Category World News

Conservationists have raised the alarm about the Botswana government’s decision to raise its annual trophy-hunting quota for elephants, reigniting the debate over how the country should manage the world’s largest elephant population.

Botswana, a largely dry nation which is home to 2.3 million people, has more than 130,000 elephants, nearly one-third of all elephants in Africa. The African continent is home to some 415,000 elephants of the world’s 460,000 elephants. The rest of the world’s elephants are in Asia.

In 2019, the government lifted its five-year moratorium on elephant hunting to keep the elephant population in check and help generate revenue for rural communities.

However, conservationists and scientists warn that the sharp increase in quota numbers recently announced risks undermining the long-term health of elephant populations as well as exacerbating human-wildlife conflict.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Oaitse Nawa, founder of the Botswana-based Elephant Protection Society (EPS), said the number of elephants being hunted is “too high” and called on the government to revisit this issue.

What is Botswana’s new trophy-hunting quota?

A preliminary government draft indicates that the quota for trophy hunting for 2026 has been raised to 430 elephants, up from 410 in 2025.

Trophy hunting refers to the practice of legally killing wild animals, such as elephants, lions, and rhinoceroses, and taking a highly valued part of their bodies, such as a tusk or horn. Botswana’s expansive, yet sparsely inhabited landscapes have long drawn foreigners who wish to visit its wildlife.

The move reflects Botswana’s general approach to the conservation of elephant herds.

In 2014, the country imposed a complete ban on trophy hunting but reversed that decision five years later, saying elephant numbers had risen too high and were threatening farmers’ livelihoods.

Now, the government allocates annual hunting quotas for more than a dozen species, including elephants, rhinos, and hippopotamuses.

Other African nations, including Namibia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, also have trophy-hunting quotas to manage their elephant and other wildlife populations.

Why does the government allow trophy hunting?

The Botswana government argues the practice is important to keep the population of the large animals in check, as they are increasingly coming into conflict with humans. Climate change and logging, which encroach on elephants’ natural habitat and food sources, have also forced elephants to look elsewhere for habitat and food.

As a result, elephants in several African countries have been known to enter private homes and villages, trampling crops, eating stored grain, and damaging homes, fences and water infrastructure.

Botswana’s former President Mokgweetsi Masisi last year slammed the German government for a proposed ban on the import of elephant parts.

Many other countries, including Australia, Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands, have also imposed restrictions on the import of parts of endangered species, including elephants, lions, hippopotamuses and rhinos.

Masisi said Germans should “try living among elephants”. He claimed that an explosion in the number of the mammals roaming his country had produced a “plague”.

Moreover, the Botswanan government says regulated hunting provides a highly valuable revenue stream. Earlier this year, Minister of Environment Wynter Mmolotsi said the country earned more than $4m from the sale of hunting licences in 2024, compared with $2.7m in 2023, and that this money was used to support conservation and community-led projects.

Depending on the animal being hunted, hunting licences can cost up to $10,000.

Is trophy hunting a serious threat to elephants?

Amy Dickman, a professor of wildlife conservation and director of WildCRU at the University of Oxford, said, while trophy hunting may be “contentious”, it is not a key threat to any species, including elephants, and that “revenue from legal hunting helps maintain large areas of wildlife habitat and can be very important for local people”.

“Botswana – the leading country in the world for large mammal conservation – has a thriving elephant population, and both the government and local communities need to see financial benefits from that presence,” she told Al Jazeera.

“They have long used trophy hunting to generate some of those benefits, and their sovereign decisions should be trusted and respected.”

Al Jazeera contacted Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks and the Ministry of Environment for comment, but received no reply.

What do critics of the trophy hunting quota system say?

According to Will Travers, cofounder and executive president of Born Free, a wildlife charity, Botswana’s expanded elephant trophy hunting quota “raises deep biological concerns”, however.

“Biological, because, as the name suggests, trophy hunters target individual animals they regard as ‘trophies’ … in the case of elephants, those with the largest tusks, the mature males,” he told Al Jazeera in an emailed statement.

“These long-lived ‘elders’ are repositories of vital survival knowledge within elephant society, are desired by female elephants, and can successfully reproduce, passing on their genes well into old age. They are targets for poachers and trophy hunters, adding even more pressure on this tiny demographic of animals, which some estimate may represent just 1 percent of Botswana’s national elephant herd.”

Moreover, experts also say that removing elephants changes how they behave, which can actually exacerbate, rather than reduce, conflict with nearby human communities.

“Since the community lives within the same environment as these animals, they often encounter wildlife that can be provoked or become aggressive,” EPS’s Nawa told Al Jazeera.

“When people go to the fields or search for their cattle, they may come across breeding herds of elephants, and that’s where problems begin.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has urged European leaders to “go further” in modernising the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), arguing that the treaty is no longer fit for purpose in an era of irregular migration and as far-right political parties gain influence across Europe.

On Wednesday, European countries agreed to begin the process of modernising the ECHR at a meeting of justice ministers in Strasbourg. Leaders are hoping to modify the treaty to make it easier to deport undocumented migrants.

The United Kingdom is a leading voice in the charge to modernise the ECHR. The government says the ECHR, particularly its protections against torture and family separation, makes it too difficult to “control our borders to protect our democracies”.

But Starmer’s message marks a significant shift in his Labour Party’s traditional approach to human rights law and asylum policy.

Furthermore, migration experts and rights groups are warning that weakening ECHR protections could expose vulnerable people to serious harm.

What are Starmer and other European leaders pushing for?

Ahead of the Strasbourg meeting on Wednesday, Starmer urged European governments to agree to modernise the ECHR, arguing that current interpretations of the treaty make it too difficult for states to remove people who arrive irregularly, via routes which are not approved by the government.

This would most likely be achieved by carving out exceptions to provisions in the ECHR which protect specific rights, or changing the legal interpretation of these rights. The main articles that European leaders want to modernise are Article 3, which covers people fearing torture or inhuman treatment in their home countries, and Article 8, which protects family life and can be used by refugees to support family members being reunited.

They say they need to make these changes if they have any hope of stemming the tide of migrant inflows.

In particular, the UK – which was one of the countries which drafted the ECHR in the wake of World War II – has grappled with a rising number of refugees and migrants arriving on small boats across the English Channel from France, and this has become a major point of concern among voters.

This year, Starmer reached a “one in one out” deal with France to send back one undocumented migrant without ties to the UK in return for keeping one who comes in on an approved route and who does have ties. However, so far, only a handful of people have been sent back and at least one has returned to the UK since being deported.

In October, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood dispatched officials to study the workings of the Danish immigration and asylum system, widely considered the toughest in Europe. The officials are reportedly looking to review British immigration rules on family reunion and limit refugees to a temporary stay.

Denmark has made family reunions much tougher, keeping the bar of conditions comparatively higher than in other European countries. Permanent residency is possible only after eight years under very strict criteria, including full-time employment.

Those who live in estates designated as “parallel societies”, where more than 50 percent of residents are from so-called “non-Western” backgrounds, are barred from being granted family reunion. This has been decried by rights groups as racist and constituting ethnic profiling.

In November, the UK announced plans for sweeping changes to legal rights for refugees. Most importantly, the changes will end the automatic path to settled status for refugees after five years. They will also remove state benefits from those who have the right to work and can support themselves.

Why is the UK pushing for a change to the ECHR treaty now?

In short, Starmer is attempting to face down strong pressure from the far right in the UK to withdraw completely from the ECHR treaty. Instead, he is calling for the treaty to be modernised in the hope that this will placate right-wing concerns, which have become more mainstream in the UK.

In a joint article with the Danish leader, Mette Frederiksen, published in the UK’s Guardian newspaper this week, Starmer argued that curbing the ECHR would be the best way to deter voters from supporting far-right political parties in Europe.

“The best way of fighting against the forces of hate and division, is to show that mainstream, progressive politics can fix this problem,” he wrote.

According to analyst Susan Fratzke of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), Starmer’s stance also reflects broader concerns among European governments about the ECHR’s impact on the removal of “illegally present foreign nationals”.

Fratzke told Al Jazeera that these governments, including the UK and Denmark, believe that the ECHR, under its current interpretations, restricts their ability to carry out returns.

She added that, under the ECHR, many officials perceive a challenge in distinguishing “who genuinely has a protection need and right to stay, and who doesn’t”.

Furthermore, they argue that, over time, domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights have “widened the definitions of some aspects of human rights law to such an extent that it makes it difficult to return people, even when there aren’t truly serious human rights concerns present”.

Fratzke said Starmer and his counterparts want “to return to a narrower core understanding of what constitutes a protection need on human rights grounds”.

Politically, this push comes amid a surge in popularity for the far right, especially the party Reform UK, which wants to withdraw from the ECHR.

Fratzke said migration policy is very much being “driven by concerns about the strength of Reform and fears that it could dominate at the next elections”.

What would this mean for migrants and asylum seekers in the UK?

Starmer’s push to curb the ECHR could have significant consequences for people seeking asylum in the UK.

If the UK and its European partners succeed in tightening the treaty’s interpretations, the people most affected would be those who currently rely on Article 3, covering torture or inhuman treatment, or Article 8, which protects family life, to argue against removal.

These safeguards could become harder to invoke, raising the likelihood of removals even in cases involving complex humanitarian or family circumstances.

However, Fratzke said that the degree to which the ECHR currently prevents removals is often overstated. She said that appeals on human rights grounds do occur, typically under Article 3 or under Article 8, which protects family life, and that such appeals “can and have been used to delay returns”.

However, she said that “fewer than 5 percent of successful appeals against returns have been on human rights grounds”. Most deportation cases are not stopped by the ECHR, even though public debate and media coverage frequently suggest otherwise.

According to Fratzke, “the public perception of the ECHR and the idea that it forms a barrier have outstripped reality and become the crux of the challenge in itself”.

What are the criticisms of Labour’s approach to the ECHR?

There are three main reasons that Starmer is facing criticism for his stance towards immigration and refugee rights.

Undermining human rights

Human rights groups and some Labour figures have warned that the prime minister’s stance on the ECHR risks undermining fundamental protections that have been in place for decades.

Major rights organisations, including Amnesty International UK, Freedom from Torture and Reprieve, have echoed that concern, arguing that carving out exceptions to Article 3 would erode one of the most fundamental guarantees in European human rights law.

“Human rights were built for hard times, not rewrites when it suits the Government,” Amnesty said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Pushing to water down the European Convention on Human Rights on International Human Rights Day is a moral retreat, not a solution,” it said. “The lives of real people depend on those protections, we must not sacrifice dignity for political convenience.”

Emulating the far right

Several left-leaning Labour Party MPs have condemned the “far-right”, “racist” approach of the British government’s moves to adapt the Danish model.

Last month, Nadia Whittome, Labour MP for Nottingham East, told BBC Radio 4 Today: “This is a dead end – morally, politically and electorally.

“I think these are policies of the far right,” she said. “I don’t think anyone wants to see a Labour government flirting with them.”

Whittome argued that it would be a “dangerous path” to take and that some of the Danish policies, especially those around “parallel societies”, were “undeniably racist”.

Clive Lewis, the MP for Norwich South, said: “Denmark’s Social Democrats have gone down what I would call a hardcore approach to immigration. They’ve adopted many of the talking points of what we would call the far right.

“Labour does need to win back some Reform-leaning voters, but you can’t do that at the cost of losing progressive votes,” he added

In October, Lucy Powell, who won the Labour deputy leadership contest, challenged Starmer to soften his stance on immigration. “Division and hate are on the rise,” Powell said. “Discontent and disillusionment are widespread. We have this one big chance to show that progressive mainstream politics really can change people’s lives for the better.”

Reversing traditional Labour values

Critics also say Starmer has moved away from the social justice messages which once shaped the Labour Party’s approach to migration.

Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, said Labour was simply “reheating” the previous Conservative government’s rhetoric when it pledged tougher removals.

“This ‘securitised’ approach to asylum and immigration will simply deter and punish many of the people most in need of crossing borders, people who are therefore often most vulnerable to criminal exploitation,” he said.

Fratzke said that instead of developing a tougher stance on human rights, governments should seek to balance deterrence with legal pathways and social protections.

“Deterrence is part of the picture,” she said, “but the question is how it is applied and alongside what other interventions.”

She noted that the UK is also exploring new legal pathways, including humanitarian sponsorship programmes and regulated routes from France, but cautioned that “they will need to find a balance between the two … to be effective”.

Is the far right a political threat to Labour in the UK?

Yes, and this threat is the driving force behind Labour’s approach, experts say.

In July this year, the polling group YouGov said Reform UK, the far-right political party led by Nigel Farage, who spearheaded Brexit, would win an election if one were held now. Much of its rise in popularity is down to its tough stance towards asylum seekers and on immigration generally.

Reform’s rise has unsettled both Labour and the former ruling Conservative Party, and has triggered a reckoning among liberals and centrists on migration policy. Starmer’s government appears aware that migration is a key issue and that adopting a tougher stance may prevent a further rise in the popularity of parties like Reform.

But Fratzke said fear of Reform has limited the government’s room to explore more thoughtful migration policies, keeping the debate focused on enforcement and deterrence.

Across Europe, similar pressures are shaping politics as centre and left-wing governments continue to toughen migration policies in a bid to slow far-right parties from gaining ground. This approach has had mixed effects, however, experts say.

In countries such as Denmark, the Social Democrats have taken a much harder line on immigration and have managed to limit the rise of the far-right Danish People’s Party for a period.

South Sudan’s military has moved into the Heglig oilfield under an unprecedented agreement between the country and neighbouring Sudan’s warring parties to safeguard critical energy infrastructure from the country’s civil war.

The deployment on Wednesday came after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured the strategic site on December 8, compelling the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) units to retreat across the border into South Sudan, where they reportedly surrendered their weapons.

The agreement aims to neutralise the facility from combat operations as fighting intensifies across Sudan’s Kordofan region, threatening both countries’ primary revenue source.

Official Sudanese government sources revealed to Al Jazeera that high-level contacts have taken place between the Sudanese and South Sudanese leaderships since the beginning of this week, after the RSF mobilized to attack the “Heglig” area.

Understandings were reached to secure the evacuation of workers in the field and avoid military confrontations to ensure that the oil field and its facilities are not subjected to sabotage and destruction, and tribal leaders also played a role in that.

The deployment of South Sudan forces was based on a previous oil and security cooperation agreement signed between Khartoum and Juba, which stipulates the protection of oil fields, pipelines and central pumping stations for South Sudan’s oil, in addition to the electricity interconnection project and strengthening cooperation in the energy sector.

The new factor is the involvement of the RSF.

South Sudan People’s Defence Forces Chief of Staff Paul Nang said at Heglig that troops entered under a “tripartite agreement” involving President Salva Kiir, SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti, according to state broadcaster SSBC News.

The pact requires both Sudanese forces to withdraw from the area.

Nang stressed that South Sudanese forces would maintain strict neutrality.

“The primary goal is to completely neutralise the Heglig field from any combat operations”, he said, because it “represents an economic lifeline not only for South Sudan but for Sudan as well”.

The deployment followed a deadly drone attack on Tuesday evening that killed dozens, including three South Sudanese soldiers.

SAF confirmed using a drone to target RSF fighters at the facility, though the exact death toll remains unclear. Local media reported that seven tribal leaders and numerous RSF personnel died in the attack.

Approximately 3,900 Sudanese soldiers crossed into South Sudan’s Rubkona County after evacuating Heglig, handing over tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery to South Sudanese authorities, according to Unity State officials in South Sudan.

Thousands of civilians have also fled across the border since Sunday.

Heglig houses a central processing facility able to handle up to 130,000 barrels per day of South Sudanese crude destined for export through Sudanese pipelines. The site also includes Block 6, Sudan’s largest producing field.

Jan Pospisil, a South Sudan expert at Coventry University, explained the strategic calculus behind the unusual arrangement.

“From the SAF’s perspective, they don’t want the RSF to find another possible revenue stream, and it is better from their perspective for South Sudan to take control of the area,” he told Al Jazeera.

He added that the RSF “can’t really defend against air attacks by the SAF, as we saw with this drone strike, and they don’t need money right now”.

The seizure of Heglig marks the latest RSF advance as the conflict’s centre of gravity shifts from Darfur to the vast Kordofan region. The paramilitary force secured complete control of Darfur in October with the fall of el-Fasher, prompting international alarm over mass atrocities.

Activists at the Tawila camp told Al Jazeera that refugees continue arriving, with some forced to sleep outdoors due to insufficient resources.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk repeated a warning he issued last week that he was “extremely worried that we might see in Kordofan a repeat of the atrocities that have been committed in el-Fasher”, amid RSF advances in the region.

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect echoed his warning, with Executive Director Savita Pawnday stressing that Sudan faces “one of the world’s gravest atrocity crises”, where civilians are enduring “unimaginable harm while the international community fails to respond”.

The fighting has triggered displacement, with the International Organization for Migration reporting more than 1,000 people fled South Kordofan province in just two days this week as combat intensified around the state capital, Kadugli.

In el-Fasher, the Sudan Doctors Network reported this week that the RSF is holding more than 19,000 detainees across Darfur prisons, including 73 medical personnel.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado greeted supporters in Oslo after missing the ceremony to award her the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado has spent more than a year in hiding, and has backed sanctions and US military intervention against the government.