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Ukranian woman finds strenght in Slovakia to go against all odds

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“I was born in the heart of Europe, in Rakhiv, a small town in the Zakarpattia region of Western Ukraine, not far from Slovakia’s Eastern border,” Hanna begins as she proudly introduces her story. An old memorial dating back to 1887 and a new, silver-shiny modern monument designed by a local artist indicates where the geographical centre of Europe is set.

Hanna, a mother of five, came to the Humanitarian Centre in Gabcikovo, Slovakia, from Odesa, Ukraine, while her husband and son joined the Ukrainian army and are fighting in Bakhmut. Photo: IOM / Júlia Kováčová

Hanna recalls her childhood in the small town of Rakhiv. She signals to the interpreter that it is not necessary to translate everything for her. She has come to manage the Slovak language well over the past months.

When she was 15 years old, Hanna moved to the village of Mykolaivka, not far from Odesa, the third most populous city in Ukraine. She enrolled in vocational secondary school where she learnt the trades of painting and stucco finishing of walls. The years went by as she practiced her dream profession. She married twice and had two daughters and three sons.

When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022, Hanna lived in Odesa for more than forty-five years. Odesa, a major seaport and transport hub with twice as many inhabitants as Slovakia’s capital Bratislava, became the target of shelling and airstrikes fired by Russian forces from warships in the Black Sea. Massive explosions were heard everywhere.

Hanna’s husband Vasyl volunteered for the Ukrainian army the day after the war broke out. “I didn’t want him to join the army in 2014 when Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula. This time, he did not ask for my permission,” she explains.

Eventually, both Hanna’s husband and their youngest son enrolled in the Ukrainian army in Bakhmut. “In the very hell of Bakhmut,” she adds. One of her sons-in-law was also recently recruited to the military operating in the same area. Hanna is apprehensive about their lives. Tears fill up her eyes as she shows videos and pictures they sent her.

Hanna is extremely worried about the safety of her husband and son fighting in Bakhmut. Yet, at the same time, she is proud of their courage and determination to defend their homeland. Photo: IOM / Júlia Kováčová

Once cruise missiles started hitting Odesa, people began to flee in large numbers. Hanna, her daughter-in-law and three small grandchildren boarded a packed evacuation train heading to Uzhhorod in Western Ukraine. The journey was exhausting, especially for the children. They were offered to go to Italy, yet they opted for Slovakia which was closer. Finally on 25 March 2022, they arrived at the Humanitarian Centre in Gabcikovo, where the International Organization for Migration (IOM) assists. 

Hanna adapted quickly to the new environment. “I am not someone who gives up easily, I do not succumb to hysteria,” she says. It was not her first time abroad as she had been to Czechia for seasonal jobs several times in the past. In Slovakia, she found a job at a petrol station, cleaning car windshields. Later, she would go around to people’s houses and offer to wash their windows and help in the garden. Her daughter-in-law found work at a local bakery. The grandchildren enrolled in local schools. 

A couple of months later, Hanna found a new job as a cleaner in a supermarket in the nearby town of Dunajská Streda. The daily bus commute of 30 km to work and back to the Humanitarian Centre did not discourage her. There was no bus connection to return to the Centre. When she had a late shift, she would use a bicycle that was given to her by the people with whom she worked. 

One night, as she was biking back home, Hanna got hit by a car coming from the opposite way and in a split second, found herself in a ditch by the road. She remembers everything – the pain, the shock, the people who stopped to help her.

This accident completely changed her life. “What did not catch up with me in Ukraine caught up with me later,” Hanna reflects. “I’m happy that I survived”. 

The IOM team in the Humanitarian Centre in Gabcikovo was determined to help Hanna recover after the accident and subsequent surgeries. Photo: IOM / Júlia Kováčová

Numerous injuries, fractures, lacerations, and contusions required three complex surgeries and several weeks of hospitalization. At the time, Hanna had no health insurance and, as a holder of temporary protection status, she was only entitled to emergency care.

Hanna returned from the hospital to the Humanitarian Centre in June. Spent her first summer in Slovakia with her left hand in a gypsum bandage, going to check-ups and wound dressings and attending rehabilitation therapy. In August, she underwent another surgery. She had again escaped the worst.

Shortly after, Hanna came to the IOM office in the Humanitarian Centre in Gabcikovo asking for help. She was not able to use her left hand at all. She could not perform simple activities such as dressing herself or combing her hair. This prevented her from finding a job. Although she had been recommended a post-surgery stay in a specialised facility, she could not afford it due to her social and health insurance situation. “If I had had the option of an employment contract with health insurance included at the time, I would have definitely taken it,” confesses Hanna.

At the Humanitarian Centre in Gabcikovo, from April 2022 till March 2023, IOM provided information, labour and legal counselling, and Slovak language courses. It also distributed material assistance such as blankets, clothes, footwear, and kitchen and hygiene kits, organised community activities and psychosocial support as well as other activities, including shuttle bus transport from Gabčíkovo to Bratislava and Dunajská Streda for almost 1,000 centre residents in the Humanitarian Centre.

Although her needs did not fit into any of these categories, IOM decided to assist Hanna to access all phases of the post-operation treatment in Slovakia.

Towards the end of the year, Hanna was informed by a facility in Piešťany that she was eligible for a 10-day stay, including treatment procedures, as a pro bono case. “I’m still emotional when I think about the stay. It meant a lot to me,” she recalls.

As she returned from Piešťany in mid-January, Hanna was in much better health. She could walk easier, her left hand was more mobile, and she could even grab a piece of paper with her fingers. Back in Gabčíkovo, she continued rehabilitation therapy.

Hanna is determined to return to work and hopes to find an employer to accept her condition. Photo: IOM / Júlia Kováčová

Today Hanna is feeling better. “I would like to work but wonder whether I can find an employer who takes an elderly person over 55 with a health issue.” She hopes to find, even against the odds. She knows that, in the end, she will cope with everything, as she always has.

SDG 3 - Good Health and Well Being
SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth
SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities

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Global powers fuel war as civilians die under drones, barrel bombs

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The question in Sudan is no longer whether the war has crossed every red line. It crossed them long ago.

The real question now is brutal and urgent: How many more crimes, how many more bodies must the world see before Sudanese blood is worth an independent international investigation?

The Chemical Bombs Dossier That Shook The World

In September 2026, the most damning case yet exploded into the open.

The Washington Post revealed it had reviewed about 150 documents, photographs, videos and audio recordings, plus thousands of messages, detailing alleged chemical weapons use by the Sudanese army.

The newspaper did not act alone. It enlisted more than 20 former intelligence officials and experts in chemical weapons and human rights to assess the material.

According to PMNewsnigeria.com, what they found was chilling: a programme to assemble chlorine-filled bombs, tests conducted in remote desert areas, a stockpile that reportedly reached 290 chemical munitions, messages referring to hundreds of bombs stored at Merowe Air Base and 106 of them already used.

Experts who examined the cache said the indications were strongly consistent with a chemical weapons programme, while stressing that definitive proof requires independent investigators to gain access to sites and witnesses.

That is precisely where international action should have started, not where the debate ended.

Sudan has been a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention since 1999. Developing, stockpiling or using such weapons is not a footnote in a civil war. It is a violation of one of the clearest prohibitions in international law.

If the allegations are false, an investigation will expose that. If they are true, the Sudanese people and the world have the right to know who ordered, who manufactured, who stockpiled and who dropped these bombs.

Why has evidence of this scale not immediately triggered an independent international investigation under the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and other relevant institutions?

Why the silence?

El Fasher Is Not Beyond Justice

But chemical weapons are not the only horror demanding answers reports PMNewsnigeria.com.

El Fasher and Darfur have become the graveyard of civilian protection.

The region is under sustained, indiscriminate aerial bombardment involving advanced Turkish drones and barrel bombs dropped by Sudanese army transport aircraft on civilians without distinction.

These crimes cannot be mitigated or justified under any circumstances or by any party to the conflict.

The Sudanese Armed Forces themselves have used aircraft, aerial bombardment and drones in civilian areas, while human rights organisations have documented the bombing of residential and commercial areas in Darfur with unguided aerial bombs.

Sudan has witnessed a massive escalation in drone warfare. According to the United Nations, more than 1,000 civilians were killed by drone strikes between January and May 2026 alone, making such strikes one of the largest sources of civilian deaths in the war.

In Darfur, Antonov aircraft have been used in aerial bombardment operations, while UN and human rights documents reveal widespread use of weapons and barrel bombs in populated areas.

Drones have fundamentally altered the nature of the war. Research reports indicate that the Sudanese army possesses Iranian and Turkish systems, including the Iranian Mohajer-6 and Ababil, as well as Turkish Bayraktar systems, in addition to Turkish-Pakistani types, allowing air operations to extend over greater distances.

The problem is not the nationality of the weapon alone, but how it is used and who bears the cost of its continued flow.

A bomb is still a war crime when it falls on a market, whether it was built in Ankara or Tehran.

Who Is Arming This War?

Here, international silence becomes even more perplexing, even criminal.

The Sudanese war is no longer a purely Sudanese war. It has become an arena where regional and international networks of support and arms supplies intersect, fueling the slaughter.

International reports indicate that the army has received military and technical support from countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Iran.

This is not a call to hold one side accountable while exempting the other. Quite the opposite.

If foreign weapons reaching parties to the conflict and being used against civilians warrant investigation and accountability, then the weapons reaching the army must be subject to the same standard, added PMNewsnigeria.com.

There is no morally acceptable bomb because it was dropped by a side we favour, nor is there a legitimate drone because it came from an allied country.

When markets, hospitals and residential neighbourhoods are struck, the legal question is who targeted civilians and who provided them with the capacity to do so, not which political camp they belong to. Justice that pursues one crime while ignoring another is not justice.

A law that criminalises an adversary’s weapon while turning a blind eye to an ally’s weapon loses its meaning.

What Do Cairo, Ankara And Riyadh Know?

This is where the responsibility of countries with close ties to the Sudanese army comes into sharp focus.

Egypt has deep military and security cooperation with the army. Türkiye is linked by reports to the provision of technology and drone systems to it, while Saudi Arabia maintains close ties with the army leadership, although it took a notable position in April 2026 when it asked Pakistan to halt a $1.5 billion arms deal with Sudan and refused to finance it, following what was said to be US advice and warnings to Riyadh.

Does this mean that these countries are legally responsible for the army’s crimes? No.

But it imposes a question that cannot be evaded: What are these governments doing now that allegations of chemical weapons use have become public, and violations resulting from airstrikes and drone attacks have been internationally documented?

Moral and political responsibility does not begin only when a state’s involvement in a particular crime is proven. It also begins when an ally knows that weapons flowing into a war zone could be used amid civilians, yet support continues without guarantees, oversight or accountability.

If you know your drones may be used to bomb a hospital in Nyala and you keep supplying them, at what point do you share the guilt?

Why Is The World Silent?

This is the real question that haunts every Sudanese today.

How can the world speak of protecting civilians and then allow Sudan to become a laboratory for weapons and drones?

How can evidence on this scale emerge concerning the possible manufacture and use of a chemical weapon, while a comprehensive international investigation remains a demand rather than a reality?

And how can bombs fall on markets, hospitals and residential areas while arms and financing channels and political relationships continue as though nothing has happened?

Sudan does not need another local committee through which the authorities investigate themselves. It has had enough of that theatre.

Nor does it need more statements of concern from Geneva and New York. It needs action.

The Price Of Selective Justice

It needs an independent international investigation into the chemical weapons file, transparent investigations into air attacks, drone strikes and violations against civilians, and accountability for every party proven to be involved, regardless of its name, allies or supporters.

Scrutiny must also extend to the states, companies and intermediary networks supplying the parties to the war with weapons when there is evidence that they may be used in grave violations of international law.

The civilian killed in El Fasher, Nyala or Khartoum does not care whether the drone that killed him was Turkish or Iranian, nor whether the bomb was dropped by an Antonov or launched by another force.

What matters to him is that someone killed him, that someone armed the killer, and that there was a world watching the war expand and knowing the scale of the violations, yet failing to do enough to stop it.

That is justice at a price in Sudan: the problem is not merely the absence of evidence, but that the value of the evidence itself sometimes appears to be tied to the name of the accused, the identity of his allies, and the political cost of holding him accountable.

That is why the investigation must begin now, not against one side, nor in the service of one camp against another, but because the Sudanese person killed by chemical weapons, aerial bombardment or drones deserves the same standard of justice, regardless of the name of the person who pulled the trigger and regardless of the capital from which the aircraft, bomb or money came.

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Les autorités italiennes immobilisent un navire de sauvetage après avoir secouru 20 personnes

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Les autorités italiennes ont immobilisé pendant 15 jours le navire de recherche et de sauvetage Sea Punk I et lui ont infligé une amende de 7 500 euros après le sauvetage de 20 personnes dans les eaux internationales.

L’opération de sauvetage a eu lieu le jeudi 10 septembre 2026, près de la plateforme pétrolière de Bouri. L’équipage du navire a déclaré que l’opération avait été menée en coordination avec les autorités italiennes et conformément aux conventions applicables et aux réglementations internationales.

Les autorités ont invoqué le décret dit Piantedosi et accusé le capitaine de ne pas avoir suivi les instructions des garde-côtes libyens dits « garde-côtes libyens ». Le Sea Punk I est partenaire de l’alliance Justice Fleet, une coalition d’organisations civiles de recherche et de sauvetage et de leurs soutiens.

Selon Justice Fleet, cette immobilisation porte à plus de 310 le nombre total de jours pendant lesquels les autorités italiennes ont bloqué ses navires depuis la création de l’alliance, en novembre 2025. Le Sea Punk I est le 11e navire de Justice Fleet à être immobilisé.

Selon Justice Fleet, les organisations civiles de recherche et de sauvetage ont recensé près de 80 incidents de violences extrêmes commises par des milices libyennes depuis 2016, dont la plupart seraient attribués aux garde-côtes libyens dits « garde-côtes libyens ». Le groupe affirme également que plus de 27 000 personnes ayant fui la Libye y ont été renvoyées de force l’an dernier, en violation du droit international. Il indique que les réfugiés et les migrants présents dans le pays sont confrontés à une recrudescence des violences et à des menaces de mort.

« Alors que des violences extrêmes contre les personnes en déplacement sont actuellement en cours en Libye, les autorités italiennes veulent nous contraindre à coopérer avec les garde-côtes libyens dits “garde-côtes libyens”. Pas question ! », a déclaré Giulia Messmer, porte-parole de Justice Fleet, appelant à mettre fin à la coopération européenne avec cette force.

Justice Fleet a été fondée en novembre 2025 par 13 organisations de recherche et de sauvetage, avec le soutien de groupes de la société civile. L’alliance indique notamment vouloir contester l’immobilisation des navires de sauvetage en Italie et s’opposer à la sous-traitance du contrôle migratoire à des acteurs libyens.

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20 000 enfants arrivent en Europe sans parent ni tuteur

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De nouvelles données de l’ONU révèlent que, sur les 31 100 enfants qui ont atteint l’Europe l’an dernier en empruntant des routes migratoires mixtes, plus de 20 000 sont arrivés sans parent ni tuteur.

La Directrice générale de l’Organisation internationale pour les migrations (OIM), Amy Pope, a appelé à une coopération plus étroite entre les États européens et les pays situés le long des routes migratoires afin de protéger les enfants qui voyagent seuls et de lutter contre les réseaux de passeurs et les réseaux criminels qui s’en prennent à eux.

Les conclusions indiquent que la réduction des possibilités de déplacement sûr et tenant compte des besoins de protection le long de ces routes pourrait pousser les jeunes à entreprendre des voyages plus risqués, à dépendre davantage des passeurs et à être davantage exposés à la violence, à l’exploitation et aux mauvais traitements.

« Des enfants entreprennent des voyages difficiles et dangereux sans parent ni tuteur à leurs côtés, a déclaré Amy Pope, Directrice générale de l’OIM. Ce rapport montre à quel point ils sont exposés à la violence et à l’exploitation lorsque les voies sûres sont limitées et qu’ils doivent compter sur des passeurs. Aucun enfant ne devrait avoir à affronter ces risques seul. Nous avons la responsabilité commune d’agir par-delà les frontières pour les protéger, défendre leurs droits et leur apporter les soins et le soutien dont ils ont besoin. »

Le nombre total d’enfants arrivés par voie maritime ou terrestre en Bulgarie, à Chypre, en Grèce, en Italie, à Malte et en Espagne a diminué de 25 % par rapport à 2024. Parmi les enfants arrivés, 78 % étaient des garçons et 22 % des filles. Toutefois, la proportion d’enfants recensés comme non accompagnés est passée à 67 %, contre 51 % l’année précédente. Les proportions les plus élevées ont été enregistrées en Italie et en Espagne, où 86 % des enfants sont arrivés seuls.

L’Italie a fait exception à la tendance à la baisse. Le nombre total d’arrivées y est resté stable, mais celui des enfants a augmenté de 12 %, pour atteindre près de 14 100. La plupart venaient d’Égypte, d’Érythrée, de Somalie, du Bangladesh et d’Éthiopie.

Ces voyages sont dangereux. L’OIM a interrogé plus de 4 600 adolescents et jeunes adultes âgés de 15 à 24 ans le long des routes de la Méditerranée, de l’Atlantique ouest-africain et des Balkans occidentaux. Près de la moitié des personnes interrogées au sujet de leur expérience ont déclaré avoir subi des violences physiques. Sur la route de la Méditerranée centrale, 28 % ont indiqué avoir été retenues contre leur gré et 17 % avoir été contraintes de travailler. La Libye est restée le pays le plus souvent cité comme lieu de ces mauvais traitements.

Dans le même temps, les solutions de remplacement sûres se sont raréfiées. Les enfants représentaient la moitié des 6 800 personnes engagées dans des procédures de réinstallation de réfugiés vers l’Europe en 2025 : 3 400 enfants, contre 8 900 un an plus tôt. Par ailleurs, seuls 199 enfants ont été relocalisés entre États européens dans le cadre du mécanisme de solidarité volontaire, soit une baisse de 67 %, et aucun n’était non accompagné.

Au total, 214 600 enfants ont demandé une protection internationale en Europe en 2025, dont 79 % étaient des primo-demandeurs. Environ 71 % des premières demandes ont été déposées dans seulement quatre pays : l’Allemagne (30 %), la France (19 %), l’Espagne (15 %) et la Grèce (7 %). Sur les 210 900 décisions rendues en première instance concernant des demandes d’enfants, 56 % étaient positives, tandis que les rejets ont augmenté de 25 %.

L’OIM exhorte les États membres de l’Union européenne à placer l’intérêt supérieur de l’enfant au cœur de chaque décision, à garantir un accès rapide aux services et à ne jamais placer des enfants en détention pour des motifs liés à l’immigration. Les enfants non accompagnés et séparés de leur famille devraient avoir immédiatement accès à une représentation juridique. Les évaluations de l’âge devraient rester rares, être adaptées aux enfants et pouvoir faire l’objet d’un recours.

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