Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday accused Israel of “acts of genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza by depriving them of adequate water supplies.

The group, in an extensive report, found that between October 2023 and September 2024, Israeli authorities deprived Palestinians of what the World Health Organization (WHO) says is the minimum quantity of water required for survival in prolonged emergency situations. This has contributed to thousands of deaths and the spread of numerous diseases, the report found.

Israel, which has repeatedly denied allegations of genocide and of using hunger as a weapon of war, denied HRW’s latest accusations, with a foreign ministry spokesperson saying the report was “full of lies.”

According to WHO, a person needs between 50 and 100 liters (13 and 26 gallons) of water per day to ensure their “basic needs are met.” In protracted emergency situations, the minimum amount of water can drop to 15 to 20 liters per day for drinking and washing.

For the over 2 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, even this is out of reach, HRW found. Most or all of the water Palestinians in Gaza have access to is not safe to drink.

HRW says Israel’s actions amount to acts of genocide under the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It stresses that the deprivation of water is leading to the slow deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, including newborn babies whose mothers can’t feed them due to malnourishment and dehydration, and who are drinking formula mixed with dirty water.

Israel’s war in Gaza, launched after Hamas’ attack in October 2023, has killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians and injured 106,000 more, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

HRW says that the obstruction of water in Gaza is a deliberate act by Israeli authorities, citing Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian aid including supplies relating to water treatment and production, restrictions on the flow of clean water through pipelines from Israel into Gaza, as well as “massive” damage to Gaza’s water infrastructure caused by Israeli strikes.

In January, the World Bank and Ipsos, a market research firm, estimated that nearly 60% of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure had been damaged or destroyed by hostilities. By August, that had risen to 84%.

In a statement on X, Oren Marmorstein, the spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry, denied the accusations and said Israel had “facilitated the continuous flow of water and humanitarian aid” into Gaza.

He said Israel had also ensured water infrastructure, including four water pipelines and water pumping and desalination facilities, remain operational.

‘Brazen breach of international law’

Israel has previously faced accusations of using water as a weapon of war in Gaza.

Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, said in November 2023 that “every hour that passes with Israel preventing the provision of safe drinking water in the Gaza strip, in brazen breach of international law, puts Gazans at risk of dying of thirst and diseases related to the lack of safe drinking water.”

The crisis has fueled diseases in Gaza and caused deaths estimated in the thousands, HRW said. The scale of the devastation caused by a lack of water may likely never be fully understood, the organization warned, due to the decimation of Gaza’s health care system including disease tracking.

Polio, a highly contagious viral disease often caused by insufficient access to safe water and sanitation, is one example of this. WHO testing first discovered the polio virus in samples of sewage taken from overcrowded tents of people displaced by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza in July. On August 16, the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed a case of polio in a 10-month-old child – the first case in Gaza in 25 years.

Bacterial infections like diarrhea have become commonplace in the enclave due to the consumption of contaminated water. Describing the impact of being forced to drink from an unclean well, one man told HRW: “I was getting sick, my kids were vomiting and had diarrhea, and I had diarrhea…This was from the moment we started drinking the (dirty) water.”

The HRW report comes as an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal remains elusive, although negotiations appear to have taken a more positive turn in recent days.

In an official statement on Tuesday, Hamas said reaching an agreement was “possible.” A Hamas source also added that talks were “positive and optimistic.” However, the militant group cautioned that hurdles remain.

Both Israeli and Hamas teams are in the Qatari capital for indirect negotiations.

French President Emmanuel Macron has landed on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte, days after the French overseas territory was hit by a devastating cyclone.

At least 31 people have been confirmed dead so far, but local officials fear the complete toll could be much higher, reaching hundreds or even thousands.

Many parts of Mayotte remain inaccessible after Cyclone Chido – the worst to hit the territory of just over 300,000 in at least 90 years – struck last weekend. The powerful storm flattened neighborhoods, knocked out electrical grids, crushed hospitals and schools and damaged the airport’s control tower.

Mayotte lies in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa, just west of Madagascar. Made up of two main islands, its land area is about twice the size of Washington DC.

The extent of the damage has been difficult to ascertain, in part because of the prevalence of undocumented migrants living in informal dwellings. An estimated 100,000 undocumented migrants, many from neighboring Comoros and Madagascar, live in Mayotte, according to France’s interior ministry.

Mayotte has struggled with poverty, unemployment, violence and a deepening migration crisis, which France has responded to with police crackdowns and mass deportations.

The government activated a state of “exceptional natural disaster” on Wednesday evening, a measure that has never been used, to help manage the crisis, according to the French overseas minister. Authorities also froze the price of consumer goods, such as food and hygiene products, amid shortages.

Local officials have warned that a lack of safe drinking water and poor sanitation conditions could lead to a disease outbreak.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said Tuesday it had lost contact with 200 of its volunteers in Mayotte and that it was racing to deliver aid, including water and medical supplies, to impacted communities.

French authorities distributed 120 metric tons of food Wednesday ahead of Macron’s visit, news agency Reuters reported. On Thursday, the president’s plane also transported more than four tons of food and health aid, Macron said on social media.

Cyclone Chido, a Category 4 storm, tore through the southwestern Indian Ocean over the weekend, impacting northern Madagascar before rapidly intensifying and slamming Mayotte with winds above 220 kilometers per hour (136 miles per hour), according to France’s weather service.

Bruno Garcia, a resident of Mamoudzou, Mayotte’s capital, told BFMTV the destruction was “catastrophic” and “apocalyptic.”

“There is nothing left. It’s as if an atomic bomb fell on Mayotte,” Garcia said.

Ethiopia and Kenya both embrace renewables for their electricity production.

Ethiopia produces all the power for its national grid from renewable sources, and is home to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the largest hydropower plant in Africa. In Kenya, renewables account for around 90% of electricity, and the country boasts one of the largest geothermal facilities in the world, in the Olkaria Area.

But relying on renewables can be hard: electricity can’t always be generated when needed (a drought can mean no hydropower) and renewable energy is difficult to store. One solution? The Ethiopia-Kenya Electricity Highway.

The vast piece of infrastructure opened officially last year after a decade of work and $1.2 billion of investment. Now, when one country needs more electricity for its national grid and the other has a surplus, electricity automatically flows across the border, along 650 miles of transmission lines, so that supply meets demand. Last week, a Kenya-Tanzania link began operations, which will let energy flow across that border, too.

Power sharing

Experts say sharing electricity (or “power sharing”) between African countries is fundamental to a successful clean energy transition. According to Darlain Edeme, African Energy Analyst for the International Energy Agency (IEA), it can “improve quality, reliability, security, and have benefits on prices,” in a continent where demand for electricity is rapidly increasing.

In Ethiopia, a country with a population of nearly 130 million, electricity consumption per capita quadrupled between 2000 and 2022. In Kenya, it rose by three quarters within the same period. And it’s set to continue rising – in 2017 Ethiopia launched its National Electrification Plan that aimed to achieve universal electrification by 2025, despite only about one in four rural households currently having access to electricity. Across Africa, the UN has targeted universal access to electricity by 2030, which would mean adding the 600 million people currently without it – nearly half the population of the continent – in the next five years.

With a rising energy access deficit – the difference between supply and demand – it makes sense for neighbors to pool their resources. But power sharing requires sophisticated infrastructure – namely, interconnectors – transmission lines that enable electricity to flow both ways across a border or over a large distance.

And it’s expensive, too. The Ethiopia-Kenya Electricity Highway follows the model of other interconnectors in Africa, including one between Zambia and Namibia, which has run since 2010 and cost $300 million to construct, and a 1,000-mile interconnector between two regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, running since 1982 and costing over $800 million.

For the African Development Bank (AfDB), which contributed over $300 million of funding towards the Ethiopia-Kenya link, it’s worth it. “You see population growth somewhat outstripping the growth of new connections,” said Daniel Schroth, director of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Department at the AfDB. “There’s a big push on addressing this energy access deficit more decisively.”

Energy security for East Africa

Since the highway opened, Ethiopia’s electricity supply has provided vital backup for Kenya, which has been importing 200 megawatts (MW) of power daily from its neighbor, equivalent to around 10% of the peak demand of Kenya’s national grid. The interconnector has the capacity to transfer up to 2,000 MW.

For many countries in East Africa with a history of power outages, including Ethiopia and Kenya, access to a backup supply could be a lifeline. But while Alemayehu Wubeshet Zegeye, manager for Regional Power Systems Operations in the East African Region for the AfDB, said that the new interconnector “absolutely will reduce the number of blackouts,” it cannot remove them entirely. IEA analyst Edeme said that while having access to backup supplies of electricity is one thing, having functioning utilities to distribute it is another. Across Africa, he said, utilities “are not in the best shape from a financial perspective.”

In September, Reuters reported two “major blackouts” in Kenya in a single week, with Energy Minister Opiyo Wandayi blaming “sub-optimal investment in infrastructure.”

Connecting the continent

The Ethiopia-Kenya Electricity Highway, also funded by the World Bank, is one part of a wider project for the Eastern African Power Pool (EAPP), a group of 13 countries brought together to meet rising demand for electricity and ensure backup supplies.

The EAPP is one of five power pools in Africa, which, with the help of interconnectors, could one day link together the energy supplies of every region in the continent.

“The vision clearly articulated by the African Union is to create an African single electricity market building on the regional power pools being interconnected,” said Schroth. The hope is that with increased competition will come falling prices for consumers, and new sources of revenue for countries producing surplus energy that – in the absence of expensive storage systems – would otherwise go to waste. Already, due to the electricity highway, Ethiopia has increased revenue from its electricity exports, which were previously limited to Djibouti, by almost a half, according to Zegeye.

Having added the Kenya-Tanzania interconnector to its power sharing network, the next target for the EAPP is to link Tanzania (and therefore Kenya and Ethiopia, too) to Zambia, both countries in the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP).

Environmental benefits around the world

Interconnectors are popular outside Africa, too, with a network of over 400 in Europe. A link between Spain and Morocco already connects the electricity supplies of Europe and Africa, and another – between Greece and Egypt – is currently under construction, with the aim of completion by 2029.

“I think there has been a rallying call over the last two years,” said Schroth, explaining the proliferation of interconnector projects across the continent and the world. “There won’t be an energy transition without transmission.”

With more funding and international cooperation, there is hope that Africa will one day become a clean energy powerhouse. “I’m optimistic,” said Edeme, “I see a lot of momentum right now in the sector.”

President Vladimir Putin declined to say when Russian forces would retake the southern Kursk region from Ukraine, insisting that they were making advances “along the entire frontline,” as he began his year-end news conference.

The Moscow event on Thursday consists of a public Q&A session combined with a public phone-in, which Putin stages annually to show his sweeping control of all aspects of the country.

Asked about Russia’s southern Kursk, where Kyiv’s forces are fighting to hold onto settlements following a surprise incursion launched in August, Putin declined to commit to stating when Russia would recapture the whole region – but promised it would happen.

“I cannot and do not want to name a specific date when they will push [the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of the Kursk region],” he said.

“Our guys are fighting, there is a battle going on right now, and serious battles. It is unclear why, there was no military sense in the Ukrainian Armed Forces entering the Kursk region, or holding on there now as they are doing, throwing their best units there to be slaughtered. But nevertheless, it is happening.”

He added, “We will definitely push them out, there is no other way.”

In response to a question on how Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – which in Russia is referred to euphemistically as the “special military operation” – was going, Putin said the “situation is changing dramatically,” as the war approaches its third year.

“Movement is going on along the entire front line, every day.”

He continued: “And as I already said, we are not talking about advancing 100-200-300 meters. Our fighters are taking and returning territory in square kilometers. I want to emphasize – every day.”

His answer comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged in an interview published Wednesday that Ukraine lacks the strength to take back all its territory occupied by Russia.

Russian forces failed to capture the capital Kyiv in the early weeks of the war, but the war in the east of Ukraine has turned into a costly and brutal war of attrition.

Ukrainian forces remain in the Kursk region but have slowly ceded ground to Russian forces there. Kyiv has said North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian troops there have suffered heavy losses.

Putin did not mention North Korean troops in his reply to the caller, but promised that housing and infrastructure damaged or destroyed in the fighting would be restored.

“I understand that there is nothing good about what is happening to you,” the Russian leader said. “People are suffering heavy losses, hardships, and daily inconveniences, especially those related to children. But rest assured, we will do everything necessary. We will restore everything.”

The annual event allows citizens and journalists to ask the Russian president questions directly, providing a glimpse into Putin’s views on critical matters, and gives the Kremlin leader a platform to showcase his main talking points and address both domestic and international issues. The marathon sessions in the past have lasted well over four hours.

This year’s conference comes amid mounting economic challenges, ongoing tensions over the war on Ukraine, and increased scrutiny on Russia’s international and domestic policies as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office in the United States.

The pilgrims crawled forward, some barely inching along the rough ground with hands, knees and elbows rubbed raw.

The procession of St. Lazarus is one of the largest yearly religious processions in officially secular Cuba and also one of the most colorful.

To show their devotion, thousands of Cubans walk for miles barefoot to the small church known as El Rincón — the corner in Spanish — on the outskirts of Havana ahead of December 17, the day when the saint is celebrated.

“It was a tradition of my father’s and I have followed it for 27 years since he passed away. Lazarus grants me what I ask for,” said pilgrim Fernando Valdez, after walking without shoes for more than five hours on broken roads.

In the New Testament, Lazarus was resurrected four days after his death by Jesus and became the patron saint of the poor and the sick. Many of the Cubans asking a wish from the saint wear clothing made from rough cloth sacks to represent poverty.

Other adherents take their shows of devotion to the extreme, crawling on their stomachs or facing backwards or sometimes with cinder blocks tied to their feet to further slow them down.

Blood stains the pavement in places and medics with the Red Cross apply bandages on scraped knees and hands and pass out water to exhausted pilgrims.

Open displays of religious belief have slowly grown over the years in Cuba, which changed its constitution in 1992 to transition from an officially atheist state to a secular one. A groundbreaking visit by Pope John Paul II six years later further helped restore rights for people of faith.

Still, a heavy police presence surrounded El Rincón during the pilgrimage and officials strategically placed large posters of former Cuban leaders Fidel and Raul Castro as well of the island’s current president Miguel Diaz-Canel outside the entrance to the church.

The complexity of Cuba was also on display as many of the pilgrims are believers in Santería, an offshoot of the Yoruba religion brought to Cuba more than 200 years ago by African slaves. Forced to convert to Catholicism, the slaves blended the two faiths into a syncretic religion that spread across the island and around the Caribbean.

Believers melded African deities like Babalú-Ayé, who both spread and healed sickness, with Catholic saints like Lazarus, who granted wishes for good health.

Already adept at surviving in the shadows and without central leadership, Santería in large part flourished after the crackdown on organized religion in Cuba following Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

Santería’s growth has presented a dilemma to the Catholic Church in Cuba which does not recognize the religion but, faced with often empty pews at services, cannot afford to turn away its followers.

At an outdoor mass held at El Rincón, Catholic priests told Santerîa followers they were welcome at the ceremony but should not ask the priests to bless their beads and idols.

Some priests appeared to pretend to not notice as Santería followers blew cigar smoke onto statues of St. Lazarus, who is represented walking on crutches and wearing a sack cloth.

But the acceptance only goes so far.

Many of the pilgrims voiced concern at Cuba’s worsening economic situation and expressed a wistfulness for the change in policy towards the communist-run government announced by then-President Barack Obama exactly 10 years ago to the day.

Many followers of St. Lazarus saw the announcement on the same day celebrating their deity as fortuitous timing. As the two Cold War-era enemies restored diplomatic ties, Cuba experienced a tourism boom and the island’s beleaguered economic fortunes briefly lifted.

But during his first term, then-President Donald Trump, a critic of what he called Obama’s appeasement of Cuba, reversed much of that opening. Many Cubans say a second Trump term — combined with their own government’s resistance to make meaningful economic reforms — could spell the worst crisis in their lives.

In 2024, Cuba has suffered island-wide rolling blackouts that lasted more than a week, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated from the island and the social safety net once provided by the government all but evaporated.

But as he rested from his pilgrimage, Valdez said he was sure St. Lazarus would once again steer him through the tough times ahead.

“To live, human beings need a reason,” he said. “Something that gives them light and for me it’s my faith. If not, you die.”