Afghanistan, Haiti, Lebanon.

Today's three stories you should know.

Jan 24, 2023

Afghanistan

At least 124 people in Afghanistan have perished in freezing weather, the ruling Taliban has said, as the country goes through its coldest winter in a decade. Several major aid agencies have stopped work in the country after the Taliban earlier this month banned women from working for NGOs. Despite the deaths, there were no plans to reverse the decision, the acting minister for disaster management told the BBC. "Men are already working with us in the rescue effort and there is no need for women to work with us. The men from every family are already participating in relief efforts, so there's no need for women," Mullah Mohammad Abbas Akhund said.

Haiti

The United Nations envoy for Haiti, Helen La Lime, has again made the extraordinary call for an international armed force to be deployed to the country to fight rampant gang violence. Powerful and well-armed criminal gangs control much of the capital Port-au-Prince as well as other parts of the country and violence spiralled to new levels after President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in July 2022. La Lime said there were 1,359 kidnappings in 2022, more than double the number in 2021. Murders were up by a third from 2021, with 2,183 reported. "I reiterate the urgent need for the deployment of an international specialised armed force," she quoted Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as saying in the UN’s latest report on the situation.

Lebanon

Lebanon's former prime minister, its top public prosecutor and several other officials are to be charged with “homicide with probable intent” over a massive blast at Beirut port that killed more than 200 people and destroyed a large part of the city in 2020, according to a report from the Reuters news agency. The prosecutions would come as a surprise given the judicial probe into the explosion has been hampered by constant delays and political interference since it began, paralysing it for more than a year.