After detaining them in squalid short-term holding facilities for more than a decade, Thailand deported 40 Uyghur asylum seekers to China on Feb. 27. Human rights groups had been urging the Thai government for over a month to halt any plans to deport the group—though senior officials denied there were any such plans. The removals were carried out in a pre-dawn operation using trucks with blacked-out windows, flanked by police. The Chinese embassy in Bangkok described the men as "illegal immigrants" and said they would "return to normal life." But rights groups, as well as relatives of the asylum seekers living abroad, worry that the group will remain detained in China—or be sentenced to death. China has previously labelled anyone seeking asylum abroad as a "terrorist." The UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, said the deportations were "a clear violation of the principle of non-refoulement" and international law.

Three weeks after US President Donald Trump's order to freeze foreign aid, Syrians are already seeing medical clinics providing urgent assistance close, water distributions slow down, and bread distribution in many displacement camps grind to a halt. After nearly 14 years of war, the UN estimates that 16.5 million people across Syria need some sort of aid. While the December overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad is beginning to change the way aid works in the country, the need for widespread relief for those dealing with severe poverty, food insecurity, and mass internal displacement has been unrelenting.

Israeli police raided two branches of a renowned bookshop in occupied East Jerusalem early this week, seizing books and arresting the owner and his nephew. Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna were accused of selling books that incite terrorism, and later charged with disturbing public order. The family-owned Educational Bookshop is a Jerusalem landmark and cultural hub, and publishers, academics, and rights groups came out to protest and support the Munas and their shop. The rights watchdog B'Tselem said in a statement that "the attempt to crush the Palestinian people includes the harassment and arrest of intellectuals… Israel must immediately release [Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna] from detention and stop persecuting Palestinian intellectuals." The Munas were held for two nights and released on five days' house arrest—but the family re-opened the shop even before that.

The Sudanese army appears close to retaking the capital city Khartoum from the paramilitary-turned-rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as momentum continues to swing in its favor following nearly two years of conflict. Reports suggest the army has been advancing on multiple fronts, having broken a bruising siege on its Khartoum headquarters last month. It has also won back significant territory in other parts of central Sudan, including Gezira state. Military control, however, has come at a significant cost, with the UN reporting that soldiers and allied militia have been carrying out summary executions of civilians they accuse of being RSF collaborators. Workers in self-organized "mutual aid" groups—the backbone of the humanitarian response in Sudan—have also been targeted in the reprisals.

Dubbed "Sahelexit," the decision by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger to leave the West African regional community known as ECOWAS is now official. The three members of the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States (AES)—sanctioned over coups that overturned their elected governments—are out. It leaves the 12 other countries in ECOWAS, one of Africa's most economically integrated blocs, rethinking the organization's relevance. Like ECOWAS, the new group will allow free movement between their shared territories—now derisively referred to as the "coup belt." But it is in the field of security cooperation that the AES states will be especially missed. Jihadist insurgents are on the march. So-called "Islamic State" forces have set up in northwest Nigeria, where they are known as Lakurawa. With neighboring Niger now pulling out of a regional Multilateral Joint Task Force, there are fears that countering the threat will be all the harder.

President Trump has ordered the construction of a 30,000-bed facility to hold migrants at the notorious US naval facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as part of his mass deportation campaign. The US base has been used to house terrorism suspects since 2002, becoming synonymous with torture and unlawful imprisonment. The US has secretively detained refugees and migrants intercepted at sea at Guantánamo Bay for decades, but the facility has not previously been used for people apprehended on US soil or at this scale.

During his first days back in office, Donald Trump rapidly started implementing his hardline migration agenda, including by declaring a state of emergency at the US southern border. The move allows his administration to access billions of dollars to expand the building of a border wall and to deploy the military and national guard to the area. Around 1,500 active duty soldiers are already being deployed. Trump also reinstated the controversial "Remain in Mexico" program from his first administration. This policy, which requires people to wait for asylum appointments in Mexico, helped to create a now-perennial humanitarian crisis in northern Mexico. The Trump administration has also shut down CBP One—a cell phone app for scheduling asylum appointments—leaving thousands of people stranded in Mexico, and suspended the US refugee resettlement program, as well as cancelling travel plans for refugees who had already been approved to enter the country. Trump's promised mass deportation of millions of undocumented people has yet to get underway, but his administration has begun laying the groundwork for expanded immigration raids—potentially including on schools, churches, and hospitals—and has threatened to prosecute any local officials who don't comply.

With the sounds of war starting to fall silent in the Gaza Strip after 470 days of brutal Israeli military assault and siege, a tiny crack of hope has opened for the Palestinian residents of the enclave that they will be able to gather the shattered pieces of their lives and begin the daunting task of rebuilding. But whether the deal reached by Israel and Hamas on Jan. 15 will lead to a decisive end to the war remains entirely unclear.