgently needed. The risk of wider war is real — and the parallels with (northern) Sudan are sobering: there too, a falling-out between two military commanders unleashed a devastating conflict that has now consumed the country for nearly three years. 

News Links

United Nations

Human rights are under "full-scale attack" globally, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned at the opening of the Human Rights Council's annual session in Geneva, declaring that "the rule of law is being outmuscled by the rule of force." He cited deliberate erosion of the two-state solution in the occupied Palestinian territory and condemned violence in Ukraine. UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk echoed the alarm, warning that domination and supremacy are making a comeback at a pace unseen in 80 years, with mass civilian suffering unfolding in Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, and Myanmar.

DRC 

A national MSF staff member was killed when crossfire hit their office in North Kivu, the sixth humanitarian killed since January.

Sudan

Nine people, including three children, were killed when a landmine destroyed their auto-rickshaw on a road in Sudan's Kordofan region. Sudan's nearly three-year civil war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces has left the country strewn with mines and unexploded ordnance, killing tens of thousands and displacing 11 million people.

Chad

Chad closed its eastern border with Sudan indefinitely after weekend clashes in the border town of Tine killed five Chadian soldiers and three civilians. The government cited "repeated incursions and violations" by forces in Sudan's conflict and deployed additional troops, with one analyst warning that Chad now appears to be a party to the conflict.

South Sudan

More than a dozen civilians were killed in South Sudan's Jonglei State after government-allied fighters lured villagers from their homes in Pankor with promises of humanitarian food aid registration, then opened fire. The Agwelek militia, an ethnic Shilluk group, claimed the attack was retaliation for previous Nuer militia assaults. Government officials condemned the killings and reported arrests of involved battalion members.

USA / Africa

The Trump administration is ending all humanitarian funding in seven African countries — Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Somalia, and Zimbabwe — because "there is no strong nexus between the humanitarian response and U.S. national interests," according to an internal State Department email obtained by The Atlantic. The programs being canceled had previously survived USAID cuts precisely because they were classified as lifesaving. At least 6.2 million people across the seven countries face extreme or catastrophic hunger conditions according to the UN. In Somalia alone, hundreds of health and nutrition centers have already shut down following last year's cuts, and deaths among severely malnourished children under five have increased by 44 percent at one Doctors Without Borders-supported hospital. In Sudan, the aid organization Alight has been forced to close 30 health clinics, 14 nutrition centers, and pull out of three refugee camps where it had provided the only available healthcare.

Syria

The closure of al-Hol and Roj camps in northeast Syria has left thousands of women and children in precarious and dangerous conditions, Human Rights Watch warned, with most residents never having been charged with a crime. Women remaining in Roj camp report near-nightly raids by Kurdish security forces, beatings, theft, and boys being separated from their mothers. HRW called on all governments to urgently repatriate their nationals, noting that countries can no longer claim the excuse of negotiating with a non-state actor.