The UN’s top court is hearing a landmark genocide case against Myanmar, which has been accused of mass killings, rape, and persecution of Rohingya Muslims. Myanmar rejects the allegations saying it was conducting a legitimate anti-terror campaign.
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has opened an investigation and warned of possible disciplinary action for “unacceptable behaviour of players and officials” as they clashed on the pitch on Saturday at the end of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) quarterfinal between Algeria and Nigeria.
“CAF has referred the matters to the disciplinary board for investigation and has called for appropriate action to be taken if the identified persons were to be found guilty of any wrongdoing,” said African football’s governing body in a statement on Monday.
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Tensions spilled over on the pitch at the end of the January 10 game in Marrakesh, Morocco, which Nigeria won 2-0 thanks to second-half goals by Victor Osimhen and Akor Adams.
Referee Issa Sy was shielded from irate Algeria team staff and was escorted off the field. Video clips showed Sy was still being pursued in the mixed zone for media and broadcasters as he made his way to his cabin.
Any disciplinary action could have an impact on the Super Eagles as they prepare for their semifinal showdown on Wednesday against Morocco.
“CAF strongly condemns any inappropriate behaviour which occurs during matches, especially those targeting the refereeing team or match organisers,” CAF said.
Video showed accredited media fighting in the mixed zone as they waited for players to pass through for interviews after the match.
Algeria’s federation also confirmed it had filed a complaint with CAF over Sy’s performance.
“The Algerian Football Federation cannot ignore the refereeing performance observed during the last match, which raised numerous questions and caused considerable confusion,” it said in a statement.
“Certain decisions have damaged the credibility of African refereeing and do nothing to enhance the value of continental football on the international stage.”
CAF said it was also investigating incidents in Friday’s last-eight tie between the hosts and Cameroon.
Many of the millions of people displaced by fighting in Myanmar won’t get to vote in elections being held by a military government accused of waging war on its own people. Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng has been to a displacement camp where people say they’ve been forgotten.
EXPLAINER
After the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the United States on January 3, nearby countries that host large Venezuelan communities, including Colombia and Peru, have warned of a potential new influx of refugees if the country is distabilised.
The Venezuelan diaspora remains one of the largest in the world with at least 7.9 million people living outside the country as of early 2026, primarily due to nearly a decade of ongoing political and economic crises.
In this visual explainer, Al Jazeera unpacks where Venezuelans are living abroad, what protections they have and what the abilities are for Venezuelans wishing to travel.
Venezuelan migration started with a small group of mostly professionals leaving the country after leftist leader Hugo Chavez became president in 1999, promising to change the old political system, which was stacked against the poor and the Indigenous people, with more than half of the population falling below the poverty line.
During one decade of Chavez’s rule, the country ramped up government spending using the revenue from oil sector. Millions of people were lifted from extreme poverty.
In 2013 after the death of Chavez, Maduro came to power and inherited high levels of debt and rising inflation. By 2014 as oil prices plummeted, these challenges escalated into an economic collapse.
The resource-rich nation experienced a deep depression and soaring inflation, making the cost of living unbearable. This situation led hundreds of thousands of people to flee abroad, primarily to countries within South and Central America as well as a significant number migrating to the US.
By June, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had tracked nearly 8 million refugees and migrants around the world with 6.7 million (85 percent) of them in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The top host countries are:
UNHCR lists Venezuelans under a unique category of displaced persons due to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in their home country.
This classification allows them access to essential services, such as legal assistance, healthcare and shelter in host nations.
In Colombia, the region’s primary host with 2.8 million Venezuelans, the Temporary Protection Statute provides a 10-year residency permit. In the United States, a temporary protected status for Venezuelans was revoked in late 2025 by the Trump administration, leaving more than 600,000 Venezuelans uncertain about their future and legal status to live and work there.
The Trump administration also deported hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants, some of them to notorious prisons in El Salvador. Rights groups say many of them were tortured and sexually abused there.
According to the UN, nearly half of the Venezuelans who have left the country rely on informal, low-paid work, 42 percent struggle to afford enough food and 23 percent live in overcrowded housing.
Despite Venezuela’s unstable political and economic situation, its passport remains one of the stronger travel documents in the world, according to the 2026 Passport Index.
It currently ranks 42nd globally, providing visa-free, visa-on-arrival or e-visa access to 124 countries.
Venezuela has a longstanding visa waiver for the Schengen Area, allowing 90 days of visa-free travel to most of Europe. Additionally, Venezuelans may enter and work across much of South America due to decades-old regional mobility treaties.
Protests in Iran that began in late December over soaring prices have evolved into a broader challenge to its religious rulers, who have governed Iran since the 1979 revolution.
More than 100 security personnel have been killed in recent days, state media reported, while opposition activists said the death toll is higher and includes dozens of protesters. Al Jazeera cannot independently verify either figure.
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We take a look at Iran’s main opposition groups:
The establishment in Iran is facing mounting pressure from a fragmented opposition movement.
While some groups and individuals in the movement are inside Iran, others are voicing opposition to the rulers from outside the country. They are mainly leaders who are living in exile or members of the Iranian diaspora.
Groups in other countries, including the United Kingdom and Germany, have started to rally on the streets in solidarity with the protesters in Iran.
Iran currently lacks a uniform opposition group which could form a government, Shahram Akbarzadeh, a professor in Middle East and Central Asian politics at Australia’s Deakin University, told Al Jazeera.
Opposition groups in Iran and outside are disjointed and have different aims. Some have clear leaders while others do not. No individual inside Iran, however, has emerged as a clear opposition leader in the ongoing protest movement.
A possible reason for this is that opposition members are fearful of reprisals if they have identifiable leaders.
Iran’s “Green Movement” in June 2009 was a spontaneous mass demonstration by white collar workers, women’s rights activists and civil society activists against the officially declared victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in perhaps the most publicly contested presidential election in the history of the country. The day after these protests began, Ahmadinejad and his supporters staged an official demonstration in support of his declared victory. He served as president until 2013.
Ahmadinejad had been president since 2005. He was a hardline conservative, controversial for some of his opinions, including repeatedly denying the Holocaust.
The 2009 presidential election was also contested by former Prime Minister Mir‑Hossein Mousavi, who became a symbolic leader of the Green Movement. Since February 2011, however, he has been held under strict house arrest for rejecting the official election results.
Another candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist Muslim scholar and former parliament speaker, also took a leading role in challenging the election results and supporting the protests. He was placed under house arrest in 2011.
In March last year, the Iranian authorities officially lifted Karroubi’s house arrest.
Neither man is thought to be a focus of the current protests, but as a result of their examples, Iranian protesters inside the country tend not to organise themselves around a single, identifiable leader.
In line with other protest movements around the world, protesters inside Iran increasingly rely on networked organising. Mobilisation through student groups, social media platforms such as Discord and neighbourhood networks has resulted in the creation of numerous local groups and local leaders rather than just one or two central figureheads.
This was recently seen in the “Gen Z” youth protests in Nepal, which took place in September, and the youth protests in Bangladesh, which took place in July 2024 and resulted in the overthrow of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
“[The] Iranian government has actively and effectively suppressed any attempt for organised opposition at home over the past decades and arrested and silenced its leaders,” Maryam Alemzadeh, an associate professor in the history and politics of Iran at the University of Oxford, told Al Jazeera. “Even nonpolitical NGOs, unions, student groups and anything that could resemble a bottom-up order has been quashed.
“As a result, neither leadership nor grassroots organisation can be expected, and protests are left contingent on ad hoc individual or collective decisions of the protesters.”
Besides the mass-organised movements going on inside Iran now, there are some other opposition groups based both inside and outside the country.
Pahlavi, 65, is the son of the deposed shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the heir of the former Pahlavi monarchy.
After Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran’s prime minister who was democratically elected in 1951, nationalised the British-controlled oil industry in Iran, he was overthrown in a 1953 coup backed by the United States and UK to reverse that move and secure Western oil interests. A repressive royal rule was reinstated until 1979 when the last shah fled the country as the Iranian Revolution took hold. He died in Egypt in 1980.
Living in exile in the US, his son now leads a prominent monarchist movement known as the Iran National Council but claims not to be insisting on a return to a monarchy. Instead, he says he advocates for a secular, democratic system to be decided by a referendum.
However, Pahlavi is supported by members of the Iranian diaspora and groups that do support the return of a monarchy. He is strongly opposed by other opposition groups, including republicans and leftists, so Iran’s opposition remains fragmented.
Many people who currently live in Iran do not remember the era of the monarchy. While some Iranians who do view the pre-revolutionary era with nostalgia, many others remember it for its inequality and repression.
Alemzadeh said Pahlavi emerged as the most prominent opposition leader in the aftermath of the Woman, Life, Freedom protest movement, which began in 2022.
“He enjoys support within [the] Iranian diaspora, especially the generation that left Iran with the 1979 revolution, like himself, but in parts of the younger generation as well. He does have some appeal in Iran as well, as there were chants in his support on the streets of Iran among other chants in this round of protests, but the extent of it is debated.”
Pahlavi’s appeal, she added, stems less from any credible plan or leadership of the protests than from years of nostalgic promotion by diaspora media and social media campaigns that have elevated him as the “loudest available alternative” amid widespread frustration and a lack of other visible leaders.
“Aided by an online campaign on social media, which was also assisted by Israel, according to Haaretz, Reza Pahlavi was then highlighted as the key to return to that ideal past,” Alemzadeh said.
She added that although Pahlavi is the best‑known opposition figure, there is little evidence he has a realistic plan or organisational base to manage the security apparatus, entrenched corruption, remaining government supporters and basic state functions in a post-Islamic Republic Iran.
“Calling for Pahlavi’s return is a nostalgic reaction to the economic and diplomatic deadlock created by the Islamic regime. It is more about rejecting the rule of the clergy, than calling for the restoration of the monarchy,” Akbarzadeh from Deakin University told Al Jazeera.
The Mujahideen was a powerful leftist group that carried out bombing campaigns against the shah’s government and US targets in the 1970s but eventually fell out with other groups.
It is often known by its Persian name, the Mujahideen-e Khalq Organisation, or by the acronyms MEK or MKO.
Many Iranians, including sworn enemies of the Islamic Republic, say they cannot forgive the group for siding with Iraq against Iran during the 1980-1988 war.
The group was the first to publicly reveal in 2002 that Iran had a secret uranium-enrichment programme.
However, the Mujahideen has shown little sign of any active presence inside Iran for years.
In exile, first in France and later in Iraq, its leader, Massoud Rajavi, has not been seen for more than 20 years and his wife, Maryam Rajavi, has taken control. Rights groups have criticised the group for what they call cult-like behaviour and abuses of its followers, which the group denies.
The group is the main force behind the National Council of Resistance of Iran, led by Maryam Rajavi, which has an active presence in many Western countries, including France and Albania.
A number of groups based outside Iran and calling for a democratic republic joined together in 2023 to form the Solidarity for a Secular Democratic Republic in Iran (Hamgami) political coalition.
It gained some popularity among the Iranian diaspora in the wake of the 2022 protests over the killing of Mahsa Amini, 22, who died in police custody after being arrested by Iran’s so-called morality police for not wearing her hijab correctly – part of the strict dress code that was made obligatory shortly after the 1979 revolution.
The coalition advocates for the separation of religion and state, free elections and the establishment of an independent judiciary and media.
However, it has not gained much traction within Iran itself. “I don’t think it has any weight in the public sphere,” Alemzadeh said.
Persians make up about 61 percent of Iran’s 92 million people while significant minority groups include Azerbaijanis (16 percent) and Kurds (10 percent). Other minorities are Lurs (6 percent), Arabs (2 percent), Baluchis (2 percent) and Turkic groups (2 percent).
Iran is predominantly Shia Muslim, making up about 90 percent of the population, while Sunni Muslims and other Muslim sects account for roughly 9 percent. The remaining 1 percent includes roughly 300,000 Baha’i, 300,000 Christians, 35,000 Zoroastrians, 20,000 Jews and 10,000 Sabean Mandeans, according to the Minority Rights Group.
Iran’s mostly Sunni Muslim Kurdish and Baluch minorities have often clashed with the Persian-speaking, Shia Muslim government in Tehran.
Several Kurdish groups have long opposed the government in western Iran, where they form a majority, and there have been periods of active rebellion against government forces in those areas.
In Sistan-Baluchestan, along Iran’s eastern border with Pakistan, opposition to Tehran includes supporters of Sunni leaders seeking better representation within the country and armed groups with links to al-Qaeda.
Israel is set to advance two major illegal settlement plans for occupied East Jerusalem, which Palestinian officials and experts warn will serve as the final blow to hopes for a contiguous Palestinian state.
The Jerusalem governorate announced on Sunday that Israeli authorities will discuss approving 9,000 settlement units on the ruins of the Qalandiya airport, also known as Atarot, and a separate project in Sheikh Jarrah to displace 40 families.
To understand the strategic implications of these moves, Al Jazeera spoke to Suhail Khalilieh, a political analyst and expert on illegal Israeli settlements.
The Atarot plan was briefly shelved in December 2025 but has now returned to the table. According to Khalilieh, the timing is directly linked to the shifting geopolitical landscape following the recent meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and United States President Donald Trump.
“The meeting … served as a green light for continued settlement expansion,” Khalilieh told Al Jazeera.
“The American position, which treats Jerusalem as being outside any negotiation process … has encouraged the occupation to put this project into direct implementation,” he added, noting that international criticism has been reduced to mere “verbal objections without any deterrence”.
The airport project is not just about housing; it is a strategic chokehold, Khalilieh said.
He explained that the Atarot settlement is one of the three major axes designed to complete the “Greater Jerusalem” vision:
“This will increase the area of Jerusalem … by adding 175sq km [68sq miles],” Khalilieh said.
“The current area of East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli definition, is 71sq km [27sq miles]. With these additions, Greater Jerusalem under Israeli control will reach 246sq km [95sq miles], 4.5 percent … of the West Bank’s area, aiming to abort any possibility of establishing a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.”
In parallel, the “Nahalat Shimon” plan in Sheikh Jarrah targets the historic “Holy Basin” area north of the Old City.
“This falls under the old-new Israeli efforts to expand the settlement ring around the Old City,” Khalilieh said.
The goal, he argued, is to dismantle geographical continuity between Palestinian neighbourhoods like Silwan, the Mount of Olives, and Sheikh Jarrah, transforming them into “isolated population islands”.
“Today, the takeover of the Old City has begun through this ring … aiming to empty these areas gradually through intensified demolitions.”
Khalilieh warned that Israel is using neutral planning terms like “urban renewal” and “land settlement” to camouflage a policy of forced displacement.
“Development for Israelis means demolishing Palestinian homes under the guise of ‘building without a permit’,” he said, noting that more than 300 Palestinian homes were demolished in East Jerusalem in 2025 alone.
He also pointed to the unification of the “Arnona” property tax, which forces residents of neglected Palestinian neighbourhoods to pay the high rates as those in affluent Israeli areas.
“This puts them under cumulative pressure to leave Jerusalem … it constitutes a silent forced transfer.”
Khalilieh stressed that legal and diplomatic intervention must happen “before construction begins”, as reversing facts on the ground is politically “nearly impossible”.
He called for activating provisional measures at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and targeting international companies involved in the projects.