“Our presence here is not innocent, and our history has been written... with deeply painful pages,” Macron said during a remembrance ceremony at the former royal palace in the capital Antananarivo. 

“Only you can make this journey of forgiveness,” he said after touring the palace with Princess Fenosoa Ralandison Ratsimamanga. 

Russia attacked Kyiv with an hours long barrage of missiles and drones, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 70 in its deadliest assault on the Ukrainian capital since last July and just as peace efforts are coming to a head. 

The Basic Court of Pristina said it had ordered 30 days of detention for three former prison guards suspected of war crimes during the Kosovo war of 1998-1999. 

The Special Prosecutor’s document, seen by BIRN, said that Boban Tonic, a 59-year-old Kosovo Serb from Lipjan/Lipljan, Mirsad Ibro, a 56-year-old member of the Gorani minority from Pristina, and Nadica Cepkenovic, a 62-year-old Serb born in Skopje and now residing in Pozarevac in Serbia, “systematically mistreated Albanian prisoners” while working as guards at prisons in Pristina and Lipjan/Lipljan. 

Senior Palestinian officials loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas are meeting to vote on the creation of a vice presidency and could choose a possible successor to the unpopular 89-year-old. 

The two-day meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Central Council, comes as Abbas seeks relevance and a role in postwar planning for the Gaza Strip after having been largely sidelined by the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. 

A Tunisian judge has ordered the detention of prominent lawyer Ahmed Souab, a fierce critic of President Kais Saied, lawyers said, two days after his arrest for comments about the judiciary. 

Souab’s arrest sparked widespread anger among political parties and civil society groups, which said the move was a dangerous escalation of a crackdown on dissent and marked a further entrenchment of the country’s authoritarian regime. 

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have launched a ballistic missile towards northern Israel, according to the Israeli military, which claimed to have shot down the projectile without causing any injuries. 

Shortly after 4 am local time (01:00 GMT) on April 23, the Israeli army said that the missile triggered air raid sirens in Haifa, Krayot and other areas west of the Sea of Galilee. 

This area is a rare target for the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who continue to be the target of an intense United States air strike campaign. 

A court in Ivory Coast ruled that Tidjane Thiam, a former CEO of Credit Suisse, is not eligible to run for president because of his dual Ivorian-French nationality, according to a lawyer representing him. 

Thiam won his party’s primary on Friday in an uncontested vote and was widely seen as the main challenger to President Alassane Ouattara. 

A top commander of the armed wing of the Lebanese party al-Jamaa al-Islamiya has been killed in an Israeli drone attack in Lebanon. 

Assistant Secretary-General (ASG) Robert Petit, leading a delegation from the Independent International Impartial Mechanism (IIIM), concluded a series of high-level meetings during his second visit to Damascus, including a meeting with the Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shaibani and officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates of the Syrian Arab Republic. 

In recent years, states have increasingly imposed sanctions in relation to the commission of human rights violations, which has expanded their potential to advance transitional justice goals. In this context, ICTJ recently published a new report offering an analysis of international sanctions from a transitional justice perspective. In this interview, the report's author, ICTJ Senior Expert Elena Naughton, discusses how sanctions may advance or hinder efforts to deliver accountability, acknowledge and redress victims, and prevent recurrence in response to massive human rights abuses.