On November 16th, NATO’s highest military body concluded meetings in Brussels in anticipation of the Riga Summit. The meetings were intended to build consensus-based advice that will inform the military discussion at the upcoming summit.
For more, see http://www.nato.int/ims/news/2006/n061116e.htm
Massive flooding in Kenya has uprooted more than 78,000 Somali refugees. The UN will begin airlifting critical supplies to the stranded refugees over the weekend. The UN hopes to deliver emergency health kits, fuel, and 25,000 tarpaulins for constructing shelters.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20632&Cr=kenya&Cr1=
The Sudanese Government has agreed to allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur, pending clarification of the size of the force. At least 200,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Darfur as a result of conflict between Government forces, allied militia and rebels seeking greater autonomy.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20631&Cr=sudan&Cr1=
The violence in Darfur is increasingly spilling over to neighboring Chad. Attacks in Chad have killed around 200 people over the past week. It is estimated that 12,000 Chadians have been displaced since November 4th. Survivors describe their attackers as Arab nomad tribes, both Chadian and Sudanese. Many victims were burned alive in their homes.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20641&Cr=sudan&Cr1=
On Tuesday, November 14, Radovan Stanković was sentenced by the Court of Bosnia Herzegovina to 16 years’ imprisonment for rapes and other crimes against humanity. The Court found that Stanković held a number of Bosnian women and girls captive so that Serb soldiers and other Serb men could sexually assault them. This case was the first to have been transferred to a national court from the International Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia as part of the Tribunal’s completion strategy where cases and expertise are transferred to the judiciaries in the region.
Meeting in San Marino, the Standing Committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly resolved that non-citizens in Latvia be granted at least the same rights as other EU nationals living in there.
The resolution called for automatic naturalization of elderly or native non-citizens in addition to those who have made significant contributions to the Latvian state. It also held that minorities should also be able to use their language in dealing with administrative authoraties in areas in which they live in substanstial numbers.
More information is available at https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=1065037.
