Heavy rains, wind and snow have hit displaced people living across northern Syria hard this month, as camps flooded and tents collapsed. Forecasts predict even lower temperatures in the coming days. Three children are already reported to have died—one when snow caused a family's tent to collapse; two more when a heater set their tent on fire. These deaths have become a tragically predictable feature of the Syrian war, as a large number of the country's 6.7 million internally displaced people live in shelters that can't withstand winter weather. The same is true for many Syrian refugees in places like neighboring Lebanon, who are forced to brave the cold in makeshift settlements. Fuel is costly and can be hard to come by, so some people take dangerous steps to stay warm. As Sherine Ibrahim, country director of CARE Turkey, said in a statement on Jan. 18: "During the cold winter, mothers are usually the last ones to eat, and children are usually the first ones to freeze."

More than 600 asylum-seekers and migrants were detained on Jan. 10 when Libyan security forces cleared a protest encampment in front of an aid center run by the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, in the capital city of Tripoli. The protesters—who were asking for protection, and evacuation from Libya—had been camped out since last October, when Libyan security forces violently rounded up more than 5,000 asylum-seekers and migrants, forcing them into notoriously grim detention centers. Before the raid on the protest camp, UNHCR permanently closed the center in Tripoli, leaving thousands without humanitarian assistance. The Norwegian Refugee Council said the most recent arrests were the "culmination of a disastrous situation," and Médecins Sans Frontières called on the EU to "stop supporting...an unending system of detention, abuse, and violence in Libya." The EU backs the Libyan Coast Guard, which intercepted more than 32,000 asylum-seekers and migrants at sea last year, returning them to detention centers. 

The UN human rights office says a "profound change" is needed in how Colombia's National Police force, run by the Defense Ministry, handles protests, after concluding that law enforcement agents were responsible for at least 28 deaths during anti-government demonstrations earlier this year. A Dec. 15 report by the UN body's Colombia representative said the response to the widespread protests, which began in April, involved "unnecessary or disproportionate force." Aside from murder, police forces were accused of arbitrary detentions and sexual violence against civilians. The unrest began in reaction to a tax reform bill—that was later ditched—but was fuelled by anger over broader economic and social inequalities. Amnesty International recently reported that the number of eye injuries (more than 100) sustained by protesters was an "indication of intentionality" by the police force.

The Greek trial of 24 aid volunteers accused of people-smuggling got off to a shambolic false start on Nov. 18. The defendants were members of Emergency Response Center International (ECRI), an NGO that performed rescue activities in the Aegean Sea and provided humanitarian assistance to people in Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos between 2016 and 2018. Human rights groups say the accusations are part of a broader trend of governments across Europe criminalizing people providing humanitarian assistance to asylum-seekers and migrants. They have called on Greece to drop the charges, describing the case as "absurd."

The Democratic Republic of Congo's Senate has once again extended martial law in two of the country's eastern provinces, despite increasing criticism of the measure, which has done nothing to stem decades of violence. Since May, civilian officials in North Kivu and Ituri provinces have been replaced by police and military figures. Bintou Keita, head of the UN's peacekeeping mission in Congo, has thrown her weight behind the measure, even as local rights groups accuse authorities of using the "state of siege" to curtail civil liberties. The non-civilians newly given positions of power have also received little funding and few clear objectives from Kinshasa, according to a recent parliamentary report. And attacks by armed groups have continued at the same rate as before, with at least 1,000 civilians killed since May, according to the Kivu Security Tracker, a conflict-mapping project. More than one million people have been internally displaced in eastern Congo so far this year.

A judicial panel of inquiry has found the Nigerian army killed at least 11 people when soldiers opened fire on unarmed protestors at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos just over a year ago—a politically seismic event that still reverberates. The panel's report, submitted Nov. 15 to the Lagos state government, describes the shootings as a "massacre." The findings cast a shadow over repeated denials by the government and the army that any killings occurred—consistently labelling such reports "fake news."

Sudan's ousted Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who had been placed under house arrest with last month's military coup, appeared on TV Nov. 21 to sign a new power-sharing agreement with putsch leader Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. But the deal officially restoring Hamdok as prime minister was immediately rejected by the pro-democracy movement in the streets. Just after the announcement, security forces in Khartoum fired tear-gas at protesters marching toward the presidential palace to demand the military's complete withdrawal from politics. "The future of the country will be determined by the young people on the ground," said Siddiq Abu-Fawwaz of the Forces for Freedom & Change coalition.

At least six people were killed and dozens more wounded by guards who opened fire at asylum seekers and migrants attempting to escape en masse from an overcrowded detention center in Tripoli on Oct. 8. This came after the Libyan authorities rounded up and detained at least 5,000 asylum seekers and migrants in the capital, starting on Oct. 1. Earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Council said it believes "crimes against humanity" have been committed in Libya's detention centers. So far this year, more than 26,000 migrants and asylum seekers have been intercepted by the EU-backed Libyan Coast Guard and returned to the centers, where they face a well-documented cycle of abuse. Despite the human rights concerns, the EU's executive body, the European Commission, is reportedly aiming to deliver new patrol boats to the Libyan Coast Guard.