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Rwanda has downplayed secretly filmed comments by its high commissioner to Britain that criticised the UK's stance on migration.

The government spokeswoman, Yolande Makolo, defended Rwanda's immigration partnership with the UK while insisting that current global immigration policies were "broken".

It came after the campaign group, Led By Donkeys, published an investigative piece, where Rwandan Ambassador Johnston Busingye defended the asylum deal but questioned the UK's moral role during a meeting in London with a person he was told was an Asian businessman seeking to invest in his country.

"It is immoral for this country to still see themselves as... the compassion country," he said, adding: "They enslaved millions of people for 400 years. They destroyed India, they destroyed China, they destroyed Africa."

Asked what he would tell the UK home secretary about the migrant policy, Mr Busingye said: "I would tell them that they are doing it absolutely wrong.

"They should have a long-term idea," he added, so that people do not "risk their lives coming to the UK".

Ms Makolo appeared to back those remarks about long-term strategy, saying Rwanda's position was that the current global immigration policies were unsuitable for refugees.

"On the wider issues covered in the piece, the broken global migration system is failing to protect the vulnerable, and empowering criminal smuggling gangs at an immeasurable human cost," she said.

She added that Rwanda was committed to the agreement with the UK, which is still the subject of a Supreme Court appeal, after the appellate court declared it "unlawful".

Mercy Juma
BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

Uganda’s constitutional court is due this morning to start hearing three petitions challenging the anti-homosexuality law that came into effect in May.

The law imposes capital punishments for those convicted of same-sex acts including death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" - which can involve sex with children or vulnerable people.

It can also be deemed aggravated, external if someone is forced to have same-sex relations, contracts a life-long infection including HIV or in cases of serial offenders.

The petitioners, a group of individuals and human right organisations, argue that the law was passed without adequate and meaningful public participation and also violates some constitutional rights and freedoms.

The law has been described as draconian, inhumane and a tragic violation of universal human rights.

The petitioners in this case argue the legal and parliamentary affairs committee took a very short time to scrutinise and did not facilitate sufficient public participation.

The law, they say, is also in violation of constitutional rights and freedoms including the right to equality and non-discrimination, the right to dignity, privacy, health, freedom of expression and association.

In August, a 20-year-old man became the first person to be prosecuted for aggravated homosexuality and risks a death penalty.

A recent report said there had been over 300 human rights abuses this year against LGBTQ+ people.

Rights groups say people have been tortured, beaten, arrested, and outed because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.

Editor's note: The petition’s lawyers have told the BBC that the case has been postponed to Thursday next week.

Image source, Reuters

The UN Security Council is on Monday expected to vote on a resolution that will see an international force led by Kenya deployed to Haiti to quell a surge in gang violence.

The 15-member council is set to develop the framework for and authorise a one-year deployment of the force, with a review after nine months.

If approved by the UN, Kenya will deploy 1,000 police officers to Haiti by January next year. The Bahamas, Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda have said they will take part in the mission.

The force will help train Haitian police and rebuild vital infrastructure which has been overrun by criminal gangs.

The US has pledged $100m (£82m) to support the mission.

Haiti has suffered from gang violence for decades but the current wave of brutality escalated after the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

Gangs have taken control of large parts of the country, waging terror on residents and killing hundreds.

Read more here:

• Haiti crisis: Can Kenyan police officers defeat the gangs?

Image source, Getty Images

Gabon’s coup leader has held talks with Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso as he seeks to end sanctions imposed on the country.

Gen Brice Oligui Nguema said his visit on Sunday to Congo-Brazzaville was aimed at strengthening ties with its neighbour and ending Gabon's isolation within the region and globally.

It comes weeks after Gabon's membership of the African Union and the central African regional bloc Eccas was suspended after the 30 August coup.

Eccas also moved its headquarters from Gabon to Equatorial Guinea after the coup.

"I have come to consult with the president, who for us is a key in the region, who can relay to global authorities what we have done," Gen Nguema said after talks with Mr Nguesso.

"It is also to ease the sanctions. We hope to once again take our place among the nations," he said.

This is the second official visit Gabon's leader has made since former President Ali Bongo was ousted in August. His first was to Equatorial Guinea in September.

Videos are being shared across social media of the blaze which local media says has injured more than 20 people.

The Newsroom
BBC World Service

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Rights groups say that the use of torture by the Egyptian authorities is so widespread and systematic as to amount to a crime against humanity.

In a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, six groups spoke of beatings, electric shocks, sexual violence and denial of access to medical care by members of the security services.

They said torture has been used as a political tool to curtail dissent.

The new chairman of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin, has threatened to block US military aid to Egypt if Cairo did not take concrete steps to improve its record on human rights.

During his decade-long rule, Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has overseen a crackdown on dissent.

Image source, Reuters

A huge fire has broken out at a police complex in the city of Ismailia in north-eastern Egypt.

Reports say dozens of people have been injured.

Videos posted online showed the security directorate, a building many storeys high, engulfed in flames. Civil defence sources said parts of it had collapsed.

Fire engines at the scene appeared to be struggling to contain the blaze, the Reuters news agency quotes witnesses as saying. State TV reported hours later that the fire had been contained.

The cause is not yet known.

Deadly fires are not uncommon in Egypt amid poorly enforced fire safety standards.

In August last year, dozens of people died after a fire broke out at a church.

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Juliana Lumumba had to fight to reclaim the remains of her father, Patrice Lumumba.

He'd been the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo and an anti-colonial hero. He was assassinated in 1961 when Juliana was five years old, and no trace of his body was found. So when it emerged 60 years later that one of his gold teeth was in Belgium, Juliana yearned to bring it home.

Presenter: India Rakusen Producer: Rob Wilson Editor: Munazza Khan

A mother, a son, and the discovery of a shared dream.

Latifa Khamessi and her son Mohamed Toukabri from Tunisia were inseparable until aged 15 when he left for Europe to study dance. It was gut-wrenching to be apart, but an opportunity he couldn't turn down. It wasn't until years later that Mohamed discovered his mother had had the same dream as a girl, but had been forbidden from pursuing it. Separated by a sea and oceans of time Mohamed then hatched a plan to reunite with his mother, now in her sixties, and unite their dreams.

The Power (of) the Fragile was performed at The Shubbak Festival in London.

Presenter: India Rakusen Producer: Helen Fitzhenry Editor: Rebecca Vincent Voice over by Mounira Chaieb

In today's episode, Tom and Dominic discuss the Senegalese island of Gorée, and its complex relationship with the transatlantic slave trade. They look at both the history and mythology of the "House of Slaves", which still stands today as a vestige to human exploitation.

The Rest Is History is a Goalhanger Podcasts production.

Playwright Inua Ellams explores how writers from Nsukka, a university town in southeastern Nigeria, have continued to bloom in spite of erasure and exile.

Producing some of the most formidable voices in African literature, like Chinua Achebe, Ifeoma Okoye and Chimamanda Adichie, this Igbo town has burned bright as a beacon of resistance in Nigeria.

Nsukka's harmattan season brings about an unusual chill but this is likely the only cold thing about this place. As one of the first areas invaded and burned in the Nigerian Biafran war, we trace Nsukka’s history of creativity right through to the stories and spaces of resilience that exist today.

Inua speaks with Nwando Achebe, oral historian and the daughter of Chinua Achebe, about the war’s impact on the town and how creativity was nurtured at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The writer Chika Unigwe talks about her memories of Nsukka and how she returns in her work. And Inua hears from writers Otosirieze Obi-Young and Arinze Ifeakandu about The Writers Community that is continuing a tradition of resistance and platforming young artists.

Inua Ellams is the writer of Three Sisters and Barber Shop Chronicles. He is an internationally touring poet, playwright and performer. His published books of poetry include Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales and The Half-God of Rainfall.

Sound Engineer: Charlie Brandon-King Voiceover Artist: Chidimma Nwodoh, Uju Ejizu and Obi Maduegbuna Sound Designer and Composer: Alexis Adimora

Produced by Deborah Shorindé. Executive Producer: Hannah Marshall

Commissioned as part of the Multitrack Audio Producers Fellowship A 7digital production for BBC Radio 4

Correction: Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street won the 2012 NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature, not the 2013 Commonwealth Prize.

Luol Deng is a giant - both physically and in the world of American professional basketball where is one of the biggest stars, and reportedly Barack Obama's favourite player. He was born in South Sudan but had to flee as a child because of his father's political activities. His family moved to Brixton where Luol's talents on the basketball court were spotted as a teenager. He's now established a charity working with the "lost boys" of Sudan - young men who have lived their entire lives in refugee camps after fleeing the country as children. Now Sudan is facing the prospects of partition, with a referendum next year expected to endorse splitting the mainly Christian South from the mainly Muslim North. Tim Franks joins Luol Deng as he returns to Sudan to assess the prospects for peace - and of course to show his skills with a basketball. Producer: Edward Main.

Crossing Continents encounters converts in Egypt who live in constant fear. We meet 'Mariam', a convert to Christianity who is secretly married to a Christian and who lives in hiding as her family have threatened to kill her. She is now pregnant, and says that she will never be allowed to officially marry her husband and that her child will have to be raised without official papers.

But there is also a group of Christian TV channels, mostly based in the USA and run by converts, who are targeting the region's Muslims. The programme gains rare access to one of these channels, where they discover converts using shocking language to attack Islam. The largest of these channels, called Al-Hayat, claims to have millions of viewers in the Arab World. Its most prominent preacher, Father Zakaria Boutros, is famous for his incendiary attacks on Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Father Boutros lives in hiding after receiving numerous death threats. He has inspired a new generation of preachers who are deliberately attacking Islam as a method to convert Muslims to Christianity. His brand of 'shock' preaching has spread across the airwaves and the internet. We track down the Al-Hayat channel to the USA, and find that it is a 'vital partner' of one the USA's most prominent TV evangelists. Joyce Meyer Ministries (JMM) receives tens of millions of dollars a year in donations, and much of it is spent on 'Christian outreach.' While JMM deny any editorial control over the station, the BBC finds they helped to launch it and they buy airtime. A spokesman for JMM eventually sends an email saying that Father Boutros will no longer be hosting a show on Al Hayat. The programme is written and reported by Omar Abdel-Razak of the BBC Arabic Service and narrated by Hugh Levinson.

Madagascar is in crisis. Since a coup last year that brought a DJ in his mid-thirties to power as president, this huge island nation has become a pariah state. For the most part, the international community has refused to recognise the new government. Most seriously for Madagascar, in an effort to persuade the new regime to restore democracy, most aid has been withdrawn. This has created a huge dent in the state's coffers because donor assistance accounted for a staggering half of Madagascar's income.

The fallout for an already poor nation has been profound. Thousands have lost their jobs in garment factories as a result of the United States' decision to suspend favourable trade tariffs for Madagascar. Others eke out a living on the streets, or have headed for the countryside to subsist on what rice they can grow. Hospitals and schools are under serious pressure. Over half of all children are malnourished, and family breakdown is an everyday event.

Now there is evidence that Madagascar's unique and spectacular wildlife - ancient hardwoods, baobabs, and lemurs - is especially endangered by corruption, poverty and a breakdown in the rule of law. The forests are being plundered. Loggers have illegally sought out and exported rare rosewood, and there is anecdotal evidence that hunting for bush meat, and the smuggling of rare wildlife are both on the increase.

As Madagascar celebrates fifty years of independence from French rule, Linda Pressly visits the capital of Antananorivo and travels out to one of the National Parks to find out how people are surviving in this island nation seemingly in freefall.

Tim Whewell investigates the causes of a horrific spate of child sacrifices in Uganda and follows a former witch doctor who is now committed to stamping out the practice.

Peter Greste investigates whether Rwandans in France and Germany are controlling a deadly African militia. For the last 15 years, the rebels of the FDLR have enforced their control through a series of brutal atrocities. Now Crossing Continents has secret intelligence suggesting that they were taking orders from political leaders living openly in Europe.

Sue MacGregor presents the series which reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history.

Sue gathers together the core negotiators and key campaigners involved in the secret talks which ultimately led to the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 and the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

She is joined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who led the Free Mandela Campaign throughout the 1980s; Dr Niel Barnard, who was the head of South Africa's National Intelligence Service and who had dozens of clandestine meetings with Mandela; Professor Willie Esterhuyse, an Afrikaner academic who liaised between the government and the ANC; Aziz Pahad, who was a core member of the ANC and led many of its delegations; former President Thabo Mbeki, who was a lead negotiator for the ANC; and journalist and political commentator Allister Sparks, who chronicled the negotiations in a revealing book.

Former President FW de Klerk also contributes to the programme, describing the surprise that he and other cabinet figures felt when they learnt of the years of secret meetings.

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

Magdi Abdelhadi explores what kind of society Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who has no obvious successor in place, will leave behind when he dies.

Egypt is the most populous country in the Middle East and is pivotal for stability in the region and beyond, but after nearly three decades in power, the absence of a potential successor to the 81-year-old President Mubarak, has raised fears of a succession crisis.

Magdi finds, to his surprise, that nearly 60 years after the military seized power and abolished the monarchy, Egyptians still look to the army for a saviour.