Schlagwort: Amnesty International

As Trump tears down renewable energy, once again, Mozambique bears the brunt of climate harm caused by fossil fuel producers.

By Tigere Chagutah

In his address to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on 21 January, US President Donald Trump argued against renewable energy solutions. In a wide-ranging speech, he described them as a “green new scam”, while calling world leaders, mainly from the Global North, to extract more fossil fuels to “avoid a catastrophic energy collapse”. The burning and production of fossil fuels is the major driver of global warming, accounting for 89% of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to global harm to the planet, fossil fuel production harms nature and human rights.

As Trump made this speech, Mozambique was experiencing deadly floods caused by a tropical depression, an event in part made more likely by human-induced climate change.

Mozambique is not helping itself

Daniel Chapo, Mozambique’s president, cancelled his participation at the 2026 WEF, ostensibly to monitor the impact of the floods and the delivery of assistance to victims. However, such actions are meaningless in the absence of an adequate, consistent and coherent implementation of Mozambique’s Climate Action Strategy.

As global calls for the world to equitably phase out fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy grow ever louder, Mozambique continues to invest heavily in fossil fuel production.

YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images

The country is home to the biggest fossil gas project in Africa, the Mozambique Liquefied Natural Gas project, in the poorest province of Cabo Delgado, owned by TotalEnergies, the French oil and gas giant. After its halt in 2021, due to a deadly attack by armed groups that have been fighting against the government since 2017, Chapo authorised the project to resume operation, despite strong allegations of human rights abuses and violations, and the improper displacement of communities to give way to the project.

Besides this project, there are three other major fossil fuel projects in the same province: Rovuma LNG, owned by Eni and ExxonMobil; Coral Sul FLNG, owned by Eni; and Coral North LNG, also owned by Eni. Combined, these facilities will produce 9.9 gigatons of CO2 greenhouse emissions, which will significantly increase Mozambique’s total emissions.

In 2019, Cabo Delgado province was hit by Cyclone Kenneth, which flattened the villages of Quissanga, Macomia and Ibo, killing dozens and leaving thousands of people without shelter, food, crops and assets.

Deadly floods

Once again, Mozambique is experiencing deadly climate-related floods. Between 9 and 26 January, about 692,522 people (151,962 families) were affected across southern and central Mozambique, mainly in Gaza (75%), Maputo and Sofala provinces, where 12 people died, 45 were injured, and four remain unaccounted for. The floods destroyed or damaged more than 4,000 homes and flooded almost 155,000 others.

According to the Mozambique Disaster and Risk Management Institute, since the beginning of the rainy season in October, 137 people have died and 800,000 people have been affected. About 72,000 homes were destroyed, and essential infrastructure, including roads, bridges, health care facilities, agricultural land and schools, was damaged.

The country will need $644-million to rebuild its essential infrastructure washed away by the rains, which are expected to continue, with the situation likely to worsen.

Despite its insignificant greenhouse gas emissions (60.26 megatons of CO2, about 0.11% of the global total, in 2024), Mozambique is among the top 10 countries most severely affected by climate change and natural hazards. Climate projections indicate that Mozambique’s land surface temperatures are likely to keep rising.

Unprecedented warming

As Trump fiercely opposes renewable energy, the world is warming at an unprecedented rate. After record heat in 2024, the first year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the critical temperature threshold set in the Paris Agreement, 2026 is likely to be the fourth year in succession with high temperature levels (at least 1.44ºC, above the pre-industrial levels).

Besides Trump’s obstruction of climate action and the devastating effects of climate change, research has shown that fossil fuel companies were responsible for half of all greenhouse gas emissions globally.

According to a recent update to the Carbon Majors’ database, state-owned companies comprised 17 out of the top 20 emitters. All 17 companies are controlled by countries that refused the proposed phase-out plan at COP30, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and India.

If the world wants to address global warming, unlike the outcome of COP30, at which world leaders failed to commit to a phase-out roadmap, the transition to renewable energy produced in a manner consistent with human rights is paramount, and it must be just.

As reflected in Amnesty International’s COP30 outcome analysis, this must also be accompanied by, inter alia, the operationalisation of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, to meet the needs of vulnerable nations such as Mozambique, which is among the most affected by climate change impacts and is currently experiencing the unjust impact of climate change.

Higher income historical emitters must:

• Provide technical and grant-based or non-debt financial assistance to support Mozambique’s mitigation and adaptation efforts; and
• Provide reparations for loss and damage due to irreversible climate harm, such as the recent floods.

On its side, Mozambique must:

• Invest in more robust emergency disaster response systems and provide remedies to individuals or groups affected by the floods; and
• Embark on an equitable transition away from fossil fuels and invest in adaptation. DM

Tigere Chagutah is the regional director for Amnesty International East and Southern Africa.

This opinion piece first ran in South Africa’s Daily Maverick.

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Responding to a landmark judgement by an Athens court which found four individuals linked to spyware maker Intellexa, guilty of unlawful access to private communication systems and data, and of violating privacy and data protection laws, Rebecca White, Amnesty International’s Security Lab Researcher said: 

“Almost four years since the ‘Predatorgate’ scandal hit Greece, we are finally seeing consequences for those involved in the abuse of surveillance technology.

“Amnesty International and other organizations have shown time and again that Intellexa’s products have been used to mount brazen attacks against journalists, activists, academics and politicians around the world.  

“We hope this landmark ruling signals the end of the era of impunity for the surveillance industry.  

Rebecca White, Amnesty International’s Security Lab Researcher

“Questions remain about the role of the Greek government which has consistently denied purchasing or using Predator. Transparency is a crucial part of accountability – as is remedy for the many victims of the human rights violations brought about by the unlawful use of this technology.” 
 
Background 

The ‘Predatorgate’ scandal surfaced in March 2022 when journalist Thanasis Koukakis discovered that his phone had  been infected with the highly invasive spyware, Predator and that he had been wiretapped by the Greek National Intelligence Service. Four months later, Nikos Androulakis, leader of the opposition party PASOK-KINAL, also discovered his phone had been targeted with Predator while serving as a Member of the European Parliament.  

Numerous allegations, public outrage, parliamentary inquiries and criminal investigations followed. In July 2024, the Supreme Court cleared the intelligence services and political officials of wrong doing.

On 26 February 2026, the Athens court sentenced four individuals  – Tal Dilian, a former Israeli intelligence officer and founder of Intellexa, Sara Hamou – Dilian’s business partner, Felix Bitzios – a former deputy administrator and shareholder of Intellexa and Yiannis Lavranos – owner of Kriel, the company through which Predator was allegedly procured, to 126 years and eight months in prison each,  though the sentence has been suspended pending an appeal. A prosecutor has asked for their investigation along with eight others for espionage and any other people who maybe involved in the case citing the possibility of collaboration with foreign state forces.  

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To mark Poland’s official withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention or the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, Julia Głębocka, Human rights researcher for Amnesty International Poland, reflects on what the return of these indiscriminate weapons means for human rights in Europe.

Not so long ago, in 2020, the European Union was funding mine relief efforts in Lebanon and  hoping to see an anti-personnel mine-free world within five years. HALO Ukraine, an EU-supported organization, had already been making tangible change, removing explosives from Ukrainian soil since 2016. In Chad, the EU-funded project PRODECO, was reintegrating anti-personnel mine victims into society through long-term medical care and rehabilitation, as well as supporting demining efforts.

At the beginning of 2025, all 27 EU member states had been parties to the Ottawa Convention, which bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines, for over two decades.

But any hope for a more peaceful world was short lived.

While many of us dreamed that one day these indiscriminate weapons would be eradicated, these ghosts of twentieth century warfare are making a comeback. 

In March 2025, the governments of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland announced their intention to withdraw jointly from the Ottawa Convention. Finland followed suit with a similar announcement in April 2025.  While the withdrawal has already come into effect for other countries, Poland’s exit entered into force on Friday. The move from multiple EU member states marks a disturbing shift in national security policies undermining the bloc’s credibility on its own adherence to international humanitarian law.

For decades, Brussels has been an avid supporter of the Ottawa Convention. EU strategies on conventional weapons explicitly condemn anti-personnel mines as indiscriminate tools that cause harm far beyond the battlefield. EU funds are routinely channeled into demining operations, victim assistance programmes and international advocacy against anti-personnel mines. And yet, when several of its own members openly abandon this consensus, the EU refused even to utter words of condemnation.

Meanwhile, in my home country, Poland, arms companies wasted no time in seizing on the opportunity that the Ottawa withdrawal presented.

Almost immediately after Poland announced its withdrawal, two major arms-industry companies signaled their readiness to restart anti-personnel mine production. State-owned Bydgoszcz Electromechanical Plant Belma and Niewiadów Polish Military Group JSC declared that they could produce enough mines to secure the entire 800-kilometre eastern border of Poland, with plans to sell any surplus to the Baltic states and Ukraine.

The Polish government justifies its decision in the language of military deterrence. But according to international monitoring organisations, roughly 80 to 85 percent of anti-personnel mine victims worldwide are civilians, many of them children. In Ukraine, where anti-personnel mines have been deployed on a massive scale, their effects extend far beyond military targets. It is worth mentioning that severe mine contamination affected local communities not only in terms of physical safety, but also economically. Ukrainian farmers had to take the initiative and start demining operations themselves and were then reimbursed by their government. Anti-personnel mines do not end wars. They survive them.

Absent, however, from public debate is how the use of these mines might put refugees and migrants at risk.

Julia Głębocka

In 2021-2022 Amnesty International documented Poland’s unlawful pushbacks and ill-treatment of refugees and migrants at its border with Belarus, the adoption of legislation limiting access to the border for humanitarian organizations, and the granting of powers to the Polish Border Guard to reject asylum applications without examination, in breach of international law standards.

On the other side of the border, Amnesty International revealed how Belarusian authorities ruthlessly forced people under duress across the border, in full knowledge of the violence they would face at the hands of Polish border guards on the other side. seeking protection in Europe.

Since then, restrictions to accessing the border were once again re-introduced through the creation of a “buffer/exclusion zone” in June 2024, the effects of which were repeatedly extended and remain active to date. Soon after, the law regulating the use of arms by the Border Guard was amended, limiting their accountability for excessive force.

In a flagrant violation of international law, in March 2025 (at the same time Poland announced its withdrawal from Ottawa) the right to seek asylum at the border was temporarily suspended. Humanitarian organizations warned at the outset that these measures were a slippery slope.   

Amnesty International has serious concerns about how a possible re-introduction of anti-personnel mines compounds risks for refugees and migrants, creating a new horrifying and dangerous reality for people seeking protection in Europe.

These developments along Europe’s northeastern borders are retrograde moves that will only further weaken the global consensus aimed at minimizing civilian harm during armed conflict. Antipersonnel mines’ devasting impact on civilians, sometimes decades after they are deployed, and unexploded anti-personnel landmines can blight whole regions for generations.  

The decision to leave the Convention must be reversed.

Europe once committed itself to leave anti-personnel mines in the past. Allowing them to return uncontested means accepting that some ghosts are welcome after all.

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This article was originally published in EUobserver.

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Since December 2025, Israeli authorities have unleashed a series of unlawful measures deliberately designed to dispossess Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to make the annexation of the territory an irreversible reality, Amnesty International said today.   

These decisions represent an unprecedented escalation – in scale and speed – in Israel’s project to expand illegal settlements. They facilitate the takeover of more Palestinian land, authorize a record number of new settlements, expanding existing ones, and formalize registration of land in the West Bank as Israeli state property. While successive Israeli governments have pursued policies aimed at expanding settlements and entrenching occupation and apartheid, the latest measures underscore how the current Israeli government has turbocharged these efforts, in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza.   

“What we are witnessing is a state, led by a Prime Minister wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, openly gloating about its defiance of international law. Despite hundreds of UN resolutions, Advisory Opinions from the International Court of Justice and global condemnation, Israel continues to brazenly expand illegal settlements, entrenching its cruel system of apartheid and destroying Palestinian lives and livelihoods,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns. 

“The unconditional support of the USA government, combined with the pervasive lack of international accountability for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, decades of crimes under international law linked to its unlawful occupation and its system of apartheid, has further emboldened Israel to escalate its illegal actions. This includes formalizing land grabs with full confidence that it will face no consequences 

The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action. 

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns. 

“The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action. Third states have failed to respect their own legal obligations, refusing to use the tools at their disposal, such as suspension of the EU Israel Association Agreement, to deter Israel from pursuing its unlawful agenda.” 

On 10 December 2025 the Israel Land Authority published a tender for 3,401 housing units in the E1 area, east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank. The plan seeks to expand the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and create a continuum with occupied East Jerusalem. This would sever the West Bank in two, permanently rupturing urban Palestinian contiguity between Ramallah, occupied East Jerusalem, and Bethlehem. Together with the construction of a bypass road which is set to begin this month, this plan will also lead to the forcible transfer of the Palestinian communities living in the area.  

While since the 1990s successive Israeli governments have attempted to implement the E1 plan, it remained largely dormant for decades due to international pressure. Its current advancement with such speed signifies a government that is brazenly pursuing its settlement expansion agenda amidst insufficient international pushback.  

Since its occupation of Palestinian territory in 1967, Israel has introduced and developed an oppressive administrative and legal architecture of dispossession and control against Palestinians. The current government has been relentlessly accelerating this project by fast-tracking settlement expansion and land seizures. On 11 December 2025 Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to establish 19 new settlements, bringing the total number approved by the current coalition government to 68 in just three years and the total number of official settlements to about 210. Around 750,000 Israeli settlers currently live illegally in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. 

The new settlements include the retroactive “legalization” of outposts built in violation of even Israel’s own domestic laws. Credible media reports indicate at least three of these sites sit upon land from which Palestinian communities, such as Ein Samia and Ras Ein al-Ouja, were recently forcibly transferred following state-backed settler violence. 

According to Peace Now, an Israeli organization monitoring settlement expansion, in 2025 alone, a record 86 outposts were established, primarily “herding” or “farming” outposts” which have significantly contributed to the spike in state-backed settler violence and forcible transfer of Palestinian communities. Protected by the Israeli military and funded by the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, the outposts have turned the lives of Palestinian farmers and shepherds, particularly in Area C, into a living hell. Settlers in the outposts aggressively prevent Palestinian shepherds from accessing their grazing land, depriving them of their main livelihood, as well as seizing land by force, vandalizing property, stealing livestock and attacking Palestinians and their homes.  

According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, 21 Palestinian communities were fully or partially uprooted in 2025 as a result of state-backed settler violence. A mother of three from Ras Ein al-Ouja, near Jericho, told Amnesty International: “The fear of attacks forced us to put our children to bed with their shoes on, because we might have to flee at any moment.” In January 2026, she and her family were driven out in the freezing cold along with another 122 families; in total more than 600 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from this community.  

A declaration by the Israeli civil administration on 5 January 2026 designating 694 dunams of land belonging to the Palestinian towns of Deir Istiya, Bidya and Kafr Thulth in the northern West Bank as “state land”, along with a series of measures to expand control over the West Bank announced by Israel’s security cabinet on 8 February marked a further escalation in Israel’s land grabs. 

These measures include repealing Jordanian legislation still in force to allow Israeli settlers to purchase Palestinian land without oversight increasing Israeli civil administrative control over planning and construction in Hebron City and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, as well as granting Israeli authorities new enforcement powers in archaeological sites and in issues related to water and environment in Areas A and B.  

On 15 February 2026 the Israeli cabinet issued a decision that amounts to annexation under Israeli law.  It allocated over 244 million NIS (Israeli shekels) for the establishment of a government mechanism to facilitate land registration in Area C, transferring the powers of land registration from the civil administration to Israel’s Ministry of Justice.   

Currently, nearly 58% of the land in Area C of the occupied West Bank is unregistered, according to Peace Now. Israel has already seized more than half of that area through state land designations. Palestinians face almost insurmountable hurdles to prove land ownership due to Israel’s archaic interpretation of Ottoman land laws which require Palestinians to provide an array of documents, maps and other records that most Palestinians do not have access to. 

Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it. Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions.

Erika Guevara-Rosas

“Land registration is yet another Israeli euphemism for land grabs and dispossession. Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it. Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions,” Erika Guevara-Rosas said. 

“Israel has totally disregarded its obligations as an Occupying Power towards Palestinian civilians and instead has deliberately and consistently advance its aggressive annexation agenda, in blatant violation of international law, which categorically prohibits annexation and establishment of settlements in occupied territory.  

“These measures are in brazen defiance of the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinions of 2004 and 2024, the latter of which unequivocally found Israel’s presence in the OPT to be unlawful. A subsequent UN General Assembly resolution set September 2025 as the deadline to end Israel’s unlawful occupation. Yet instead of complying, Israel has simply invented new ways to violate international law, further entrenching its unlawful occupation and apartheid – while the international community continues, at best, to pay lip service to Palestinians’ rights and taken no effective action.” 

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