The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan on Sept. 3 released a new report detailing how external support networks fuel the conflict and escalate civilian harm in the country. The Mission concluded that foreign-sourced weapons, drone systems, components and personnel have significantly expanded the military capabilities of both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), intensifying the conflict's scale and lethality.

Libya's rival governments agreed Aug. 30 to hold national elections within the next two years, with a view to re-unifying the country. After months of UN-sponsored talks, representatives from the country's eastern and western administrations—known as the 4+4 Committee—signed a pact on terms to restructure the electoral commission and address disputes over the process. The elections are to be run by an interim unified authority and "national sovereign institutions."

A group of 31 international human rights organizations on July 17 called on the EU and its member states to end their cooperation with Libyan authorities on migration control. The groups expressed alarm at plans to strengthen cooperation with the rival authorities in Eastern and Western Libya, which both have a longstanding record of grave rights abuses against refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.

The US will launch a diplomatic campaign aimed at dismantling the International Criminal Court, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced July 6. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Rubio wrote that the US will work alongside allied governments to take the Court apart "brick by brick, if necessary," using all tools at the government's disposal. He said the campaign's message to other governments will be a choice of "sovereign states over globalism," and pledged that the administration will protect US service members from ICC jurisdiction.

A new Lighthouse Reports investigation has brought to light new evidence of the United Arab Emirates' role in sustaining Sudan's civil war by backing the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) through a covert logistics and training network based in eastern Libya. The report draws on social media analysis, geolocation data, satellite imagery, and witness interviews to trace alleged RSF-linked camps, convoy routes, and transfers of weapons and fuel between Libya and Sudan. The investigation identified four previously unknown RSF staging areas in Libya, including one near Benghazi. RSF defectors described training alongside Libyan National Army soldiers and UAE-contracted Colombian mercenaries before being sent back to Sudan.

The Trump administration has built a network of third-country transfer agreements with more than 30 governments and used them to remove over 17,400 people, in some cases in defiance of federal court orders and after individuals had won their release through habeas corpus, according to data released May 5 by Human Rights First and Refugees International.

Italy, Tunisia and Malta are withholding information about the true death toll from stricken vessels carrying migrants in the central Mediterranean, according to an AP report. The beginning of 2026 has been the deadliest start to a year in the Mediterranean since the UN began keeping track in 2014, with nearly 700 lives lost to date. But phone calls from people looking for missing relatives, bodies washing ashore, and other clues suggest there have been numerous "invisible" shipwrecks, and the true toll is significantly higher. (TNH)

The Libyan Attorney General's Office on Jan. 16 announced the discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of 21 bodies. A prosecutor in Benghazi charged an individual identified by the initials "MFH" with human trafficking in connection with the discovery.