France, UK propose one-month Ukraine truce; European allies rally around Zelensky amid US row

CAPE TOWN, South Africa: The United Nations’ World Food Program is closing its southern Africa office in the wake of the Trump administration’s aid cuts, a spokesperson said Monday.
Tomson Phiri said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press that the UN food agency had launched a multiyear plan to streamline its structure in 2023 but as “the donor funding outlook becomes more constrained, we have been compelled to accelerate these efforts.”
Phiri said the WFP would consolidate its southern and East Africa operations into one regional office in Nairobi, Kenya. The southern Africa office in Johannesburg will close.

Phiri said food programs would continue.
“Our commitment to serving vulnerable communities is as strong as ever, and WFP remains committed to ensuring our operations are as effective and efficient as possible in meeting the needs of those facing hunger,” he wrote.
The WFP didn’t say how much funding it had lost from USAID, but it received $4.4 billion in assistance from the United States last year, around half its total annual budget and more than four times the amount given by the second biggest donor, Germany.
The Trump administration announced last week it was terminating 90 percent of USAID’s foreign aid contracts because they didn’t advance America’s national interests, stopping $60 billion in spending on humanitarian projects across the world.
The move comes after southern Africa was hit by its worst drought in decades last year, destroying crops and putting 27 million people in danger of hunger, according to the WFP. The WFP made a call for $147 million in donations to help some of those in need even before President Donald Trump started cutting US foreign aid.
The WFP provides food assistance to more than 150 million people in 120 countries worldwide, it says. It won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020 and its last six leaders since 1992 have all been Americans, including current executive director Cindy McCain, the widow of former US Sen. John McCain.
Few UN agencies have been specific about the impact of the US aid cuts.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration reportedly has cut 3,000 jobs linked to resettlement in the United States, and family planning agency UNFPA has estimated that a number of its operations will be affected.
Many UN aid agencies have said they are still assessing the impact and remain unclear about whether some programs or projects will benefit from waivers that could allow US donations to continue to flow.
 

LONDON: Asylum-seekers are being forcibly expelled at the borders of some EU countries, Europe’s most senior human rights official has warned.

The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Michael O’Flaherty, sounded the alarm over the treatment of asylum-seekers in comments to The Guardian. The “securitization response” encouraged by populists in Europe is “going too far,” he said.

Poland, Greece and Latvia are among the countries that have pushed back asylum-seekers.

O’Flaherty testified last month before the grand chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. The court cases were brought by asylum-seekers against Poland and Latvia.

The case against the former involved 31 Afghans alleging that Polish border guards pushed them back to Belarus in 2021, giving them no chance to claim asylum.

The second case saw 26 Iraqi Kurds allege that they were expelled to Belarus from Latvia the same year.

“The willingness to shut down any possibility of asylum is a violation of law; the willingness to return people across a border at risk of persecution is a violation of international law,” O’Flaherty said.

“And it’s not necessary, because the numbers that are being intercepted at the fences are modest.”

Frontex, the EU’s border agency, reported about 17,000 irregular crossings over the bloc’s eastern land border last year.

Lawmakers in Poland are proposing plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said migration is a question of “the survival of our Western civilization.”

Asked about the alleged pushbacks from Poland, O’Flaherty said he was “not in a position to describe a universal practice,” but was “confident that there have been sufficient incidents to be a cause of great concern.”

There is also “compelling evidence” of expulsions on the Greek border with Turkiye, O’Flaherty added.

He visited Greece in February to discuss the Adriana shipwreck with officials. The June 2023 disaster led to more than 700 migrants drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, with NGOs accusing Greek authorities of negligence.

O’Flaherty also addressed growing calls within Europe to “off-shore” asylum processing, including an Italian agreement with Albania and Britain’s axed Rwanda plan.

He said any external centers have to guarantee certain human rights: the right to claim asylum and appeal a decision; “appropriate reception conditions”; no detention of children; and ensuring asylum-seekers would not be returned to a country where they risk persecution.

The current period is the “most challenging time for the protection of human rights” he has seen in his career, O’Flaherty told The Guardian. The Irish national began working with the UN in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1993.

Since 2024, centrist politicians have been willing to suspend or ignore human rights obligations, particularly concerning asylum rights, he said.

“Centrist politicians are saying things that would have been unacceptable a very short time ago, and that worries me, because if I can mangle a quotation from the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, ‘when the centre cannot hold, things fall apart,’” O’Flaherty added.