Al Jazeera Correspondent

Libya has been mired in conflict and violence since the country's 2011 civil war that toppled and later killed longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The oil-rich nation is now divided, with a UN-recognised but weak administration in the capital Tripoli overseeing the country's west and a rival government in the east aligned with the self-declared Libyan National Army led by renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar. Libyan MP and former foreign minister Aly Abuzaakouk and Haftar lived in exile in the US "for many years together as acquaintances, as friends ... in Fairfax", and also knew Gaddafi during his school days. They'd both "suffered from the ruthless regime" of Gaddafi. But after Hafter went back to Libya and "started to build his own entourage", Abuzaakouk "realised this is not a person I would continue to have a relationship with ... He is a man who believes he is worthy of controlling Libya and he always would speak about the need for a strong force to control Libya." In April, Haftar launched a military offensive against the government in Tripoli and vowed to fight until Tripoli 'militias' were defeated. But according to Abuzaakouk, Haftar's "base of support in the east is not as it used to be". In an interview with Al Jazeera, he said that opposition to Haftar has grown after the assault on Tripoli, with tribes now openly opposing him and "calling for reconciliation with the rest of the country". "Many forces have come together ... to support Tripoli, and the militia in Tripoli also defended their city ... They stopped the forces of Haftar and now they are hitting them back," he added. But while support for Haftar might be waning inside Libya, he still has strong backers outside the country, says Abuzaakouk. "The former president of Tunisia spoke about the axis of evil. Abu Dhabi, the Saudis and the Egyptians ... This axis of evil has a mandate to work against the success of the Arab Spring," he said. "I think the international community have to realise they have supported Haftar with weapons against the United Nations Security Council resolutions. Everybody knows ... that there are arms coming from … at least Abu Dhabi and Egypt to Mr Haftar." UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently appealed to all countries to enforce the arms embargo against Libya saying the issue is "of immediate importance in de-escalating the current situation" and "of critical importance to the protection of civilians and the restoration of security and stability in Libya and the region". As Libya's ongoing crisis is still being deliberated in the international community, Abuzaakouk believes that the world at large failed the once wealthy African nation. "Getting rid of Gaddafi was step number one. Building Libya to really restructure itself was step number two and the world community at large left Libya alone and that, I think, was a great mistake." "Life in Benghazi and in Derna is unbearable, it's worse than the days of Gaddafi. There's no freedom of speech, there's no freedom of law, there are a lot of killings, extrajudicial killings ... I'm very clear that the war crimes committed by Haftar or others should be investigated," said Abuzaakouk. "There are now forces in Washington, in The Hague to really follow up on the war crimes that have been committed in Libya … the Libyans deserve to have some of the criminals be brought to justice.” - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, among others, are platforms enabling free expression of information and ideas, but they are also increasingly used to spread fake news and hate speech - making serious public policy discussions more difficult and thereby undermining democracies. What is the state of freedom of speech around the world? Is democracy under threat from all the misinformation and manipulation? And how do you police the internet without censorship and restricting freedom of expression? David Kaye, the UN special rapporteur for freedom of expression, is an independent expert who is tasked by the UN Human Rights Council to report and monitor on the freedom of expression globally - including on the internet and social media. "The problem that we see all around the world today is that governments are increasingly interfering with all sorts of human rights, but in terms of my mandate, they are interfering increasingly with everyone's right to freedom of expression and this is unfortunately a global phenomenon," he told Al Jazeera. Since 2014, when Kaye started his role, he has seen the state of freedom of expression going backwards. "We have seen increasing efforts by political leaders, by governments to restrict the kind of robust debate that we expect in democratic societies. We see an increasing concentration of media controlled by the state, it's been deeply problematic over the last couple of years." While the US has traditionally played a role in advocating for freedom of expression, US President Donald Trump may be sending a different message. "When you have a president who attacks the media on a regular basis, where he calls the media 'the enemy of the people' which I think he does for strategic purposes to sow doubt in the people's opinion about media and in the truthfulness of traditional reporting, I think that's deeply problematic," Kaye said, adding, "the rhetoric gives some comfort to authoritarians." While Kaye says some societies - like North Korea - are "closed", others may have journalists targeted for their words. The brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on October 2, 2018, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, has led to a demand for accountability and transparency. US intelligence agencies have concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also referred to as MBS, ordered the murder of Khashoggi - a conclusion the Saudi kingdom denies. Kaye says there is a broader issue of inaction in the face of Khashoggi's murder. "There's been no effort in the UN system by states to seek to censure Saudi Arabia, except in one instance led by Iceland actually in the Human Rights Council. Except for that, in an informal way, there's been very little censure of Saudi Arabia for its role in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and I think that is frankly a travesty," he said. "All of the threads lead back to the crown prince. He is responsible, I think that seems pretty clear. Whether it amounts to criminal culpability, I think is a question I would really like to see handled by the structures of the UN system." The UN determined that the ability to use Facebook was one of the motivators for people to incite violence against the Rohingya in 2016 and 2017. "Facebook really did not do anything in the face of that incitement of violence even though that was inconsistent with its own rules for participating in the service," Kaye said. Facebook acknowledged it wasn't doing enough to prevent the incitement of violence against the Rohingya community and created additional rules to address the issue, but Kaye noted in many instances it is a real question whether companies are consistently enforcing these rules. "The major problem here is that we don't know because they are not transparent about their implementations of their rules." Kaye said government regulation to ensure transparency may be a solution but the other issue is policing the internet without censorship. According to Kaye, the internet itself has changed and it is no longer a place where you can discover a whole world of information without any restrictions. "It was very difficult for governments to impose restrictions. But that internet is gone," he said. "The internet in the last 15 years has made censorship easier, rather than allow us to reach what we had expected at some level, which might have been a naive expectation of a nirvana of free speech online." - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean is a highly-prized commodity. In 1999, geological surveys revealed that there were natural gas fields off the coast of Gaza. But through a series of poor decisions, questionable leadership and regional geopolitics, the so-called Gaza Marine gas field has lain dormant for 20 years. So why has Gaza's gas not been exploited for decades? And why has such a major story received relatively little media attention? While making this film, Al Jazeera obtained exclusive documents revealing correspondence between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and other bodies involved in the negotiations. When mineral engineers first told Yasser Arafat about the potential gas resources off Gaza, he proclaimed it "a gift from God to the Palestinian people". The geological surveys suggested that this gas was good quality, of real value, and within easy reach of Gaza's coastline. It was seen by many as a way for Palestinians to achieve energy independence and perhaps a little sovereignty. "If our gas and oil are produced properly, Palestine in general and Gaza, in particular, won't need international aid anymore," says Yousef al-Mansi, a former Palestinian minister. But the PA seemed strangely hesitant right from the start. Added to that, a non-competitive contract with British Gas in 1999 gave Palestinians a minor share of potential gas revenues. Later, Israel - an obvious market - blocked a deal with British Gas in 2003, while Egypt began selling gas to Israel, commandeering what would have been Gaza Marine's share of the market. What's more, a veil of secrecy surrounds the deal-making. "For 20 years, the PA continued to hide facts and refused to answer questions asked by several parties around the world," says economic analyst Rami Abdo. No one at the PA would talk to Al Jazeera about the deal, while political divisions within the governing authority have weakened its ability to exploit a potentially life-changing resource. "Look at the rest of the region," says Dania Akkad, a senior editor at Middle East Eye. "They’ve all discovered gas and they’re all now thinking they’re going to be the next wealthy rich-in-gas countries. Meanwhile, people in Gaza just sit with the gas out in the ocean." "It's exactly as if you were somebody who didn’t have any food to eat and you had a feast put in front of you and you were told you were not able to eat this feast," she says. As the blockade of Gaza continues, its people spend half their lives in darkness in a perpetual energy crisis, while the answer to many of their economic problems lies below the seabed a few kilometres away. "The Palestinians in Gaza right now are energy dependent," Akkad says. "Meanwhile, off their coast, they have gas that could make them energy rich." There are now at least eight gas fields which experts say international maritime law gives the Palestinians the right to exploit - if only they were allowed. All this time, Israel's first gas field right next to Gaza Marine, called Leviathan, is due to come on stream later in 2019. The PA once contemplated buying Israeli gas from Leviathan. Although the deal was stopped, the irony of it sums up the PA’s two decades of failure to tap into Gaza Marine - while Israel's continued efforts ensure they may never succeed. - More from Al Jazeera World on: YouTube - http://aje.io/aljazeeraworldYT Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AlJazeeraWorld Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlJazeera_World Visit our website - http://www.aljazeera.com/aljazeeraworld Subscribe to AJE on YouTube - http://aje.io/YTsubscribe - - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

For a group of alienated young Afghan refugees in Iran, football proves a powerful force that gives them a much-needed boost in pride, identity and self-worth. They call their team 'Wahdat' meaning 'unity' and assemble a talented and determined squad. They overcome all the odds to form a team, obtain sponsorship and enter one of the Iranian futsal, five-a-side competitions played in evenings after iftar during Ramadan. They not only make it through the early rounds but go on to win the final and lift the Ramadan Cup. But this is about more than football. It's about young men trying to rise above their circumstances and their daily struggle to survive - and succeeding. Afghans have been seeking refuge in Iran since the 1970s but they and their families are largely unregistered. Although they can go to school, they cannot attend university, or work as civil servants or in most white-collar jobs. So they're limited to manual work, often in construction. "I want a better job but I'm still grateful for this one. There are many people without jobs," says Reza Ghaljayi, a Wahdat player working as a building labourer. "Companies don't hire us ... We work for one day, then nothing for four days," says street trader and Wahdat team supervisor Dastagir Barik Zehi. Many young Afghans do not feel welcome in shopping malls or places of entertainment and claim widespread discrimination. "You get attached to the place where you're born. I was born, studied, married and grew up here. But, unfortunately, I don't have a residence permit or an ID," says another footballer, Mojtaba Haji Hosseini. For many, football is their only social outlet and can be their salvation. "Only football motivates us to live. If there was no football, I don't know what we'd do or where we'd go," says Reza. The Wahdat team is strong. One of them once played for Afghanistan Under-20s. But the last time they took part in a Ramadan tournament two years ago, there was violence on and off the pitch, blacklisting them in their hometown. It takes all captain Nasir Zouri's organisational powers to get them into a competition in another town - and find a sponsor prepared to back them. That would normally just involve funding, but here it also means having enough influence to ensure the players' welfare and safety during the tournament. Afghan United is a touching and rarely-told story about a disadvantaged community, but with a positive, life-affirming outcome - in the footballing sense, at least. - More from Al Jazeera World on: YouTube - http://aje.io/aljazeeraworldYT Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AlJazeeraWorld Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlJazeera_World Visit our website - http://www.aljazeera.com/aljazeeraworld Subscribe to AJE on YouTube - http://aje.io/YTsubscribe - - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

In Lebanon, there are thousands of stateless people like the Abu Eid tribe. They cannot access free public services like education and healthcare, have no freedom of movement, cannot own property, marry or work legally because of their lack of legal status. They can’t vote or run for public office. One of Lebanon’s many political challenges is overdue reform of its citizenship laws, to address the problems faced by its many vulnerable communities. Not doing so might cause more problems than it solves.

Just a few months after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, another Arab dissident says his life is also in danger. Iyad el-Baghdadi is a pro-democracy activist and strong critic of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The UK's Guardian newspaper reported that Norwegian officials took him from his home in Oslo to a secure location. There, he was told the CIA had warned Norway's government the Saudis had him "in their crosshairs". El-Baghdadi gained popularity during the Arab Spring when he posted pro-human rights messages on social media. The Palestinian activist was granted asylum in Norway four years ago after being expelled from the United Arab Emirates for criticising Middle Eastern regimes. In an exclusive interview, Iyad el-Baghdadi discusses an unlikely friendship with the murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and how continuing Khashoggi's work has made him a target of the Saudi government.

In 2014, a group of Yemeni men sold their kidneys in Egypt for $5,000 each. But that was a tiny cut of the profit. The big bucks went to two unlikely members of the international organ trafficking network. Take 15 mins to watch and find out more: #AlJazeeraEnglish #Yemen #AJInvestigations

Iran's foreign minister discusses US sanctions, foreign intervention in the region, and his past resignation attempt. In July 2015, after more than a decade of on-and-off negotiations, world powers reached a nuclear deal with Iran. Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of enriched uranium and reduce centrifuges. In return, all UN Security Council and multilateral sanctions were lifted. But not everyone was happy with the deal, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the deal was a "stunning historic mistake", as well as US Republican presidential candidates at the time. The campaign against the Iran nuclear deal succeeded when Donald Trump moved into the White House. The US withdrew from the deal in 2018, and announced that it would reimpose sanctions on Iran. Certainly, Iran does not want confrontation and escalation but we have not lived 7,000 years by escaping from those who want to bully us. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's minister of foreign affairs Iran insisted it would remain in the nuclear deal and so did other signatories such as France, Germany, and the UK. But tensions between the US and Iran have escalated; the US recent classified Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as "terrorists", and Iran responded in turn, labelling US troops in the Middle East as "terrorists". Unilateral sanctions have also affected Iran's economy, and the US recently tightened them by ending sanction waivers for countries buying oil from Iran, threatening Iran's already struggling economy, whose oil production has decreased from 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2017 to as little as 1.3 million bpd. In response, Iranian leaders have threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, a major thoroughfare for oil shipments, but their economy remains vulnerable. The country's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, says the US sanctions are "economic terrorism". "They want to put pressure on the Iranian people in order to change their policy. That is the way the United States has acted for 40 years and, particularly since President Trump came to office, it violated a commitment by another US president, President Obama," he told Al Jazeera. He said that the sanctions won't have any "political effect" and that Iran has developed various schemes with partnering countries to help protect themselves. "One of them will be in the long run to the detriment of the United States and I think that is becoming increasingly popular and that is not to use dollars for your transactions. Second is an instrument that we are developing with the Europeans, we have already developed with our neighbours and we have developed them with the Chinese and that is not to engage in transfer of money across the borders which is where the United States would step in and will try to twist the arms of people who are engaged in it, illegally and unlawfully." According to Zarif, the US has been swayed by foreign interests. "I believe the United States is not serving US interests. More than the United States, it is serving Israeli interests. And unfortunately, there are a couple of people in our region who have aligned themselves with Israeli interests," he said, listing the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed. "So this is a cabal ... who are pushing the United States and President Trump into conflict and into disastrous situations and they will be the first to suffer the consequences, unfortunately." Iran has also been accused of destabilising the region, and criticised for its involvement in countries like Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The US recently accused Iran-backed militias of killing more than 600 of its soldiers during the Iraq war, which Zarif says is a "baseless lie", stating that Iran's priority is stability in the region. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Filmmaker: Bashar Ghannam Weddings are a cause for celebration everywhere in the world. For Palestinians, they can be a way of keeping their valuable traditions alive and helping to deal with life under Israeli occupation. But for the women in this film, that day may never come because their fiances are serving life sentences in Israeli jails. "The positive side of being in prison is that it helped us become closer," says Ahlam Ahmed al-Tamimi, a former prisoner who was engaged to her cousin Nizar al-Tamimi in 2005 while they were both serving life sentences. They eventually married after being released during the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011. But at the time, Ahlam describes how their very relationship was a symbol of resistance. "I resisted the occupation with my love and my engagement to this prisoner. Through the engagement, the prisoner tells the occupier that his life continues," says Ahlam. Ahlam al-Tamimi served eight years of a life sentence for her role in a bombing in 2001 that killed 15 people and wounded 130. She got engaged to her cousin, Nizar, while he too was serving a life sentence, for killing an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank. The US now wants to extradite Ahlam from Jordan, where she now lives, because US citizens were killed in the 2001 bombing; and she is on an FBI 'most-wanted' list. The two other women, Ghufran al-Zamal and Amna al-Jayousi, have more complex stories - and little chance of a similar outcome, yet they remain hopeful. Amna was already legally married to Ahmed al-Jayoussi who was arrested for helping manufacture suicide belts, a week before their planned wedding ceremony in 2002. But despite pressure from her extended family to abandon Ahmed in prison, Amna's commitment to him is unwavering, even after 17 years. "I booked an 'afterlife husband', a husband for life and for afterlife....Ahmed and I are not just a couple. We are one soul in two bodies," she says. Ghufran, on the other hand, had never even met Hassan Salameh when she proposed marriage to him. He was in prison, serving 48 life sentences for his part in fatal attacks in Jerusalem in 1996. But inspired by Ahlam and Nizar's experience, she initiated the connection with Hassan through Ahlam. "It was difficult for me as a woman to take the first step, to discuss this subject and break social taboos by proposing to a man," she explains. Ghufran was familiar with Hassan's case and in her letters she says, "As he considered his sentence part of a sacrifice, I said I wanted to share it with him and asked him not to deny me this happiness...I wrote that I would share his suffering, his pain and his life." Initially, Hassan refused to allow Ghufran to get mixed up in his life and imprisonment - but he later agreed when Ahlam convinced him that "engagement would be a beam of light in a dark place." While sometimes letters can take up to a year to arrive, Ghufran and Hassan have created their own world which she says transcends time and space: "We challenged our circumstances and, for us, prison didn't exit...we planned for our future life and thought about everything. We defied this reality," contends Ghufran. "The prison management make fun of prisoners' engagement," explains Ahlam...or "prevent the detainee from getting the letter...Sometimes the security agent would tell me, 'your fiance fainted while in hunger strike' or that they beat him until bleeding, and it's all fake news." "The purpose is to keep us under constant stress," she adds. According to the Jerusalem-based human rights organisation B'tselem, in February 2019, there were over 5,000 Palestinians languishing in Israeli prisons. The idea of women committing to men in prison with long sentences is a little-known aspect of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as well as an intensely personal and complex one. Regardless of what the men may have done to be handed their multiple life sentences, Ahlam, Ghofran and Amna's unrelenting loyalty to them is inseparable from their desire for a Palestinian homeland, the personal and the political completely intertwined. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Morocco, like much of North Africa, has often been portrayed in the West as mysterious and exotic, a land of belly dancers, enticement and Arab enchantment. This outmoded stereotype is firmly laid to rest by the country's burgeoning combat sports scene. In Casablanca Fight Club, the regional qualifying stage of the Moroccan amateur boxing championships is just weeks away and the young boxers at the Bateha club are training for the biggest fights of their lives. It's here that a 75-year-old parking attendant and former Moroccan featherweight champion, Saleh Rouman, mentors fresh young boxing talent. "There are kids without any education or trade," explains Saleh, Bateha boxing club's head coach. "I save them from the street and encourage them to be productive. I point them in the right direction, but in the end it's up to them. I do my best with them." Saleh founded Bateha in 1979 and his honours board boasts national champions. He gets a government subsidy for rent and electricity but has to fund the rest from his day job, devoting all his free time to nurturing young boxers in the modest Derb Ghallef area of town. His club was the first in Casablanca to admit female fighters and Sanaa Akeel was a four-time national champion. While Saleh's always on the lookout for talent from the outside, most of his members are from Derb Ghallef and nearby areas. Morocco has produced several combat sport champions, including kick-boxer Badar Hari and boxer Mohammed Rabii. Rabii won world super-welterweight gold in Doha and Olympic bronze in Rio. Weight is as important to a boxer as for a jockey in horse racing. And with the qualifying stages for the national championships around the corner, everyone at Bateha needs to be the right weight for their class. That's a problem for 19-year-old Omaima Haji who currently weighs 71.6 but needs to be under 69 kilos to qualify as a welterweight. She doesn't want to fight heavier, middleweight girls, fearing she may be outclassed. "I gained four kilos from January to April," explains Oumaima. "I registered in the 69 kilo class, but my weight now is 75. Uncle Saleh advised me to register as a middleweight but I refused." Fifteen-year-old Marwan Keroual has the opposite problem. He's never yet had a competitive fight but time is running out and he's still too light to compete as a junior pinweight. He's also performing poorly at school, putting extra parental pressure on him to balance study with training. "All my attention is on this fight. I have to win," says Marwan, who's determined to prove himself. "I want to improve my life through boxing and be a champion like Rabii." Will Marwan win his first fight? And will Oumaima Haji even make the weight? Casablanca Fight Club follows the trials and tribulations of the build up to the big day, and the blood, sweat and tears in the ring, in this compelling "life-in-the-raw" story of passionate young fighters and their inspiring, gnarled old coach. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Filmmaker: Mohamed Kenawi As long as there is war, poverty and insecurity in Africa and the Middle East, migrants and refugees will try and seek a better life in Europe. For many years now, Italy has been one of the principal destinations for many and that has included the dangerous sea crossing over the Mediterranean. Egyptian refugee Mostafa Hassan was lucky to arrive in Rome at all in 2015, as one of only 27 survivors of the biggest Mediterranean disasters since World War II. He recalls one frightful day on an overloaded boat, its sinking and subsequent drowning - a regular occurrence in the Mediterranean in recent years. "At night, we all went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning the boat was unstable. Everyone was scared. Then it started to lean to one side. There were a lot of us and it was overloaded," he says. "People started to fall into the water. I saw bodies floating on the water before I jumped in ... I pushed the bodies away so I could swim. The boat sank. I swam until help arrived. They rescued survivors but the dead remained in the water. I don't know what happened to them." According to UN figures, immigration to Europe is falling year-on-year. But by the first week of April 2019, there had still been 12,350 arrivals into Europe by sea, with 289 fatalities. One in six refugees arriving in Italy is now aged under 18. Under-aged migrants - or minors - like Mostafa who was 17 at the time, are taken to reception centres where they're looked after by people like Eraldo Andi. Andi runs a primary reception centre for minors and provides support, education and shelter. "I don't just feel responsible for them at the centre. I usually help them after they leave. So I study teenage immigration. I contact experts in minors' issues hoping to know more about the dangers and problems they face and the best solutions," says Andi, who's become a guardian angel for refugees. Unfortunately, state support ends when these young people turn 18 and are left to fend for themselves on the street. "When I turned 18, I only had my bag and didn't know where to go. I didn't have a job, home, money or anything. I took my papers from the centre, packed my clothes and called a friend," says Mostafa. Only 10 percent of young people like Mostafa eventually settle legally in Italy. The authorities lose track of the rest, as they move on to northern Europe or disappear into the margins of society where a world of illegal activity can await them. "The big problem is that the economic situation here is constantly deteriorating," says Andi. "Unemployment is high and many Italian families live in poverty. If Italians don't have jobs, foreigners won't either." In addition to the financial, language, housing and social challenges migrants face, they also struggle with isolation which can lead to psychological distress. "I think their poor social status causes them psychological problems," explains psychotherapist Carmela Palazzo. "Instead of being happy to turn 18 they get desperate because they know they'll end up on the streets." That can result in a mental breakdown, such as the one Mostafa witnessed with his twin brother Mahmoud. "He used to think a lot, not sleep enough and this made him unstable. I'd talk to him about something but he'd talk about something else," says Mostafa. "He'd get nervous and scream. He was in hospital for six months. He still has treatment but has left hospital now. The Italian government will pay for his treatment until he's 21. They always follow up with him." Despite his hardships, he remains hopeful about the future, "I wish I could work, make some money and buy a house in Egypt for me and my brother. I want him to get married and secure his future. I want to build my future as well." More from Al Jazeera World on: YouTube - http://aje.io/aljazeeraworldYT Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AlJazeeraWorld Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlJazeera_World Visit our website - http://www.aljazeera.com/aljazeeraworld Subscribe to AJE on YouTube - http://aje.io/YTsubscribe - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Alphonse Etienne Dinet was a French artist from a wealthy background in 19th-century Paris who painted in what was called the Orientalist style, normally a Western view of the Middle East and North Africa which stereotyped its people as "wild" and "exotic". Edward Said's 1978 book, Orientalism, caused critics and historians to re-appraise their view of this style, as Said argued it represented a patronising, colonial attitude towards the life, culture and people of the Middle East. But unlike most Orientalist painters, Dinet travelled frequently to North Africa, and his work, far from being colonial in outlook, came to be seen as a true and sympathetic depiction of life in the Arab world. Since Dinet's death nine decades ago, his distinctive paintings have graced museums, art galleries and collections all over the world.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed since South Sudan's civil war began in December 2013, and millions more have been forced to flee their homes. On one side of the conflict are troops and militias backing President Salva Kiir. On the other, those supporting former Vice President Riek Machar. A peace deal was signed in 2018 to end the war, but the situation is far from settled, with atrocities having been committed by both sides, and continued fighting between the government and armed groups. In February 2019, the United Nations Human Rights Council released a report describing what it believes is funding the war: the country's rich oil industry. It says that the state-owned Nilepet oil company "has diverted oil revenues which should be shared with states into the coffers of elites in the government," and that its operations "have been characterised by a total lack of transparency and independent oversight." According to the report, "oil revenues and income from other natural resources have continued to fund the war, enabling its continuation and the resulting human rights violations." The country's oil sector is supervised by the minister of petroleum, Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, who denies the UN's allegations and others. "I have been in the Ministry of Petroleum since 2016 and I can assure you there is no single dollar that has been used to buy arms in the ministry and even in the country," he told Al Jazeera. "The focus is peace, peace, peace. We are not investing in war and we will not at all invest in war ... Nilepet has not been financing any activities that is related to violence in the country." He says that expanding the country's oil production - oil makes up 60 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and almost all of its exports - and attracting foreign investors, will increase the money available for development projects. "Now myself and my colleagues in the government, we are also working to make sure that the production is increased, and we resume the oil blocks that has been dormant for the last five years, this is also going to be translated into money, so that we can have more money and then we will provide services to the people of South Sudan," he said. But with a lack of transparency - one organisation obtained secret documents suggesting that Nilepet paid $80m to war-related officials and activities over a 15-month period beginning in March 2014 - the concern is that these expansions would simply deepen corruption. South Sudan ranks 178 out of 180 countries on Transparency International's corruption index. But Gatkuoth says South Sudan's president has initiatives to address these issues. "Corruption is everywhere in the world but the most important thing is how you deal with it," he said. "People are being dismissed, people are being held accountable ... We have been actually really targeting people who have been actually involved in corruption and they are in jail and they are prosecuted. To me, the president is doing exactly the right thing and we are open book. In the Ministry of Petroleum or Finance or the whole government, we are open book." - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

When Istanbul was at the heart of the Ottoman Empire, it was one of the most ethnically diverse cities in history; Rebetiko was one of many cultural and musical variations. However, after the founding of Turkey in the early 20th century, most of the city's minorities slowly disappeared and were gradually replaced by Kurds and other economic migrants from Anatolia. Turkey had begun its transformation itself from an agricultural to an industrial economy; a change that would become more prominent from the 1950s onwards. But all these groups had already left their indelible cultural mark on a country where musical influences come from Greece, the Balkans, Egypt, Iraq, Armenia, Spain, medieval European romance, seventeenth century Islamic chant - as well as traditional Ottoman folk music, the western classical tradition and contemporary pop music. Nearly all these ethnic groups are now gone. Ethnic Greeks descended from the Byzantine Christians (known as Rûm under Ottoman rule) left in the 1923 population exchange and 1955 riots - but not before Rebetiko, a kind of Greek blues, had become hugely popular. The Sephardic Jews, whose ancestors had fled fifteenth century Spain, gradually emigrated to Israel - but had kept its Ladino language and music alive and its Andalusian, Gypsy, Balkan and Middle Eastern melodies and rhythms were hugely popular in Turkey. Attaturk banned traditional Ottoman music in 1934 so Turks tuned to Arabic radio, leading to the rise of Arabesque music in the 1970s; and there are still prolific and popular Arabesque musicians in Istanbul today. The Armenian composer Komitas was once compared to Bartok and impressed Claude Debussy. He was traumatised by the ethnic cleansing of the First World War but had already collected and transcribed over 3,000 pieces of Armenian folk music and published the very first collection of Kurdish folk song.

Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive footage that proves the presence of child soldiers in the recruitment camps of the Saudi-UAE-led coalition fighting in Yemen. The children, desperately poor, are being recruited to fight along the Saudi border to defend it from the Houthis, a rebel group that overran the capital, Sanaa, and large swaths of Yemen's northwest in 2014. In 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) formed a coalition to overthrow the Houthis - plunging Yemen into a ruinous war - supported by forces loyal to the country's internationally recognised government. The conflict has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis, pushing Yemen to the brink of famine and leaving about 80 percent of its population - 24 million people - in need of humanitarian assistance. However, many children face an even worse reality: being recruited by either warring side to fight in the conflict.