The United Nations said on Thursday the refugee exodus from Ukraine was a "massive humanitarian crisis" that was growing by the second, after another 40,000 fled the country in 24 hours. The flow of people fleeing across the western borders to escape the Russian assault on Ukraine has settled at around 40,000 a day over the past week.

The parliament of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has voted to remove the economy minister, Jean-Marie Kalumba, from his post. A Wednesday motion blamed Kalumba for the soaring prices of basic goods and mismanagement of the fishing industry. It laid out a raft of complaints, including a lack of a policy to support local fishermen and frequent gas shortages driving up transport prices. Kalumba, who was nominated to his post last year by President Felix Tshisekedi, had 48 hours to resign.

Former President Juan Orlando Hernández should be extradited to the United States to face drug trafficking and weapons charges, a Honduran judge ruled Wednesday. The country's Supreme Court of Justice said late Wednesday via Twitter that the judge had decided to grant the U.S. extradition request. U.S. prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have accused Hernández in recent years of funding his political rise with profits from drug traffickers in exchange for protecting their shipments. He has strongly denied any wrongdoing. 

Indigenous leaders from Canada and survivors of the country’s notorious residential schools met with Pope Francis on Monday and told him of the abuses they suffered at the hands of Catholic priests and school workers. They came hoping to secure a papal apology and a commitment by the church to repair the harm done. “While the time for acknowledgement, apology, and atonement is long overdue, it is never too late to do the right thing,” Cassidy Caron, president of the Metis National Council, told reporters in St.

Azerbaijan has said it is ready for peace talks with Armenia, after Yerevan urged Baku to negotiate a comprehensive peace treaty amid new tensions over the long-contested enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. “If Armenia is serious about a peace agreement, then concrete steps have to be made. We repeat that Azerbaijan is ready for this,” the foreign ministry in Baku said in a statement on Tuesday.

Armed groups in Iraq abduct, rape, torture, and kill lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, with impunity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today with IraQueer.

Peru’s President Pedro Castillo avoided impeachment by the country’s opposition-dominated legislature on Monday after a parliamentary debate lasting more than eight hours. Fifty-five legislators voted in favor of impeachment, 54 voted against and 19 abstained. The president’s critics needed 87 votes to impeach the leader, who was accused of corruption and moral incapacity. Congress voted to impeach Castillo, a former teacher from a peasant farming family, earlier in March over corruption allegations.

Women and girls staged a protest near the Taliban’s Ministry of Education in Kabul on Saturday, calling on the group to reopen girls’ secondary schools in Afghanistan. The protesters chanted, “Education is our right—open the doors of girls’ schools!” as armed Taliban members looked on. The Taliban have previously broken up demonstrations and detained those involved, but this protest was allowed to continue. 

Peace talks in the Central African Republic (CAR), where civil war has raged since 2013, have concluded without any concrete progress. The talks, which had ended on Sunday, resumed on Monday—but no rebel groups were invited and the opposition equally boycotted them. In late 2020, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra promised to hold a national reconciliation dialogue, following his controversial re-election.

Tunis, March 22, 2022­—The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) will hold a series of cultural activities from March 21 through March 26, 2022, as part of its Wide Awake Art Contest.