Category: 2. World

One billion Africans have to cook on open fires or with fuel that is hazardous to their health and the environment, the International Energy Agency said on Friday.

The problem, which its report says can be easily solved, causes as much greenhouse gas emissions every year as the aviation industry.

Two billion people across the world still cook on open fires or with rudimentary stoves fed by wood, charcoal, agricultural waste or manure, the IEA report found.

“It is one of the greatest injustices of our time, especially in Africa,” IEA head Fatih Birol told AFP, where four out of five households rely on open fires and burning wood.

These fuels pollute the air both indoors and outdoors with fine particles that penetrate the lungs and cause multiple respiratory and cardiovascular problems, the report said.

It also adds to the destruction of forests, natural sinks that trap carbon and help fight global warming.

The IEA estimates that 815,000 premature deaths occur each year in Africa alone due to poor indoor air quality, largely resulting from a lack of access to clean cooking methods.

Women and children suffer the most, spending hours each day searching for fuel and keeping the fire going.

This takes time away from paid employment or education, the report said.

‘Can be easily solved’

A landmark IEA summit on the issue, held in Paris in May last year, raised $2.2bn in public and private sector commitments, as well as political pledges from 12 African governments.

Since then $470 million has been distributed, with concrete results already being seen, Birol insisted, citing a stove factory under construction in Malawi and an affordable stove programme developed in Uganda and Ivory Coast.

The IEA report assesses the progress made a year after the summit and sets out a roadmap for African countries to be able to use clean cooking methods at low cost before 2040.

Since 2010, nearly 1.5bn people in Asia and Latin America, particularly in Brazil, India, and Indonesia, have gained access to modern cooking stoves and fuels.

But the challenge remains immense in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of people without access to clean cooking methods continues to grow.

“For once and for ever, this problem can be solved with an annual investment of $2bn per year,” Birol said.

He stressed that the figure “is about 0.1 per cent of global energy investment, which is nothing”.

Alternative solutions are well known: electricity from solar panels, renewable gas and especially liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a fossil fuel, which, while not ideal, is preferable than the loss of carbon sinks due to tree felling, Birol said.

The IEA said this would prevent 4.7m premature deaths in sub-Saharan Africa by 2040 and reduce the continent’s greenhouse gas emissions by 540m tons per year, as much as the equivalent of the annual emissions of the global aviation sector.

Germany is pushing for an end to the global trade conflict but warns it will not accept any deal at any cost, Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said Friday after meeting with other Group of Seven finance ministers in South Africa.

Speaking after the G7 gathering held alongside the G20 finance chiefs’ meeting in Durban, Klingbeil said Europe is seeking a fair solution with the United States over trade tensions, including a proposed 30% tariff on EU imports threatened by President Donald Trump. He warned that such a move would seriously hurt Germany’s export-focused economy.

Klingbeil said Europe is prepared to respond if negotiations fail. “The EU is ready and willing to take determined countermeasures,” he said, pointing to Brussels’ preparations, including the anti-coercion instrument which allows the bloc to respond to economic pressure.

Talks are ongoing ahead of an August 1 deadline, and Klingbeil emphasized that protecting European jobs and businesses is the top priority.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did not attend the G20 meeting in person but joined the G7 session online. It marked his second absence from a G20 meeting in South Africa this year.

Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel also spoke at the press event, warning that tariff uncertainty could damage the global economy and harm Germany’s fragile recovery. “My appeal to the U.S. side is not to play games,” he said.

Klingbeil said G7 ministers agree that current trade tensions should be resolved and that dialogue with Washington will continue.

The UN human rights chief says his office has received credible reports indicating widespread violations and abuses, including summary executions and arbitrary killings, during the recent violence in the southern city of Suweida.

Among the alleged perpetrators were members of the security forces and individuals affiliated with the interim government, as well as local Druze and Bedouin armed elements, Volker Türk said in a statement.

“This bloodshed and the violence must stop,” he warned, adding that “those responsible must be held to account”.

Almost 600 people are reported to have been killed since sectarian clashes between Druze militias and Bedouin tribes erupted in the province on Sunday.

Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government responded by deploying its forces to the predominantly Druze city of Suweida for the first time since Islamist-led rebels overthrew President Bashar al-Assad in December, ending 13 years of civil war.

However, the fighting escalated and government forces were accused by residents and activists of killing Druze civilians and carrying out extrajudicial executions.

A fragile truce appeared to be holding in Suweida on Friday, two days after the government announced that it had agreed the military would pull out and responsibility for security would be handed to religious elders and some local factions.

According to Türk, the UN human rights office has documented the unlawful killing of at least 13 people on 15 July, when “armed individuals affiliated with the interim authorities deliberately opened fire at a family gathering”.

“On the same day, they reportedly summarily executed six men near their homes in two separate incidents,” he said.

The office has also documented the public humiliation of a Druze men, including the forcible shaving of his moustache, which is an important cultural symbol for the Druze community.

“My office has received accounts of distressed Syrians who are living in fear for their lives and those of their loved ones,” Türk said. “The deployment of state security forces should bring safety and protection, not add to the fear and violence.”

The BBC has contacted the Syrian government and security forces about allegations of summarily killings and other violations.

In a televised address early on Thursday, Sharaa vowed to hold the perpetrators accountable and promised to make protecting the Druze a “priority”.

“We are eager to hold accountable those who transgressed and abused our Druze people because they are under the protection and responsibility of the state,” he said.

He went on to blame “outlaw groups”, saying their leaders “rejected dialogue for many months”.

He also said the government had agreed that the military would pull out of Suweida and responsibility for security would be handed to religious elders and some local factions.

State media have also cited authorities and tribes as accusing “outlaw groups” of carrying out “massacres” of Bedouin fighters and civilians and other violations.

The UN human rights chief said there must be “independent, prompt and transparent investigations into all violations, and those responsible must be held to account, in accordance with international standards”.

“It is crucial that immediate steps are taken to prevent recurrence of such violence. Revenge and vengeance are not the answer,” he added.

Türk raised concerns regarding reports of civilian casualties resulting from Israeli air strikes on Suweida, Daraa and in the centre of Damascus, where the defence ministry’s headquarters and a site near the presidential palace were hit.

Israel said it carried out the strikes to stop government forces from attacking the Druze and to force the military to withdraw from Suweida province.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Thursday night that it had documented the killing of at least 594 people during the violence.

The UK-based monitoring group reported that 300 members of the Druze religious minority were killed, including 146 fighters and 154 civilians, 83 of whom were “summarily executed” by members of the interior and defence ministry’s forces.

At least 257 government personnel and 18 Bedouin fighters were also killed, while three Bedouin civilians were summarily killed by Druze fighters, it added.

• Interior ministry says plane carrying men took off Friday.
• Human rights org criticises deportations to Afghanistan.
• Berlin had only indirect contact with Taliban through third parties.

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BERLIN: Germany said on Friday it had deported 81 Afghan men convicted of crimes to their Taliban-controlled homeland, as Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government looks to signal a hard line on immigration.

The interior ministry said a plane carrying the men took off Friday morning bound for Afghanistan, adding that all the deportees were under expulsion orders and were convicted by the criminal justice system.

The government of Europe’s top economy was forging ahead with a “policy change”, said Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who was hosting several European counterparts for a migration meeting.

“Deportations to Afghanistan must continue to be carried out safely in the future. There is no right of residence for serious criminals in our country.”

Berlin has had only indirect contact with the Taliban authorities through third parties with Friday’s operation executed with the help of Qatar, said the German interior ministry.

Germany had stopped deportations to Afghanistan and closed its embassy in Kabul following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.

But expulsions resumed last year for the first time since the Taliban came to power, when the previous government of Social Democrat chancellor Olaf Scholz expelled a group of 28 Afghans convicted of crimes.

Rights concerns

Human rights group Amnesty International strongly criticised the renewed deportations to Afghanistan saying the situation in the country was “catastrophic”.

“Extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, and torture are commonplace,” the group said in a statement.

At the beginning of the month, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, accusing them of crimes against humanity over the persecution of women and girls.

Merz told a press conference on Friday that Germany wants to be an “attractive country for immigration”, to attract the best talent and fill gaping labour shortages,

The previous government’s policies had however left local administrations with too large a burden to carry, Merz said.

His government had “initiated corrections” to put migration policy on the right course, he said, including tightening border controls and limiting family reunifications rights for some refugees.

Merz said that policing Germany´s borders with its neighbours was only a “temporary” solution and a durable solution was needed at the European level.

Migration summit

Dobrindt was meeting his French, Polish, Austrian, Danish and Czech counterparts, as well as European Commissioner for Home Affairs Magnus Brunner, in southern Germany on Friday.

The objective of the meeting is to “strengthen European migration policy,” Dobrindt told the Augsburger Allgemeine daily.

A debate over resuming expulsions has flared as migration has risen up the political agenda in tandem with the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The AfD scored a historic election result of over 20% in February — its highest score at a national level — leaving the party nipping on the heels of Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc.

The controversy over immigration was fuelled by a series of deady attacks last year where the suspects were asylum seekers — including several from Afghanistan.

Germany’s new government, a coalition between the CDU/CSU and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), has promised to expel more foreign criminals alongside a crackdown on irregular migration.

As well as carrying out deportations to Afghanistan, Dobrindt has said he was in contact with authorities to enable deportations to Syria, which have been suspended since 2012.

Longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad was toppled in December. The country is now under the control of leaders, some of whom were once linked with the Al-Qaeda jihadist network.