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new report released by the Norwegian Refugee Council has placed Cameroon at the top of an annual list of the most neglected global displacement crises, highlighting a sharp decline in international support.

Despite hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people, the situation in the country has received limited international attention, insufficient humanitarian funding and minimal political engagement, according to the NGO.

"It’s a case study in global neglect," Laila Matar, NRC's director of communications, told RFI. "There’s little media coverage, no meaningful diplomatic engagement and chronic underfunding. People are really struggling to survive."

Cameroon is grappling with humanitarian emergencies driven by three distinct situations – violence in the far north, ongoing conflict in the anglophone regions, and an influx of refugees from neighbouring Central African Republic.

These crises have left the country’s services overwhelmed and under-resourced.

According to the NRC’s report, covering 2024, 11 percent of Cameroon’s population now faces acute food insecurity.

"1.4 million children are crammed into poorly maintained and overcrowded classrooms," said Matar. "There’s simply no meaningful investment coming in from the global community."

Cameroon’s 2024 humanitarian response plan was only 45 percent funded, leaving a gap of more than $202 million (almost €178m).

Alongside Cameroon, the NRC’s report highlights nine other displacement crises suffering from similar neglect and lack of aid funding, including those in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Burkina Faso, each grappling with ongoing conflict.

To explain this reduced support and lack of engagement, Matar says: "Donor fatigue is certainly a factor. But more worrying is the shift we’re seeing from international solidarity to more inward-looking, security-focused policies in countries that used to be generous donors."

Several developed countries have made significant cuts to their overseas aid budgets.

France announced it would reduce public development assistance by more than €2 billion – nearly 40 percent of its annual allocation.

The United Kingdom has cut its overseas development assistance from 0.5 percent to 0.3 percent of gross national income, while Germany and the Netherlands are amongst others to have announced substantial reductions in foreign aid.

This comes as the United States – formerly the worlds largest contributor to overseas relief funding – has shut down or drastically reduced several aid programmes, including USAID, amid accusations of inefficiency from the Trump administration.

These decisions carry serious consequences for the humanitarian work of NGOs such as the NRC.

"We’re layering compromise upon compromise," Matar told RFI. "And those compromises are deadly."

The NRC report also makes an impassioned plea for a shift in priorities, with the organisation's secretary-general Jan Egeland saying: "Displacement isn’t a distant crisis. It’s a shared responsibility. We must stand up and demand a reversal of brutal aid cuts which are costing more lives by the day."

While governments and institutions must lead the charge, Matar stressed that ordinary people also have a role to play.

"Humanitarian aid works. It helps people start to dream of a future again," she said. "We can write to our MPs, speak out, and demand that our governments stop cutting aid in our name. We don’t need these crises to come to our borders to care about them."

Helsinki (AFP) – Decades of pollution and climate change have caused fish to disappear from the Baltic Sea at an alarming rate, with the European Union on Thursday vowing to make the sea an "urgent priority".

Unveiling its road map to protect Europe's seas, the European Ocean Pact, Brussels announced a summit on the state of the Baltic Sea in late September.

The semi-enclosed sea is surrounded by industrial and agricultural nations Germany, Poland, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the three Baltic states.

Connected to the Atlantic only by the narrow waters of the Danish straits, the Baltic is known for its shallow, low-salinity waters, which are highly sensitive to the climate and environmental changes that have accumulated over the years.

"Today, the once massive Baltic cod stocks have collapsed, herring stocks in several sub-basins are balancing on critical levels, sprat recruitment is at a record low and wild salmon stocks are in decline," Swedish European MP Isabella Lovin, rapporteur for the EU Committee of Fishing, warned in a report, calling the situation "critical".

The Baltic Sea is home to some of the world's largest dead marine zones, mainly due to excess nutrient runoff into the sea from human activities on land -- a challenge the sea has long grappled with.

The runoff has primarily been phosphorus and nitrogen from waste water and fertilisers used in agriculture, as well as other activities such as forestry.

It causes vast algae blooms in summer, a process known as eutrophication that removes oxygen from the water, leaving behind dead seabeds and marine habitats and threatening species living in the Baltic.

Today, agriculture is the biggest source of nutrient pollution.

Marine biodiversity in the relatively small sea has also deteriorated due to pollution from hazardous substances, land use, extraction of resources and climate change, according to the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM).

"The state of the Baltic Sea is not good," Maria Laamanen, a senior advisor at the Finnish environment ministry, told AFP.

Climate change poses "a massive additional challenge" for the marine environment, she said.

Of the world's coastal seas, the Baltic Sea is warming the fastest.

A 2024 study said sea surface and sea floor temperatures have increased by 1.8 and 1.3 degrees Celsius respectively in the Finnish archipelago in the northern Baltic Sea, in the period from 1927 to 2020.

The consequences of rising temperatures already affect species, while increased rainfall has led to more runoff from land to sea.

Better waste water treatment and gypsum treatment of agricultural soil, as well as an expansion of protected marine areas in Finland, have had a positive effect on the maritime environment, according to Laamanen, who said environmental engagement had grown in recent years.

"The situation would be much worse without the measures already implemented," she said.

In her report, Lovin called for an ambitious reform of fisheries, with stronger attention paid to environmental and climate change impacts.

The report also questioned whether the Baltic could continue to sustain industrial-scale trawling, and suggested giving "priority access to low-impact fisheries and fishing for human consumption".

The head of the Finnish Fishermen's Association (SAKL) Kim Jordas said eutrophication was to blame for the declining fish stocks in the Baltic Sea, not overfishing.

"Looking at cod for example, it is entirely due to the state of the Baltic Sea and the poor oxygen situation," Jordas told AFP.

In Finland, the number of commercial fishermen has been declining, with a total of around 400 active today.

Kabul (AFP) – Afghan women working for the United Nations in Kabul have been threatened by unidentified men because of their jobs, the organisation and several women told AFP on Thursday.

Multiple women working for various UN agencies told AFP on condition of anonymity they had been threatened on the street and over the phone by men warning them to "stay home".

UN staffer Huda -- not her real name -- said that for weeks she has been bombarded with messages abusing her for "working with foreigners".

"The messages keep coming and they are always harassing us... saying, 'Don't let me see you again, or else'," the young woman told AFP.

She said her office had advised her to work from home until further notice.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) confirmed that UN staff had been threatened.

"Several United Nations female national staff members in the Afghan capital Kabul have been subjected to threats by unidentified individuals related to their work with the UN," it said in a statement.

Considering the threats "extremely serious", the UN has taken "interim" measures "to ensure the safety and security of staff members", it added.

The Taliban government, accused by the UN of imposing a "gender apartheid" against women since returning to power in 2021, has denied any involvement.

Interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said such threats were a "crime" and that police would take action.

UNAMA said the authorities had opened an investigation.

Since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban authorities have severely restricted Afghan women from working and it is the only country in the world where women are banned from education beyond primary school.

The government in 2022 banned women from working for domestic and international NGOs, which was extended to include the UN's offices in the country the following year.

The policy has some exceptions including for women working in healthcare and education, and has not been consistently enforced.

The UN has previously called the policy "deeply discriminatory".

Selsela, in her 30s, said while returning from the office last week she was approached by unknown men who told her she should be "ashamed" and that she must "stay home".

"They said, 'We told you nicely this time, but next time you'll have another thing coming'," she told AFP.

"I was very scared," she said, explaining how she struggles to work efficiently from home in a country where electricity and internet are unreliable.

"The situation for women is getting worse every day."

Another woman, Rahila, said she and two other women colleagues were stopped by men while travelling home in a UN vehicle and told not to go to the office anymore.

"They said, 'Don't you know that you are not allowed?'," Rahila said, adding that she has also received threatening messages from unknown numbers.

"I am very worried, I need my job and my salary," she said.

Three-quarters of Afghanistan's population of some 45 million people struggle to meet their daily needs, according to the UN, with the country facing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Tokyo (AFP) – A Japanese startup will attempt a tricky lunar touchdown on Friday with an unmanned lander named Resilience, two years after its first try which crashed onto the Moon's surface.

If successful, it will be only the third private mission to the Earth's rocky natural satellite ever completed, and the first by a company based outside the United States.

The startup, ispace, says touchdown is expected at 4:17 am Japan time on Friday (1917 GMT Thursday) with the potentially nail-biting attempt streamed on its website.

Resilience is "ready to attempt a historic landing on the Moon" and "we are confident in our preparations for success", ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said last week.

"We have leveraged the operational experience gained in Mission 1 and during this current voyage to the Moon," he said in a statement.

Only five nations have soft-landed spacecraft on the Moon -- the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India and Japan.

And now companies are vying to offer cheaper and more frequent space exploration opportunities than governments.

Last year, the Houston-based Intuitive Machines became the first private enterprise to touch down on the Moon.

Although its uncrewed craft landed at the wrong angle, it was still able to complete tests and send photos.

Then in March this year, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost -- launched on the same SpaceX rocket as ispace's Resilience -- aced its lunar landing attempt.

Despite their rocket ride-share, Resilience took longer to reach the Moon than Blue Ghost, and ispace is now hoping for its own moment of glory, after its first mission resulted in an unsalvageable "hard landing" in 2023.

Landing on the Moon is highly challenging as spacecraft must rely on precisely controlled thruster burning to slow their descent.

Intuitive Machines' second attempt at a Moon landing ended in disappointment in late March.

Its spacecraft Athena, designed to touch down on a spot called the Mons Mouton plateau -- closer to the lunar south pole than any previous mission -- tipped over and was unable to recharge its solar-powered batteries.

Meanwhile another Japanese startup, Space One, has been trying to become the country's first private firm to put a satellite into orbit.

Its latest rocket launch attempt in December blasted off but was later seen spiralling downwards in the distance as the company said the launch had to be terminated.

Johannesburg (AFP) – Coca-Cola produces 120 billion throwaway plastic bottles a year, Greenpeace Africa said at a protest in South Africa Thursday, urging the soda maker to use glass and tin packaging to cut back on plastic pollution.

Activists erected a giant bottle cap outside the company's Johannesburg office emblazoned with the slogan "Cap it Coke" in a demonstration held on World Environment Day.

Coca-Cola has been the world's top plastic polluter for six consecutive years, the environmental activist group claimed.

"Coca-Cola produces 120 billion throwaway plastics every year. And most of it will end up in the environment and in the marine ecosystem," Greenpeace representative Hellen Kahaso Dena told AFP.

"So today, we are outside the office telling them to cut plastic production, invest in refill and reuse, and ensure that they are investing in other sustainable forms of packaging such as glass and cans," she said.

The company's claims to be promoting plastics recycling amounted to "greenwashing", she claimed. "We know that only about nine percent gets recycled. Most of the plastic will end up in the environment," Dena said.

The group also urged Coca-Cola to stand behind a push for a Global Plastic Treaty that will prioritise a cap on plastic production.

Negotiations among delegates from nearly 200 nations for the world's first accord on cutting plastics pollution ended without agreement in South Korea last year after opposition from a bloc of mainly oil-producing countries.

A new round is due in Geneva in August.

Since the failure of the talks, Coca-Cola lowered its environmental commitments by effectively scrapping a pledge to reach 25 percent reusable packaging by 2030, and pushing back dates and amounts for recycling goals.

Over 99 percent of plastics derive from fossil fuels, directly linking plastic production to the climate crisis, Greenpeace said.

Jakarta (AFP) – Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said Thursday that security anxiety over China was partly driving deepening ties with Indonesia in a region riven by rivalry between Beijing and Washington.

His visit to meet counterpart Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin in Jakarta came weeks after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made Indonesia his first foreign trip following his landslide election win.

Marles said the alliance with Indonesia stood on its own terms, but concerns about China's military build-up in the region influenced Australia's foreign policy thinking.

"We've made no secret of the fact that we have a security anxiety in relation to China. We've made that clear to China itself," Marles, who also serves as deputy prime minister, told journalists in the Indonesian capital.

"It does shape how we think about the strategic landscape that we face."

He said geography was also a key part of closer relations with President Prabowo Subianto's government, with whom they signed a defence pact last year.

"You just need to look at the map to understand how strategically important Indonesia is to Australia. Its geography is profoundly important," he said.

"That's actually what's driving the increase in the activity between Australia and Indonesia."

Marles and Sjafrie discussed greater cooperation "in relation to maritime domain awareness", which would see their militaries share more information about the waters they share, the Australian minister said.

"The relationship between Australia and Indonesia has never been in better shape," he said.

The bilateral defence pact pledged closer cooperation in the contested Asia-Pacific region and included provisions for each military operating in the other country.

Months after the accord was signed, thousands of Indonesian and Australian troops held joint drills in eastern Java in November.

Canberra has drawn ever nearer to longtime ally Washington, bolstering its military in an attempt to deter the might of a rising China.

Jakarta has meanwhile walked a more neutral path, wary of drawing too close to Washington and far less willing to needle Beijing.

Warsaw (AFP) – For several months, Halyna Muliar watched Poland's presidential campaign from home in Poznan, worried as candidates swerved further to the right and increasingly aimed nationalist slogans at Poland's 1.5 million Ukrainians -- war refugees and economic migrants.

The 58-year-old arrived in Poland weeks before Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and recalled, with emotion, the huge solidarity from Poles when an evacuation train from her hometown of Mykolaiv arrived with her daughter and other refugees.

But three years later, anti-Ukrainian rhetoric is part of mainstream Polish politics.

This weekend, Poles elected as president nationalist Karol Nawrocki, who throughout his campaign questioned the rights of Ukrainians in Poland.

"So much has changed," Muliar told AFP in Warsaw, where she had come from Poznan in the west to pick up a residency card.

"I'm worried by everything that was said during the campaign."

Nawrocki claimed Ukrainians "cause problems in hospital queues" and "should not live better than Poles", also accusing Kyiv of being ungrateful to its allies -- all arguments often used by the Polish far right.

His rival, Rafal Trzaskowski, the pro-EU presidential candidate, had urged people not to give into "Russian narratives" about Ukraine.

But -- in a failed bid to win far-right votes -- he still said some benefits paid out to Ukrainian refugees should be cut.

For Muliar, the mood in Poland has seriously worsened.

"First, it started with the documents, with the waits getting much longer," she told AFP.

Many Ukrainians have experienced longer bureaucratic procedures to obtain documents legalising their presence in Poland.

Then, she noticed social media was so full of anti-Ukrainian content she preferred not to open it.

Before long, she was the victim of xenophobic comments in shops "to which I just close my eyes".

She is not alone.

Ukrainians in Warsaw who AFP spoke to -- refugees and migrants who have been living in Poland for years -- were alarmed by the unprecedented hard-right tone of the campaign.

"The damage has been done," said Olena Babakova, a longtime observer of Polish-Ukrainian relations and of Poland's Ukrainian community.

While the theme of migrants has dominated election campaigns in the conservative Catholic country for years, Babakova said this "for the first time became strictly directed against Ukrainians".

Nationalist Nawrocki has often raised 20th-century grievances between Poland and Ukraine.

The pro-EU camp also flirted with that rhetoric, which Babakova said "took away hope".

She predicted the people worst affected by the trend would be Ukrainians working in the service sector -- mostly women who have the most contact with Poles and "paradoxically, really want to integrate in Polish society".

Olga Klymenko is one of them.

She is one of the one million Ukrainian refugees in Poland and works in a hotel.

She fled Russian occupation in 2022, escaping Ukraine's city of Izyum under fire through Russia before obtaining asylum in Poland.

"It hurts and worries me," she told AFP. "It's hard to know what tomorrow will bring."

Like many, she worries about her status in Poland.

There is much uncertainty among refugees over the future of legalisation processes.

"My house is destroyed. If there is some pressure from Poland, I have nowhere to return to," Klymenko explained.

Se said she was waiting to see what kind of president Nawrocki would turn out to be.

The role of head of state is largely ceremonial in Poland but the president can veto government law.

Nawrocki's victory has boosted the chances of a far-right win in the 2027 parliamentary elections.

"If there are some laws and the president's programme is not in favour of Ukrainians, then I don't know what we'll do," Klymenko said.

Poland's economy and ageing population are heavily reliant on a Ukrainian workforce.

But Ukrainians who have been living in Poland for years have also been unnerved by the election campaign.

Yulia Melnyk, who has been in Warsaw for seven years, was convinced the negative sentiment had been whipped up "from the top".

"It's convenient for politicians to use this kind of topic," the transport worker said.

She said she had seen "a lot of hate" on the internet but not, so far, "in real life".

But she admitted: "I am worried, and my family in Ukraine is worried that there will be hate towards Ukraine from the authorities themselves."

Ukrainian cook Serhiy, who has lived in Warsaw for six years, hoped the rhetoric was limited to a heated pre-election period.

The 28-year-old is also waiting to see what Nawrocki would be like in power.

"I hope he will focus less on populism and more on real problems," he said.

Wellington (AFP) – New Zealand's parliament on Thursday handed record-long suspensions to three Indigenous Maori lawmakers who last year staged a protest haka on the debating floor.

Maori Party co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were banished from parliament for 21 days, the longest-ever suspension.

Fellow Maori Party lawmaker Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, New Zealand's youngest current MP, was suspended for seven days.

The bans stem from a haka performed during voting in November on the contentious Treaty Principles Bill, which sought to redefine the principles of a key pact between Maori and the government.

Waititi held up a noose as he rose to speak in defiance of the ban on Thursday.

"In my maiden speech, I talked about one of our (ancestors) who was hung in the gallows of Mt Eden Prison, wrongfully accused," Waititi said.

"The silencing of us today is a reminder of the silencing of our ancestors of the past, and it continues to happen.

"Now you've traded the noose for legislation. Well, we will not be silenced."

Although performed on many different occasions, haka are often used as a kind of ceremonial war dance or challenge to authority.

New Zealand's foreign affairs minister Winston Peters earlier mocked Waititi for his traditional full-face Maori tattoo.

"The Maori Party are a bunch of extremists, and middle New Zealand and the Maori world has had enough of them," said Peters, who is also Maori.

"The one that's shouting down there, with the scribbles on his face... can't keep quiet for five seconds."

Maipi-Clarke, 22, sparked the affair as parliament considered the highly contentious Treaty Principles Bill in November last year.

In footage widely shared around the world, she rose to her feet, ripped up the bill and started belting out the strains of a protest haka.

She was joined by Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer, who strode on to the chamber floor chanting the Ka Mate haka famously performed by the country's All Blacks rugby team.

Ngarewa-Packer was also accused of pointing her fingers in the shape of a gun at the leader of the right-wing ACT Party, David Seymour, who had proposed the bill.

The trio were hauled before parliament's powerful Privileges Committee, but refused to take part in the hearing.

Supported by New Zealand's three governing coalition parties, the bans were voted on and accepted Thursday.

Maipi-Clarke said Maori would not be silenced.

"A member can swear at another member, a member of Cabinet can lay their hands on a staff member, a member can drive up the steps of Parliament, a member can swear in Parliament, and yet they weren't given five minutes of suspension," she said.

"Yet when we stand up for the country's foundational document, we get punished with the most severe consequences."

The Treaty Principles Bill sought to reinterpret New Zealand's founding document, signed between Maori chiefs and British representatives in 1840.

Many critics saw the bill as an attempt to wind back the special rights given to the country's 900,000-strong Maori population.

Parliament resoundingly voted down the bill in April.

Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – A Russian drone slammed into a residential house in central Ukraine overnight Thursday, killing three members of one family, including a one-year-old baby, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

He accused Moscow of trying to "buy time for itself to continue killing" and called for the West to put "maximum sanctions" and "pressure" on Moscow, after Russia has repeatedly rejected calls for a full and unconditional ceasefire.

A total of five people were killed in Pryluky, a city in central Ukraine, including victims from three generations of the same family.

A local firefighting chief was responding to an earlier attack when his own house was hit by a Russian drone, officials said.

"His wife, daughter and one-year-old grandson were killed," Zelensky said.

Photos showed houses on fire, billowing grey smoke into the pitch black sky as rescuers battled the blaze.

A picture at dawn, published by the emergency services, showed a firefighter standing in the burned-out carcass of a residential home, the roof gone, surrounded by charred ashes and debris.

"Russia is constantly trying to buy time for itself to continue killing. When it does not feel strong enough condemnation and pressure from the world, it kills again," Zelensky said.

"This is yet another reason to impose maximum sanctions and put pressure together. We expect action from the United States, Europe, and everyone in the world who can really help change these terrible circumstances," he added.

Fighting and aerial attacks have escalated in recent weeks, even as the sides have held two rounds of talks in Istanbul that they say are aimed at finding an end to the three-year war.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday told US President Donald Trump that Moscow would respond to an audacious Ukranian drone attack that destroyed several Russian nuclear-capable military jets over the weekend, Trump said after a call between the pair.

Another attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv wounded 18 people, including four children, Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said in a post on social media.

Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) – US defence chief Pete Hegseth on Thursday pushed NATO to agree a deal on increasing military spending that could satisfy President Donald Trump at a summit this month.

The volatile US leader has demanded that alliance members boost defence budgets to five percent of their GDP at the June 24-25 meeting in the Netherlands.

NATO chief Mark Rutte has put forward a compromise agreement for 3.5 percent of GDP on core military spending by 2032, and 1.5 percent on broader security-related areas such as infrastructure.

Several diplomats say Rutte looks on track to secure the deal for the summit in The Hague as NATO grapples with the threat from Russia after more than three years of war in Ukraine.

But a few allies are still hesitant about committing to such levels of spending.

"The reason I'm here is to make sure every country in NATO understands every shoulder has to be to the plough, every country has to contribute at that level of five percent," Hegseth said at a meeting with his NATO counterparts in Brussels.

"Our message is going to continue to be clear. It's deterrence and peace through strength, but it can't be reliance. It cannot and will not be reliance on America in a world of a lot of threats," he said.

Most vocal in its reluctance is Spain, which is only set to reach NATO's current target of two percent of GDP by the end of this year.

Diplomats say other countries are also haggling over making the timeline longer and dropping a demand for core defence spending to increase by 0.2 percentage points each year.

But the deal appears an acceptable compromise to most, which will allow Trump to claim that he has achieved his headline demand, while in reality setting the bar lower for struggling European allies.

The United States has backed Rutte's plan, but Washington insists it wants to each country to lay out a "credible path" to meet the target.

In a connected move, NATO ministers were due to sign off at their meeting on new capability targets for the weaponry needed to deter Russia.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius estimated the new requirements meant Berlin would need to add "around 50,000 to 60,000" more soldiers to its army.

His Dutch counterpart Ruben Brekelmans said reaching the level requested would cost the Netherlands at least 3.5 percent of GDP.

It is not just the fear of Moscow that is pushing Europe to ramp up its ambitions -- there is also uncertainty over the United States' commitment to the continent.

"What we will decide in The Hague, what we will spend on defence going forward, the new defence investment plan, of course, is rooted in what we need in terms of the hard capabilities," Rutte said.

Hegseth, a former TV presenter, rocked NATO on his last visit in February with a fiery warning that Washington could look to scale back its forces in Europe to focus on China.

Since then, there has been no concrete announcement from the United States on troop withdrawals, but NATO allies remain on tenterhooks.

With NATO looking set for the defence spending deal, another thorny issue threatening to overshadow the summit in three weeks' time is what to do about Ukraine.

Trump's return to the White House ripped up Washington's support for Ukraine and upended the West's approach to Russia's three-year-long war.

Hegseth underscored the US disengagement with Kyiv by skipping a meeting of Ukraine's backers in Brussels on Wednesday.

Kyiv's European allies are pressing to overcome US reluctance and invite Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky to The Hague as a sign of support.

So far, NATO has said only that Ukraine will be represented at the gathering, and has not confirmed that Zelensky will be in attendance.

Denpasar (Indonesia) (AFP) – An American man and two Kazakh nationals face the death penalty for alleged drug crimes on the popular Indonesian resort island of Bali, authorities said Thursday, the latest cases in a nation with some of the world's toughest narcotics laws.

Indonesia hands out severe punishments for drug smuggling and has previously executed foreigners, but has upheld a moratorium on the death sentence since 2017.

American national William Wallace Molyneaux was arrested on May 23, allegedly carrying seven packages containing 99 pills of amphetamine, Bali's narcotics agency told reporters in Denpasar.

Molyneaux has multiple charges levelled against him including distributing drugs, which carries the maximum penalty of death by execution.

Two Kazakh men were also arrested in April with around 49 grams of crystal meth, allegedly intending to drop it off as part of a drug deal. They were accused of transacting drugs, a charge that carries the death sentence as the maximum penalty.

The American and Kazakh embassies in Jakarta did not immediately respond to AFP's requests for comment.

The narcotics agency said it had uncovered 15 drug cases in Bali between April and May, resulting in 21 arrests including five foreigners.

The other cases include an Australian man who was arrested with nearly 200 grams of hashish and 92 grams of THC in Denpasar and an Indian man caught with 488 grams of marijuana at Bali's international airport. Both face hefty prison terms.

The latest cases come after the trial of three Brits began on Tuesday, all accused of smuggling drugs or taking part in a drugs deal, leaving them also facing the death penalty.

The British embassy in Jakarta said London's policy on the death penalty was to be opposed "in all circumstances, as a matter of principle".

It said diplomats had "made representations about the use of the death penalty to the Indonesian government at the highest levels".

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto's administration has moved in recent months to repatriate several high-profile inmates, all sentenced for drug offences, back to their home countries.

According to Indonesia's Ministry of Immigration and Corrections, more than 90 foreigners were on death row, all on drug charges.

Nairobi (AFP) – Elections for a new parliament in Burundi got under way on Thursday but with little risk of an upset after the main opposition was effectively barred from running.

The impoverished, landlocked country in east Africa has seen decades of ethnic violence, civil war and authoritarian rule.

A former rebel group, the National Council for the Defense of Democracy - Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD–FDD) of President Evariste Ndayishimiye, has dominated Burundian politics since 2005.

It is accused of undermining its main opponent, the National Freedom Council (CNL), which came second at the last election in 2020 and claimed it was cheated.

In 2023, the interior ministry suspended the CNL over "irregularities" in the way it organised its meetings.

Then last year, the CNL ousted its leader, former militia commander Agathon Rwasa, while he was abroad -- a move which he said was orchestrated by the government.

The government then passed new rules effectively barring Rwasa and his allies from joining other parties or standing as independents.

A Burundian analyst, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, said the ruling party was taking no chances because the elections were happening amid "a very deep socio-economic crisis".

Burundi faces "all sorts of shortages, galloping inflation of more than 40 percent and growing popular discontent," the analyst said.

President Ndayishimiye took over following the death of his predecessor, Pierre Nkurunziza, who had isolated the country with his brutal and chaotic rule since 2005.

While Ndayishimiye was seen as relatively less authoritarian, Burundi's rights record remains poor, with journalists, activists and opposition figures all facing severe repression.

One of the candidates for Thursday's election, Patrick Nkurunziza -- no relation to the previous president -- head of the Burundi for All coalition, told AFP the campaign had been "very difficult for us".

He said his members faced "threats, harassment and sometimes even attacks" from a government-aligned youth league known as the Imbonerakure.

A group of media executives last month accused the Imbonerakure of detaining and torturing a journalist while he tried to work at the University of Burundi in the capital Bujumbura.

A fuel shortage that has largely paralysed the country for nearly three years also made it difficult for candidates to operate, said Nkurunziza.

"In the absence of Agathon Rwasa's CNL, the CNDD-FDD is sure to win," said the analyst.

Most of the other candidates are "token candidates, who are there just to show that democracy is still happening in Burundi," they added.

Burundi experienced decades of ethnic violence and civil war up to 2005.

Under a peace agreement signed in 2000, seats in the parliament are split 60-40 between the two ethnic groups, Hutu and Tutsi.

Burundi remains one of the world's poorest countries with almost two-thirds living below the World Bank's poverty line of $2.15 per day.