A resort entirely staffed and run by women in Sri Lanka seeks to break gender barriers

GENEVA: Conflict in Congo has sent 63,000 refugees fleeing to neighboring Burundi in its largest such influx in decades, with conditions dire at a crammed stadium camp and many stuck in fields outside, the UN said on Friday.
About 45,000 displaced people are sheltering in a crowded open-air stadium in Rugombo, a few km (miles) from the border with Democratic Republic of Congo where the Congolese army and M23 rebel group are fighting.
“The situation is absolutely dire. Conditions are extremely harsh,” Faith Kasina, the regional spokesperson for East and Horn of Africa and Great Lakes, told reporters in Geneva.
“The stadium is literally bursting at its seams and there is no additional space for shelter.”
Sanitary conditions inside the stadium are said to be poor with only 10 to 15 stalls of latrines for tens of thousands of people. Many families are being forced to camp in open fields nearby, according to the agency.
“Numbers keep swelling, it’s a race against time to try and save lives,” said Kasina, adding that the needs are fast outpacing the aid being provided.
The refugees include a large number of unaccompanied children separated from their families, the agency says.
On 21 February, UNHCR told a press briefing in Geneva that it would seek to move people from the stadium. However logistical challenges mean it takes six to eight hours to move large numbers of people to the Musenyi refugee site in southern Burundi. That site, which can host 10,000 people, is now 60 percent full, according to the agency.
The agency has urged countries to contribute to its emergency appeal for $40.4 million for lifesaving help to support the potential influx of 258,000 refugees into Burundi, Tanzania and Zambia.
The M23 advance is the gravest escalation in more than a decade of the long-running conflict in eastern Congo, rooted in the spillover of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide into Congo and the struggle for control of Congo’s vast mineral resources.
Rwanda rejects allegations by Congo, the United Nations and Western powers that it supports M23 with arms and troops. It says it is defending itself against the threat from a Hutu militia, which it says is fighting with the Congolese military.
Burundi has had its own soldiers in eastern Congo for years, initially to hunt down Burundian rebels there, but more recently, to aid in the fight against M23.

Pro-govt fighters kill 35 civilians

Meanwhile, at least 35 people were killed when pro-government militia attacked a village in the restive eastern DRC, local and security sources said on Friday.
The attack happened at about 3:00 am (0100 GMT) Thursday in the village of Tambi, in the Masisi area of North Kivu province controlled by the M23 armed group.
A security source told AFP that at least 35 people were killed in the attack, while local sources and an eyewitness put the death toll at more than 40.
A community leader and a medical source said villagers had recently returned to the area after having fled fighting between the M23 and the Congolese army and local militia.
“The ‘wazalendo’ (patriots in Swahili) militia went to attack Tambi where residents had started to return... they opened fire and civilians were killed,” said one community leader, who said 43 people died.
“They put some victims in a church and then shot them. Those who were in the fields were killed there.”
The community leader, a local health worker and a local resident said another group of civilians sought refuge in a house and died when the militia set it on fire.
“We counted 47 bodies in the morning,” the resident said, adding that they were buried in a communal grave.
Some of the victims were unable to be identified because of their burns, he added.
Different groups make up the militia, which has fought alongside the Congolese army against the M23. Their fighters are often accused of attacking civilians.
The M23, which according to UN experts is backed by some 4,000 Rwandan soldiers, is also accused of abuses.
The armed group resumed its fight against the government in Kinshasa in 2021 and has since seized swathes of territory in North Kivu, which borders Rwanda.
A lightning offensive in recent weeks has seen it capture the provincial capital, Goma, and Bukavu, the main city in the neighboring province of South Kivu.
The DRC’s mineral-rich east has been ravaged for three decades by conflict and atrocities.

ISTANBUL: Turkiye, with NATO’s second-largest army and a Black Sea coastline, is looking to play a key role in Europe’s security after Washington’s pivot away from the region.
After two rounds of crisis talks on Ukraine and security following Washington’s change of policy, Ankara has been quick to warn that European defenses cannot be ensured without its involvement.
“It is inconceivable to establish European security without Turkiye,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after Sunday’s London summit.
Without Turkiye, “it is becoming increasingly impossible for Europe to continue its role as a global actor,” he added.
A senior Turkish defense ministry returned to the issue on Thursday.
“With the security parameters being reshaped due to recent developments, it is impossible to ensure European security without Turkiye,” he said.
Even so, he said Turkiye would be ready to deploy troops to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping mission “if deemed necessary.”
Ankara has consistently defended Ukraine’s territorial integrity since Russia’s 2022 invasion and supplied it with combat drones and naval vessels.
But it has also maintained good ties with Russia and remains the only NATO member not to have joined the sanctions against Moscow.

With its unique position between the two warring parties, Turkiye has repeatedly offered to host peace talks.
Erdogan and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan have often received visitors such as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In recent years, Turkiye has considerably developed its defense industries, with exports growing by 29 percent to reach $7.1 billion in 2024, placing it 11th in global defense exports, Erdogan said in January.
Driving its success are the Bayraktar TB2 drones which have been sold to more than 25 nations, among them Poland and Romania, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance survey.
“Sales to European countries, particularly EU members, add credibility to Turkiye’s argument it is an important player in European security,” said IISS expert Tom Waldyn.
Its military, strategically located on the eastern flank of the Atlantic Alliance and south of the Black Sea — to which it controls access via the Bosphorus — counts 373,200 active troops and another 378,700 reservists, IISS figures show.
And these troops have been engaged in regular combat in northeastern Syria and northern Iraq fighting Kurdish insurgents, according to a Western diplomat.

“Turkiye has maintained a consistent attitude in line with the UN Charter on the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Ukraine, he told AFP.
“It has the second largest military in NATO but also the most effective as it’s been in combat for decades,” he explained.
But EU cooperation with Ankara has been hampered by the Cyprus dispute, he said with a trace of exasperation.
“How long can we afford to continue this stance?“
For Nebahat Tanriverdi Yasar, an independent researcher and policy analyst who works in Ankara and Berlin, Turkiye’s careful management of its ties with both Kyiv and Moscow has left it in a unique position.
“Turkiye aims to carefully navigate its relations with Russia and its strategic defense support to Ukraine — potentially with EU backing — to reshape the balance of power in the region amid the emergence of a ‘new order’ where the EU seeks to assume greater responsibility for its security amid shifting US policies,” she told AFP.
Given the challenges that entailed, Ankara was “likely to pursue a pragmatic approach in the short term, focusing on expanding its mediation efforts, deepening defense cooperation with select European states, and leveraging its defense industry to address emerging gaps in military support,” she added.
But Sumbul Kaya, a political scientist in France argued that Turkiye was “above all, driven by a desire to defend its own interests.
“It only intervenes in neighboring countries for internal security reasons, such as in Syria and Iraq,” she said.
“But there’s no question of sending troops to fight wars everywhere — that would not go down well with the population.
“This crisis is an opportunity to stress that Turkiye is both a NATO member and a candidate for membership in the EU.”