By: Dustin Johnson

Read some of the top stories we are following around the world this week.

UN chief calls Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis ‘catastrophic’ as Security Council condemns violence

In a rare rebuke, the United Nations Security Council has “expressed deep concern” about the situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, where over 370,000 Rohingya Muslims have been forced to flee across the border to Bangladesh to escape increasing levels of violence.

Source:
CNN, September 13th

Child soldier recruits double in one year in Middle East and North Africa

The number of children recruited to fight in conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa has more than doubled in a year, UN analysis has found. The huge increase in child soldiers in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and other countries follows years of ongoing violence, displacement and a lack of basic services, which has reduced the coping mechanisms of families, according to Unicef.

Source:
The Guardian, September 11th

Mass graves, missing bodies, and mysticism: Inside Congo’s spiralling Kasai conflict

Piles of disturbed earth covered with nettles and weeds hide the mass graves of Nganza, a neighbourhood in Kananga, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kasai Central region. Children stroll across them barefoot as if they aren’t even there. A ball rolls over from a nearby football match.

Source:
IRIN News, September 12th

Iraq holding 1,400 foreign ‘ISIL wives, children’

Iraqi authorities are holding about 1,400 foreign wives and children of suspected ISILfighters in a camp after government forces expelled the group from one of its last remaining strongholds in Iraq, security and aid officials said.

Source:
Al Jazeera, September 11th

Young Canadian ISIS recruit says he saw violence on scale he could never have imagined

In early 2014, a young Toronto-area man who went by the jihadi nom de guerre “Abu Huzaifa al-Kanadi” (Abu Huzaifa the Canadian) cleaned out his bank account and left to join the ranks of ISIS.

Source:
CBC News, September 11th