The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague dismissed India's objections concerning its authority to address the ongoing Indus River disputes between India and Pakistan on July 6. The ruling reinstates a case that had been impeded for several years. Pakistan asserts that India's proposed hydroelectric energy projects will substantially diminish the Indus' flow, negatively affecting Pakistani agriculture. Pakistan initiated legal proceedings against India in 2016, seeking arbitration to address the issue. India raised objections regarding the jurisdiction of the PCA.

Hundreds of Black African migrants were rounded up from the Tunisian port city of Sfax, expelled across the country's border with Libya and left stranded in the desert last week, sparking street protests by the large community of migrants waiting in the city. According to reports, some managed to escape back to the Tunisian side after being confronted by Libyan militiamen, but the fate of all those expelled has still not been accounted for. The expulsions came after mobs attacked Black Africans in Sfax following the funeral of a Tunisian man who was stabbed to death in an altercation with migrants. Tensions have been rising for months in Tunisia, which has seen a sharp increase in people attempting to cross the Mediterranean from its shores this year. (TNH, AfricaNews, Jurist)

The rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen significantly since President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva took office in January 2023, according to government data released July 7. The area of deforestation detected by space agency INPE's forest monitoring system amounted to 2,649 square kilometers in the first half of the year—a 34% decline from the same period last year. The loss in the first six months of 2023 is the lowest since 2019, according to the satellite-based deforestation tracking system, known as DETER. Lula has prioritized reining in deforestation since assuming the presidency. Last month, he announced his administration's plan to eliminate deforestation by 2030 as part of Brazil's pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (Mongabay)

A group of United Nations human rights experts called on the Russian Federation July 7 to investigate a violent attack against journalist Yelena Milashina and human rights lawyer Alexander Nemov, and bring to justice the perpetrators. The incident occurred on July 4 in the Russian Republic of Chechnya. Milashina was covering, and Nemov participating in, the trial of Zarema Musaeva, the mother of exiled opposition activists who challenged the leader of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov.

The US announced July 7 that it will provide Ukraine with cluster munitions, despite a plea from Human Rights Watch (HRW) for both Russia and Ukraine to cease their use of the controversial weapons, which have already caused many civilian deaths and injuries over the course of the war. In a White House press briefing, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stressed that the US deferred the decision for as long as possible due to such considerations, but ultimately found that the harm of a continued Russian offensive outweighed the risks of providing the munitions.

Amnesty International on July 4 urged Cameroon's authorities to investigate human rights violations committed in the country's conflicted Anglophone regions, the North-West and South-West. According to a new report, armed separatists and the military alike are responsible for killings, torture, rape and destruction of property. In the North-West in particular, long-standing conflicts between Mbororo Fulani herders and sedentary farmers have been fuelling armed violence. As the situation has deteriorated over the past years, militias, mainly composed of Mbororo Fulani and supported or tolerated by the authorities, have committed atrocities against civil populations. The official security forces have responded to this situation with further rights violations.

In Episode 181 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the strange reality that the Barbie move has been banned in Vietnam over a brief image of a world map appearing to show the "nine-dash line" demarcating China's unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea. While US-China brinkmanship over Taiwan has won headlines recently, Beijing's maritime dispute with Hanoi holds unsettling potential for escalation. In a nearly surreal paradox (for those who remember their history) Vietnam has actually been tilting to the US in the new cold war with China. It has also been increasingly resorting to internal police-state measures to protect the interests of foreign capital in the country. All of this constitutes a rebuke both to the neoliberals, who cling to the discredited dogma that "free markets" inevitably lead to peace and democracy, and to the tankies, who rally around both the regimes in Beijing and Hanoi, in defiance of political reality. 

French police have arrested more than 3,000 protesters in unrest that has spread since the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old delivery worker Nahel Merzouk, the son of immigrants from Algeria and Morocco, during a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre June 27. The Ministry of the Interior has mobilized some 45,000 police troops and gendarmes, as fierce clashes with police have spread across the country. On July 2, rioters rammed a burning car into the home of the mayor of Paris suburb L'Haÿ-les-Roses. Merzouk's grandmother later pleaded with protesters to stop the violence. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued an appeal to French authorities, writing: "This is a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement… Any allegations of disproportionate use of force must be swiftly investigated." The officer who fired the shot that killed Merzouk has been taken into custody on charges of voluntary homicide. (Jurist)