SCHWETZINGEN, Germany: Dr. Mohab Mousa, a Palestinian brain and neurosurgeon, lived and worked in Ukraine until the war forced him to flee. Now he and his family have taken refuge in Germany.   

More than 4 million people have fled Ukraine since the conflict began. Over 300,000 of them have arrived in Germany, many from the Middle East as Ukraine has a community of tens of thousands of people from the region.

Mousa, from Rafah in the Gaza Strip, has seen firsthand the horrors of war at home. As the situation in Gaza was unlikely to improve, he decided to leave.

“I wanted to improve my skills and provide a safe home for my wife and children,” he told Arab News. Mousa registered at the University of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine in 2016.

His wife and three children followed shortly afterward. His fourth child was born there and is a Ukrainian citizen.

Mousa learned Russian and started to work in the city of Kharkiv. Ukraine became his new home. “I like the country, but Kharkiv is something like a personal love story,” he said.

“The people are nice, there’s a large community of expats — basically everything in Kharkiv is beautiful.”

But the new world Mousa had escaped to has been turned upside down, something he said he did not expect even until the day before the conflict began.

“I was having coffee with a friend who asked me if there was going to be a war. I told him no.”

The very next day, the quarter where he lives on the outskirts of the city was hit by missiles. “I woke up my wife and children, and we fled to the school to find shelter there,” Mousa said.

As the situation deteriorated further every day, he and his wife decided to leave to protect the children.

They only took what they could carry and booked a train to the city of Lviv in western Ukraine.

They arrived after an exhausting trip that took 30 hours, but they were far from safety. Devious people who offered refugees a ride to Slovakia did not hesitate to exploit their needs.

“They charged foreigners 2,500 Ukrainian hryvnia ($85) instead of the regular 500,” Mousa said. With his children around and sub-zero temperatures at night, he accepted.

They managed to get to Bratislava, where “the stress the little ones had to suffer started to show,” he said.

Despite positive memories of people prepared to help, Mousa described the overall treatment of non-Ukrainian foreigners in Slovakia as “shameful.”

Despite guarantees by the EU that refugees coming from Ukraine could travel freely, an employee at Bratislava’s main railway station insisted that Mousa pay €77 ($84) for tickets because he is not Ukrainian.

“I asked her why? I had our residence permits from Ukraine and my youngest child is a Ukrainian citizen.” He had to pay regardless. “It was arbitrary.”  

The family’s odyssey was not over yet. After numerous stations, they finally arrived in the city of Karlsruhe in southwest Germany, where they registered and were given shelter, first in the town of Heidelberg and then in the town of Schwetzingen.  

Mousa said he did his best to hide the reality of war from his children — an almost impossible task.

His wish now is for them to resume their education and pursue outdoor activities. “They should start to learn German now so they can integrate more easily.” 

Although he has lived in Ukraine for six years, Mousa is determined to stay in Germany and practice his profession there.

To do that, he wants to learn German as quickly as possible, prove his qualifications and start to work. “An unproductive man is a burden to society.” 

RIYADH: Hans Grundberg, the UN envoy to Yemen, said on Wednesday the current truce between warring factions has led to a rare significant reduction of hostilities, despite reports about the mobilization of forces and violations in mainly around Marib.

“We have seen a significant reduction of violence. However, there are reports of some hostile military activities, particularly around Marib, which are of concern,” Grundberg said during a virtual press conference.

“We are currently setting up (a) coordination mechanism with the parties to maintain open channels of communication and help them prevent, de-escalate and manage incidents in support of their commitment to halt all offensive military operations and freeze their positions.”

The official said the UN is not monitoring the truce on the ground and has left the implementation to parties concerned, expressing hope that the truce would pave the way for achieving a comprehensive settlement to end the war in Yemen.

“We need to make the best possible use of the window this truce gives us to work toward ending the conflict. These two months will be a test of the parties’ commitment to reaching a peaceful resolution of the conflict that prioritizes the needs of the Yemeni people.”

The two-month-long ceasefire that took effect on April 2 was meant to stop hostilities across the country, opening Sanaa International Airport, allowing fuel ships into the port at Hodeidah and opening roads in Taiz and many other provinces.

Meanwhile, Yemen’s human rights groups and officials have demanded that international mediators order the Iran-backed Houthis to hand over maps that show the locations of hundreds of landmines across the country.

“The Houthis should be forced into submitting those maps, and the government and other organizations should help the country get rid of this plague,” Saleem Allawo, a lawyer and activist from Yemen’s National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms told Arab News on Wednesday.

Even before capturing Sanaa in late 2014, the Houthis planted hundreds of thousands of landmines across the country to block military advances by their opponents.

The landmines have killed and wounded thousands of people, ruined villages and farms, destroyed hundreds of vehicles and barred many displaced people from returning to their houses.

Military officials say the Houthis have randomly and intensively laid the landmines across former battlefields, and locating and defusing them might take years.

Allawo said that if the Houthis do not have maps, their fighters should be ordered to locate the landmines, demanding that demining teams quickly clean land affected to save the lives of displaced people who return to their homes during the truce.

Abdul Baset Al-Qaedi, undersecretary at Yemen’s Ministry of Information, told Arab News on Wednesday that the Houthis had planted landmines that look like rocks or other shapes to inflict maximum casualties.

“The biggest problem is that the Houthi militia plants mines indiscriminately and without maps, which doubles the losses,” Al-Qaedi said.

A report prepared by several Yemeni organizations released on Tuesday showed that landmines planted by the Houthis have killed 2,818 people, including 534 children and 177 women, and wounded 3,655 more, including 854 children and 255 women since 2014.

The biggest number of civilian deaths from landmines was recorded in Taiz where 549 died, followed by Hodeidah, 479, and Marib, 274.

The Yemeni Landmine Monitor said on Wednesday that at least 363 civilians have been killed by Houthi landmines and unexploded ordnances since January last year.

BERLIN: German investigators on Wednesday arrested a Syrian man accused of war crimes for allegedly torturing captives while he was with Daesh group in Syria in 2014.
Federal prosecutors said the man, identified only as Raed E. in line with German privacy rules, was arrested in Berlin. He is suspected of membership in a foreign terrorist organization, crimes against humanity, war crimes and bodily harm.
The suspect joined Daesh in summer 2014 and participated in an attack that August on the Shueitat tribe in the Deir Ezzor region of eastern Syria, prosecutors said.
Activists reported death tolls ranging up to 700.
Raed E. is accused of abusing and torturing three captives after that attack. Prosecutors say that he had a man who was looking for a 13-year old brother kidnapped by Daesh arrested and then tortured him at various prisons run by the terrorist group. 
The suspect allegedly also ordered the 13-year-old suspended from a ceiling with his hands tied behind his back. And he is accused of twice physically abusing a third captive during months in captivity.
Prosecutors said in a statement that, in addition to working in Daesh prisons, he handled transactions in which the freedom of Shueitat captives was bought and manned two checkpoints for the extremist group.
They didn’t say how or when he came to Germany.

BEIRUT: A total of 103 electoral lists will compete in around 40 days for 128 seats in the Lebanese Parliament. 

No one had expected the surprisingly high number, with only 77 lists in the previous elections in 2018.

There are 11 electoral lists in the Tripoli constituency alone, followed by the capital, Beirut, with 10 competing lists.

While all constituencies had an unprecedented increase in the number of lists, South Lebanon’s third constituency has the lowest number, with only three lists.

These parliamentary elections are particularly important since they are the first to be held after the October 2019 protests and the subsequent financial and economic crises.

In addition, this parliament will in turn elect the next Lebanese president for a six-year term to succeed Michel Aoun.

The electoral lists registration deadline ended at midnight on Monday, with an increase of 26 lists from the 2018 elections.

The number of candidates reached 1043, 42 of whom withdrew, and 284 others did not join the electoral lists.

The number of candidates who joined the lists decreased to 718, including 118 women, with a noticeable increase in the percentage of women over the previous elections.

Civil society groups, known as the “new forces,” were divided between several lists in all constituencies.

In 2018, there were 77 lists with 597 candidates, 86 of whom were women.

The total number of candidates reached 976, including 113 women, but 379 candidates withdrew or did not join the lists.

Since the Future Movement refrained from participating in the elections, candidates loyal to the movement were distributed among several lists from Akkar to Sidon.

Some submitted their resignations from the movement before submitting their candidacies, while others are new faces running for the first time.

Some MPs of the bloc re-nominated themselves independently in the North and West Bekaa constituencies.

The lists of the Shiite duo Hezbollah and the Amal Movement remained the same as in the previous elections, with minor changes in Nabatiyeh, Bint Jbeil, Zahle and Baalbek-Hermel.

The lists of the Free Patriotic Movement, Aoun’s supporters, were slightly altered as some former MPs were excluded from the lists.

Meanwhile, major changes were made in the Lebanese Forces lists in various constituencies from the North to Beirut.

The “new forces” are contesting the elections with unified lists in various constituencies, although the rivalries that prevailed between these forces had given the impression that they will be unable to reach an understanding on unified lists.

Some of these lists have good chances of winning over the ruling parties’ lists in several constituencies, with some serious battles ahead in 10 of the 16.

However, political observers believe that the existence of a large number of opposition lists is not necessarily a good thing, and may reflect the existing differences between these forces that would split votes in favor of the ruling parties, especially since voters loyal to traditional parties all vote for the same parties they have always supported, especially Hezbollah, the Amal Movement.

They also feel that the traditional parties will now focus on securing votes for their strongest candidates in each constituency or finding ways to bring down other candidates.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior has to train over 14,000 permanent employees and about 2,000 others in electoral law and on the logistical matters required of them on election day, in addition to securing electricity and the internet at polling and sorting stations, as well as transportation for staff and logistics; all of which have become very expensive.

On Tuesday, the Election Supervisory Authority began monitoring electoral campaigns, electoral advertising and electoral spending.

DUBAI: Millions of people in the Middle East and North Africa were suffering from severe effects of hunger and malnutrition long before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted supply chains and put a squeeze on public spending. Now the war in Ukraine threatens to exacerbate the problem and global food prices are expected to keep rising.

This is happening against the backdrop of an ever-worsening climate emergency, as rising temperatures around the world compound problems such as water shortages, soil degradation, forest fires and rural displacement. This is placing additional strain on agriculture and the food security of some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

In an effort to get ahead of this escalating food crisis, and in recognition of the fact it is intrinsically connected to the climate emergency, an ambitious new initiative led by the UAE and the US aims to double investment in climate-smart agriculture over a period of five years — from the $4 billion announced by US President Joe Biden at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November to $8 billion by the time COP27 takes place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, this year.

The initiative — the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate, or AIM for Climate — brings together more than 140 global partners from the public, private and non-profit sectors with a view to doubling investment in science-based and data-driven decision and policy making relating to two of the most pressing issues facing the MENA region: food security and climate change.

Speaking in late February after the inaugural ministerial meeting of AIM for Climate at Expo 2020 Dubai, Mariam Almheiri, the UAE’s minister for climate change and environment, said that although food systems are responsible for as much as a third of greenhouse gas emissions, they can also help to solve the problem.

“Food systems can be a challenge but also a solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. “Over two billion people are directly connected to the food-system sector, so we need to make food systems more efficient, decarbonize and ensure the livelihoods of the people dependent on the sector.”

Noting the dependence of the UAE on imported food — about 90 percent of the country’s food needs are met by other countries — Almheiri said partnerships such as AIM for Climate are critical to help arid countries such as those in the MENA region to learn from the experiences of others. Furthermore, the adaptation of food systems will play a central role in the global drive toward sustainable development.

“The transformation to sustainable food systems is an urgent task and we don’t have a lot of time,” Almheiri said. “The UAE seeks to become a leading exporter of sustainable agricultural solutions for hot and arid climates.”

Part of this transformation will involve the adoption of emerging technologies, which are already enabling the UAE to produce food that would be impossible under normal climatic conditions, such as salmon, quinoa and berries, all of which can now be sustainably farmed in the UAE.

“We are keen to share our experience with our partners and work with other countries to address critical challenges of our food systems,” Almheiri told guests at the Expo 2020 Dubai meeting. “We see ourselves as an open lab to innovate, discover and put forward solutions.”

Although it is exciting to hear about such commitments and learn about the applications of new technologies, Almheiri said, food security and climate pressures cannot be addressed without concrete global targets.

“To move it to the next level, we’ve put tangible outcomes we want to achieve by COP27, which will move to the UAE as we are hosting COP28. We have to look at the deliverables,” she added.

Thomas J. Vilsack, the US agriculture secretary, also spoke at the Expo 2020 Dubai event and lauded the efforts of the UAE to rally nations to a common cause.

“There is an innovative spirit in Dubai that all of us around the world should emulate: A belief in a better and brighter future,” he said.

Securing funding is now critical for the project to succeed, Vilsack said, as he called on governments, the private sector and non-profit organizations to pool their resources to support small farms in developing countries, commit to reducing methane emissions, and promote emerging industries such as nano-technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, sensors and drones.

“AIM for Climate government partners today demonstrated their strong commitment to work together to close the investment gap in climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovation, (which is) needed to address the twin challenges of global hunger and the climate crisis,” said Vilsack.

“We are proud of the wide range of AIM for Climate partners working to deliver impactful solutions for all people. AIM for Climate seeks to expand its network even further with new participants from across the globe.”

Food-security concerns have heightened since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Both of these countries are major suppliers of wheat and vegetable oils to global markets and several MENA nations rely on them for food staples, including bread.

Financial sanctions imposed on Russia and disruption to shipping have caused prices to rise and are stoking fears of looming shortages. In Yemen and Afghanistan, where hunger is already a fact of life for many, the prospect is terrifying.

The 2021 Near East and North Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition report, published by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in December, revealed that 69 million people in the region did not have access to adequate supplies of food in 2020, and 50.2 million people — 11 percent of the population — were undernourished.

“This is an astonishing figure for our region,” Ahmad Mukhtar, a senior economist at the FAO’s Regional Office for Near East and North Africa in Cairo, told Arab News.

“There are factors that we know, such as climate change, inequalities and protracted conflicts in our region, but one aspect that should be highlighted is that our region is particularly heavily dependent on imported food.”

About two-thirds of food in the MENA region is imported, which leaves it extremely vulnerable to supply-chain shocks, as the COVID-19 pandemic made painfully clear. Progress toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of achieving “zero hunger” by 2030 was badly affected by the health crisis, with many of the achievements of the past decade pushed into reverse, according to a FAO report published in November.

At least 132 million people in the MENA region were plunged into chronic hunger during the pandemic, with up to 14 percent of food production lost along the supply chain before it even reached consumers.

Areas in which progress has stalled, or gone into reverse, include agricultural systems and small-scale food production, which have borne the brunt of the economic toll of the COVID-19 crisis.

The region is also poorly equipped to manage strategic food reserves. Mukhtar said structured plans are needed for the management and distribution of food and to prevent waste. Much of this will depend on the deployment of new technologies and innovations.

“This is an area that needs focus,” Mukhtar added. “There are certain structural issues, such as inequalities, conflicts and climate change, which are all external factors that are beyond the agri-food policy domain, so we have to look at what is in our hands.”