The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reported Oct. 10 that over 570,000 people are believes displaced in Burma's Rakhine state due to ongoing conflict between the Myanmar Armed Forces (MAF) and the rebel Arakan Army, adding to the over 3 million people displaced across the country.

Worsening the humanitarian situation, Burma (Myanmar) has been hit by severe flooding since early September. Torrential monsoon rains and the remnants of Typhoon Yagi have affected an estimated 1 million people across 70 of the country's 330 townships, causing significant damage to crops, farmland and livestock. According to UNOCHA, this has further exacerbated the vulnerabilities of conflict-affected communities. Humanitarian responses in Rakhine face significant challenges, including blocked supply routes, communication blackouts, and restricted access to areas outside state capital Sittwe (formerly Akyab).

Amnesty International on Oct. 9 called on the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to commence negotiations on a global treaty to prevent and punish crimes against humanity. The organization said UNGA must solidify and strengthen the existing international framework in order to deliver justice more efficiently.

Although specific crimes such as genocide are covered under international law, there is no general convention regarding crimes against humanity, despite their illegality under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Unlike global treaties such the Genocide Convention, which obligate state parties to prevent and punish specific crimes within their territory, the Rome Statute only empowers the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute with respect to the crimes listed in the statute, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

A UN report released Oct. 11 documented Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities and medical personnel in the Gaza Strip in violation of international human rights law, calling the attacks war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report—written by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel—also condemned Israeli treatment of detainees, citing instances of abuse, torture, sexual assault, and arbitrary detention.

Prospects for quelling the renewed M23 insurgency in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo have hit a snag after more recriminations between the Congolese government and Rwanda, which is supporting the rebels with troops and weapons. The two countries participated in talks in late August as part of a long-running Angolan meditation, but several disagreements have since arisen. Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said Kinshasa refused to sign an agreed-upon deal that would have seen Rwanda withdraw its "defense measures" from DRC after Congolese efforts to neutralize the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a DRC-based militia founded by exiled Rwandan Hutus behind the 1994 genocide against Tutsis. Nduhungirehe said Kinshasa objected to the sequencing of the plan, and wanted the Rwandan withdrawal to happen at the same time as the anti-FDLR operations, not afterwards. By contrast, Congolese Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner said Rwanda was responsible for obstructing the negotiations, promising to withdraw from DRC but "with no guarantees or concrete details." The M23 conflict reignited in late 2021, and has displaced around 1.7 million people, according to the UN.

The bellicose and authoritarian Russian state's propaganda exploitation of the anarcho-pacifist novelist Leo Tolstoy is an obvious and perverse irony. But a less obvious irony also presents itself. Like all fascist regimes, that of Vladimir Putin is stigmatizing and even criminalizing homosexuality and other sexual "deviance." Following alarming reports of "concentration camps" for gay men in the Russian republic of Chechnya, Moscow began to impose an anti-gay agenda nationwide. A 2020 constitutional reform officially enshrined "traditional marriage," while a "gay propaganda law" imposes penalties on any outward expression of gay identity, resulting in police raids on Moscow gay bars. The "LGBT movement" has been designated a "terrorist organization"; media depictions of same-sex love are banned as "deviant content." Yet the venerable littérateur now glorified as a symbol of Russian nationalism may have himself been gay. In Episode 247 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Javier Sethness Castro, author of Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography (Routledge 2023).

A joint media report has led Dutch prosecutors to consider a criminal case concerning claims that Israeli intelligence officials have interfered with the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into alleged crimes in occupied Palestine, The Guardian confirmed on Oct. 8. The Guardian and the Israeli publications +972 Magazine and Local Call jointly investigated what they allege are nine years of illegal surveillance and intimidation of the ICC prosecutor's office since a preliminary inquiry was opened into the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2015.

Amnesty International on Oct. 3 urged the self-proclaimed Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) to reveal the whereabouts of former defense minister al-Mahdi al-Barghathi and 18 of his relatives and supporters who were abducted in Benghazi, the principal LAAF stronghold, one year ago. Al-Barghathi, who served as minister of defense from 2016 to 2018, strongly condemned the LAAF offensive on Tripoli from April 2019 to October 2020. On Oct. 7, 2023, after his return to his hometown of Benghazi, he and 38 of his family and supporters were abducted by LAAF followers. Some of them have been released, and six are reported dead, including the son of al-Barghathi. But the fate and whereabouts of the other 19 remain unknown. There are suspicions that some of them may have been extrajudicially executed.

The Amazon rainforest has seen a record-setting wildfire season this year, fueled by an historic drought and scorching temperatures. In Brazil, the cumulative total estimated carbon emissions from the fires so far in 2024 has reached 183 megatons, according to Europe's Copernicus atmospheric monitoring service—equivalent to the total annual emissions of the Netherlands. The most impacted states are Amazonas and Mato Grosso do Sul, where the great expanse of the Pantanal wetlands are located. The unprecedented fires come even as overall deforestation (defined as the permanent conversion of forest for another use, such as logging, mining or farming) has dropped in Brazil since President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva took office in January 2023. Fires now account for a much higher proportion of forest loss.