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BAABDA, Lebanon — Nour is raising her four-month-old daughter in Lebanon's most overpopulated women's prison, struggling to get formula and nappies for her baby as the country's economy lies in tatters.

"I don't have enough milk to breastfeed, and baby formula isn't readily available," said the 25-year-old, who was detained eight months ago on drug-related accusations.

"Sometimes my daughter doesn't have formula for three days," she added, as green-eyed Amar wriggled on her lap.

Lebanese authorities have long struggled to care for the more than 8,000 people stuck in the country's jails.

But three years of an unprecedented economic crisis mean even basics like medicines are lacking, while cash-strapped families struggle to support their jailed relatives.

Essentials like baby formula have become luxuries for many Lebanese, as the financial collapse — dubbed by the World Bank as one of the worst in recent world history — has pushed most of the population into poverty.

A months-long judges' strike has exacerbated the situation in prisons, contributing to overcrowding.

Nour said she and her daughter shared a cell at the Baabda women's prison with another 23 people, including two other babies.

She said she sometimes kept Amar in the same nappy overnight while waiting for her parents to bring fresh supplies, but said even they can "barely help with 1 per cent of my baby's needs".

In a hushed voice, she said the shower water gave her and her daughter rashes, but that Amar had never been examined by a prison doctor.

"We all make mistakes, but the punishment we get here is double," Nour said.

'We need basics' 

Inmates at the prison, located outside the capital Beirut, spoke to AFP in the presence of the prison director and declined to provide their surnames.

Around them, in the facility's breakroom, paint peeled off the walls and water dripped from the ceiling.

Rampant inflation and higher fuel prices have also prevented families from visiting their jailed relatives regularly.

Bushra, another inmate, said she had not seen her teenage daughter for nine months because her family could not afford transportation.

She was detained earlier this year on slander allegations and has been in jail ever since.

"I miss my daughter," said the tattooed 28-year-old, as her eyes welled up with tears.

"So many mothers here cannot even see their children," she added.

Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said in September that Lebanon's economic crisis had "multiplied the suffering of inmates".

His ministry has appealed for more international support for the prison system, citing overcrowding, poor maintenance and shortages of food and medications.

Inmate Tatiana, 32, expressed helplessness at her and her family's situation. She said her mother had slipped into poverty and was living on just $1 a day.

Prisoners "need basics: shampoo, deodorant, clothes", said Tatiana, who has been waiting for a court hearing for nearly three years.

"But our parents cannot afford them for themselves, how can they buy those things for us?" she added, dark circles lining her eyes.

'Absent state' 

Tatiana is among the nearly 80 per cent of Lebanon's prison population languishing in pre-trial detention, according to interior ministry figures. Prison occupancy stands at 323 per cent nationwide.

The country's already slow judiciary has been paralysed since August, when judges started an open-ended strike to demand better wages.

Inmates told AFP they slept on dirty mattresses strewn on the floor in a one-toilet cell shared between more than 20 people.

Baabda women's prison director Nancy Ibrahim said more than 105 detainees were crammed into the jail's five cells, compared to around 80 before the economic collapse.

Non-governmental organisations help with everything from food to "medications, vaccinations for the children" and maintenance, she told AFP from her office at the facility.

Rana Younes, 25, a social worker at Dar Al Amal, said her organisation helps women prisoners get the basics including sanitary pads, and also provides legal assistance and even funding for cancer treatments.

She said prisoners sometimes missed court hearings because authorities failed to secure fuel or transportation for them.

Dar Al Amal has spent thousands of dollars on repairs for worn-out pipes and trucked-in water supplies at the Baabda prison, said organisation director Hoda Kara.

"Parents can no longer help, the state is absent, so we try to fill the gap," she said.

TUNIS — Tunisia's massive election boycott has further challenged the legitimacy of President Kais Saied, but a divided and discredited opposition poses little threat to his grip on power, experts say.

Just nine percent of voters showed up for the elections on Saturday for a parliament stripped of most powers under Saied, who last year launched what critics have labelled a bloodless coup.

Why was turnout so low? 

The legislative vote came on the 12th anniversary of the event that sparked the country's pro-democracy uprising, the self-immolation of fruit seller Mohammed Bouazizi.

The election capped a year and a half of political turmoil since Saied sacked the government, surrounded parliament with tanks and seized full executive powers in July 2021.

Few Tunisians showed any interest in the election, with no serious public debate among the 1,055 candidates. Most were unknowns and fewer than 12 per cent were women.

Under a constitution Saied rammed through in an also widely ignored referendum in July, political parties were sidelined and candidates ran as individuals.

Most of the North African country's parties, including the Islamist-leaning Ennahdha that has dominated post-revolt politics, had urged a boycott.

The new assembly, as well as having little popular backing, will be largely toothless under a constitution that makes it near-impossible for it to sack the government or hold the president to account.

How does 

it affect Saied? 

Despite his grip on power, the low turnout "is a huge disappointment for Saied because he was counting on popular support" to legitimise his actions, said analyst Abdellatif Hannachi.

A former constitutional law lecturer, Saied was elected with 70 per cent of the vote in 2019.

He had made a string of public appearances in the previous days to drum up voter interest, but turnout still came in at a record low for Tunisian votes since the revolution.

"His popular legitimacy is collapsing," said expert Hamadi Redissi.

"It has turned out to be an illusion built on speculation and chatter by his loyalists."

What can the opposition do? 

Both Ennahdha and its sworn enemy, the staunchly secularist Free Destourian Party (PDL), have demanded Saied step down and announce a presidential election.

But Redissi pointed out that "there is no mechanism to force him out".

Youssef Cherif of the Columbia Global Centers said he doubted Saied would step down "or even admit that these elections were a failure".

When the constitution passed in the referendum with just over 30 per cent turnout, "he also refused to admit defeat", Cherif said.

Moreover, "as he has done everything to restore the presidential system that existed before 2011, the legislative elections are marginal in his eyes", Cherif said.

Tunisia's opposition is deeply split, into three main blocks: The Ennahdha-dominated National Salvation Front, leftist parties and the PDL.

Much of the division stems from attitudes towards Ennahdha, which had held sway over Tunisia's government and legislative process for a decade until Saied's power grab.

Many Tunisians blame Ennahdha above all for the cash-strapped country's current economic and political woes.

The lack of opposition unity has meant that anti-Saied demonstrations rarely gather more than 7,000 people.

Hannachi said Saturday's low participation showed that political parties could not mobilise the public. The powerful UGTT trade union federation is one of the few actors capable of mobilising mass protests.

"Only an economic collapse — which is obviously not desirable — could unblock the situation," Redissi said.

Tunisia is already in a deep economic downturn, with mounting public debts, inflation at 10 per cent and spiralling poverty exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.

What do foreign 

powers think? 

Yet, as Tunisia waits for the International Monetary Fund to sign off on a nearly $2 billion bailout package, Hannachi noted that Saied had promised the country's foreign allies a roadmap.

"Now it has been put into action," he said.

The United States, which has been critical of Saied's power grab, said Sunday that the elections were "an essential initial step toward restoring the country's democratic trajectory".

Washington's backing will be critical for securing IMF funds which would then unblock other potential funding from European and Gulf countries.

Redissi said Western powers were trying to find a "balance between their values and their interests" when it came to Tunisia.

The country's small size and population means it "doesn't represent much" in a world of rapidly shifting geopolitical forces.

"For [Western powers], the most important thing is the country's stability," he said.

TUNIS — Tunisia plunged into political uncertainty on Sunday as its main opposition alliance called on President Kais Saied to "leave immediately", a day after voters overwhelming snubbed elections for a neutered parliament.

That comes with Saied's government negotiating a nearly $2-billion package to bail out the North African country's crippled public finances.

Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, president of the National Salvation Front alliance, said Saied had “lost all legal legitimacy”.

The electoral board said 8.8 per cent of the 9-million-strong electorate had turned out for Saturday’s polls, the culmination of a power grab by Saied in the only democracy to have emerged from the Arab Spring.

An abstention rate of more than 91 per cent “shows that very, very few Tunisians support Kais Saied’s approach”, Chebbi told AFP by telephone.

He said the result showed “great popular disavowal” of the process that began when Saied, elected in 2019, seized executive powers last year.

The president in July 2021 sacked the government, froze parliament and surrounded it with military vehicles, following months of political deadlock and economic crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Saied, a former law professor, followed up by seizing control of the judiciary and pushing through a constitution that consolidated his near-absolute power in a widely boycotted referendum in July.

His moves, a decade after the ouster of dictator Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali, have sparked fears of a return to autocracy.

The National Salvation Front, which includes Saied’s nemesis the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha Party, boycotted Saturday’s election, saying it was part of a “coup” against Tunisia’s democracy.

“Today the situation is critical. We should agree on a high-ranking judge to oversee immediate presidential elections,” Chebbi said.

A presidential decree earlier this year gave Saied the power to fire judges, and he sacked 57 of them but an administrative court in August revoked most of those firings.

Chebbi said his bloc would reach out to “all social and political actors” in the coming days.

“Tunisians were shaken yesterday. I hope that will push them towards talking to each other and agreeing on an urgent solution,” Chebbi said.

‘Draconian conditions’

The ballot for the new 161-seat assembly followed three weeks of barely noticeable campaigning, with few posters in the streets and no serious debate among a public preoccupied with day-to-day economic survival.

Saied’s moves were initially supported by some Tunisians tired of the messy and sometimes corrupt democratic system installed after the revolution.

But almost a year and half on, the country’s economic woes have gone from bad to worse and inflation is higher than Saturday’s voter turnout.

Political analyst Salaheddine Jourchi said Saturday’s “shock” low turnout had left Saied “more isolated, from the elite, the parties and now the people too”.

“This turnout, the lowest ever recorded, shows that the people have no trust” in Saied, he said.

The previous legislature, dominated by Ennahdha, had far-reaching powers in the mixed presidential-parliamentary system enshrined in Tunisia’s post-revolution constitution.

But the new chamber “won’t be able to appoint a government or censure it, except under draconian conditions that are almost impossible to meet”, according to political scientist Hamadi Redissi.

Candidates were required to stand as individuals, in a system that neuters political parties.

Hamza Meddeb, a fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Centre, said the election was a “formality to complete the political system imposed by Kais Saied and concentrate power in his hands”.

ROISSY-CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT, France — French-Palestinian human rights lawyer Salah Hamouri, held without charge in Israeli prisons since March accused of security offences, arrived in Paris on Sunday following his expulsion from Israel condemned by Paris.

Hamouri, 37, had been held in Israel under a controversial practice known as administrative detention, which allows suspects to be detained for renewable periods of up to six months.

He arrived at the French capital’s Charles de Gaulle airport on Sunday morning, an AFP correspondent saw, the culmination of a lengthy judicial saga after his deportation.

“I have changed location but the fight continues,” an emotional Hamouri said at the airport, where he was welcomed by his wife Elsa, politicians, NGO representatives and supporters of the Palestinian cause.

“I have an enormous responsibility to my cause and people. We can’t abandon Palestine. Resistance is our right.”

Israel’s interior ministry earlier on Sunday announced the deportation following Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked’s decision to withdraw his residency status.

“We condemn today the Israeli authorities’ decision, against the law, to expel Salah Hamouri to France,” the French foreign ministry said in a statement.

An Israeli military court has accused Hamouri of being a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and said he “endangers security in the region”.

Hamouri holds French citizenship and was ordered into administrative detention in March.

Israel, the United States and the European Union consider the PFLP a “terrorist group”. It has been implicated in several deadly attacks on Israelis.

Hamouri denies links to the PFLP.

‘Illegal’ deportation 

The French foreign ministry said Paris had been “fully mobilised, including at the highest level of the state”, to enable Hamouri to defend his rights, benefit from all possible assistance and lead a normal life in his native occupied East Jerusalem.

“France also took several steps to communicate to the Israeli authorities in the clearest way its opposition to this expulsion of a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, an occupied territory under the Fourth Geneva Convention,” it added.

“It’s a happy day for a family reunited but for the Palestinian people, it’s a sad day,” Amnesty International’s France chief, Jean-Claude Samouiller, told AFP.

He described the expulsion as a “crime of apartheid”.

Supporters said Hamouri’s deportation from his birthplace by an “occupying power” was illegal.

Amnesty International and French NGOs said Hamouri’s deportation aimed to hinder his human rights work and was part of Israel’s “long-term political objective to diminish the Palestinian population” of occupied East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as the capital of a future state.

Hamouri has been arrested and jailed by Israeli authorities on several occasions, including in 2005.

Following that arrest he was tried and convicted by an Israeli court on charges of plotting to assassinate Ovadia Yosef, a prominent rabbi and spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas political party.

Hamouri was released in December 2011 as part of a prisoner swap.

He has always maintained his innocence.

Born in occupied East Jerusalem, Hamouri does not have Israeli nationality, but he held a residency permit that Israeli authorities revoked.

“We didn’t think it was possible to deport somebody from his birthplace,” Hamouri’s mother Denise said earlier.

Israel has occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the 1967 June War.

Last month, he was informed he would be deported, but the expulsion was delayed as his lawyers contested the case.

‘A great achievement’ 

Earlier this month, Israeli authorities confirmed the revocation of his residency, paving the way for Hamouri’s imminent expulsion despite a new administrative detention hearing scheduled for January 1.

“It is a great achievement to have been able to cause, just before the end of my term, his expulsion,” Interior Minister Shaked said on Sunday.

Benjamin Netanyahu, winner of the November 1 legislative elections, is expected to form a new Israeli government with allies from ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties.

AMMAN — The Arab Youth Centre (AYC), in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), graduated members of the first batch of members of the Youth Envoys for Development Programme in the Arab Region, after the expansion of the programme to include three new Arab countries, with the aim of supporting the economic, social and human development.

The AYC and UNDP signed the agreement to launch the second edition of the Youth Envoys for Development Programme last March during the "Arab Meeting of Young Leaders", in order to double the empowerment of young people in the Arab countries and develop their skills and practical experience in development disciplines, according to a statement from the centre.

This version of the programme witnessed the appointment of a group of Arab youth in the offices of the United Nations Development Programme in 13 Arab countries, to be envoys for development in their societies and countries, in addition to training their young peers later in the various development work skills they have acquired.

UAE’s Minister of State for Youth Shamma Al Mazrui said that the AYC is focused on continuous youth empowerment through skills building and opportunities. 

This programme is a way to provide opportunities for Arab youth to take on greater responsibilities and, through these real-world experiences, to build competencies and develop their skills, she said. 

“What I love about this programme is that fosters a feeling of connectedness and belonging, helping these youth to develop their sense of identity. The experience of contributing to a cause, a decision, and/or a group in the UNDP can be crucial part to the development of sense of responsibility, purpose and self-worth for these youth,” the minister said. 

The AYC continues to believe in the importance of engaging young people as key informants in the design and development of new programmes intended to benefit them, the statement said.

The event was organised at the centre’s headquarters in Abu Dhabi in partnership with UNDP and the Regional Centre, represented by Khalid Abdul Shafi, Director Manager of the Regional Centre for Arab States at UNDP, and Dina Assaf, United Nations Resident Coordinator in the United Arab Emirates.

Khalid Abdul Shafi said: "The sponsorship of the Arab Youth Centre for development envoys through the United Nations offices reflected positively on the level of youth participation and empowerment in the development work sector, and put youth at the centre of influence and interaction with field projects to serve communities and contribute to supporting their peers through the transfer of experience, knowledge exchange and training and improve.”

"We will continue to train young people on the best practices of development work in partnership with United Nations programmes, and we will build on the gains of previous experience in order to maximise the benefit and impact of the first version of the programme,” he added.

Quality opportunities for young people

The Programme of Youth Envoys for Development in the Arab Region, in partnership between the AYC and UNDP, provides quality opportunities for elite young people, keen to accelerate the development of their Arab societies and align its course with the Sustainable Development Goals, to work for two years in the UNDP office in their countries, the statement said.

After the first batch of the Youth Envoys for Development programme included 10 Arab countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Djibouti, Palestine, Somalia, Syria and Tunisia, the second edition of the programme expanded to include three new Arab countries: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria.

TUNIS — Tunisians voted in a lacklustre election on Saturday for a parliament with virtually no power, the final pillar in President Kais Saied's political overhaul in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

Opposition political groups in the North African country have called for a boycott. They say the poll is part of a "coup" against the only democracy to have emerged from the 2011 wave of uprisings across the region.

At a polling booth in central Tunis as the polls opened, around 20 journalists looked on as two voters waited to cast their ballots.

The election follows three weeks of barely noticeable campaigning, with few posters in the streets and no serious debate among a public largely preoccupied with pressing financial concerns.

Last year, after months of political deadlock and economic crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, Saied suspended parliament and sent military vehicles to surround it in a dramatic power grab more than a decade after a popular revolution unseated dictator Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali.

The spark for that revolt came exactly 12 years before this election, on December 17, 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi burned himself to death to protest police harassment and unemployment.

Saied, a former law professor, has pushed through a new constitution giving the presidency almost unrestrained powers and laying the ground for a 161-seat rubber-stamp legislature.

On Saturday, he told voters that the country was "breaking with those who destroyed the country".

"Those who are elected today should remember that they are being watched by their voters, and that if they're not up to the job their mandate will be taken away," he said in front of a polling station in Ennasr, a comfortable district of Tunis.

'Non-event' 

Saied's moves against an unpopular political system were initially supported by many Tunisians tired of the messy and corrupt democratic system in the post-Ben Ali era.

But almost a year and half on, the country's economic woes have gone from bad to worse, with 10 per cent inflation. Frequent shortages of milk, sugar and petrol fuel a growing wave of emigration.

The previous legislature had far-reaching powers in the mixed presidential-parliamentary system enshrined in Tunisia’s post-revolution constitution.

But candidates in Saturday’s poll are standing as individuals under a system that neuters political parties including Saied’s nemesis, the once powerful Islamist-leaning Ennahdha Party.

The new chamber “won’t be able to appoint a government or censure it, except under draconian conditions that are almost impossible to meet”, said political scientist Hamadi Redissi.

Another analyst, Hamza Meddeb, told AFP the election was a “non-event” and predicted that few Tunisians would vote.

“This election is a formality to complete the political system imposed by Kais Saied and concentrate power in his hands,” said Meddeb, a fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Centre.

Meddeb added that most of the candidates are “political newcomers” unable to mobilise a public struggling with “extremely difficult” economic conditions.

The non-governmental Tunisian Observatory for Democratic Transition said around half the candidates are either teachers or mid-level civil servants.

In contrast with the previous parliament where gender equality was mandatory, women represent less than 15 per cent of all candidates for the new legislature, according to the election board’s official list.

IMF bailout ‘easier’ 

Almost all of Tunisia’s political parties, including Ennahdha, have said they will boycott the vote.

The powerful UGTT trade union federation has called the poll meaningless.

Al Bawsala, a civil society group that has monitored Tunisia’s parliamentary politics since 2014, said it would discontinue that role because the new “puppet parliament” would simply “back the president’s programme”.

The vote would “serve primarily as a tool for President Kais Saied to legitimise his grip on power”, said Hamish Kinnear, of risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft.

Tunisia is in the final stages of negotiating a nearly $2 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to rescue its crisis-hit public finances.

Kinnear said the vote meant “securing financial assistance... will be easier now that greater political predictability is returning, even if the democratic legitimacy of the [constitutional] referendum and upcoming legislative elections is weak”.

The IMF’s top committee was set to approve next week the country’s fourth loan in 10 years, but has postponed its decision until early January at the request of the Tunisian government, a source close to the talks told AFP.

NAQURA, Lebanon — The United Nations peacekeeping force in south Lebanon urged Beirut on Friday to ensure a “speedy” investigation into the fatal shooting of an Irish soldier this week.

The convoy of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) came under fire near the village of Al Aqbiya late Wednesday, also wounding three other peacekeepers, the Irish military said.

UNIFIL acts as a buffer between Lebanon and Israel, neighbours which remain technically at war. The force operates in the south near the border, a stronghold of Iran-backed group Hizbollah.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and army chief Joseph Aoun visited the UNIFIL headquarters in the border town of Naqura, denouncing the attack that claimed Private Sean Rooney’s life.

Force spokesman Andrea Tenenti called it “a very serious incident” and told reporters it was “important” for the Lebanese authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“It is a crime against the international community, against peacekeepers who are here... to maintain stability,” he added.

It is the first death of a UNIFIL member in a violent incident in Lebanon since January 2015, when a Spanish peacekeeper was killed by Israeli fire.

“Peacekeepers are continuing with their activities and patrolling,” Tenenti added.

The flags of the force and its contributor countries were flying at half mast at the UNIFIL base, an AFP correspondent said, while one critically wounded soldier was still in intensive care.

UNIFIL was set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon in reprisal for a Palestinian attack.

Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000 but fought a devastating 2006 war with Hezbollah and its allies.

UNIFIL was beefed up to oversee the ceasefire that ended the 2006 conflict, and now counts nearly 10,000 troops.

Bullet to the head 

Witnesses said villagers in the Al Aqbiya area blocked Rooney’s vehicle after it took a road along the Mediterranean coast not normally used by the United Nations force.

Al Aqbiya is just outside UNIFIL’s area of operations, the force said.

A Lebanese judicial source told AFP that the driver was killed by a bullet to the head, one of seven that penetrated the vehicle.

The three passengers were wounded when the vehicle hit a pylon and overturned.

The source said the evidence suggested there were two shooters, who were now being sought by the security forces.

Following a meeting in Naqura on Friday with UNIFIL commander Major General Aroldo Lazaro Saenz, premier Mikati said it was “important” to prevent similar attacks, and promised “those who will be proven guilty will be punished”.

The Irish army is to send military police to Lebanon on Saturday to help with the investigation.

Over the years, there have been a number of incidents between Hizbollah supporters and UN peacekeepers but they have rarely escalated.

Wafic Safa, Hizbollah’s security chief, told Lebanon’s LBCI television on Thursday that the incident was “unintentional” and called for investigators to be given time to establish the facts.

Relations between UNIFIL and communities in south Lebanon have always been “very positive”, the force’s spokesman Tenenti said on Friday.

“The support of the communities is paramount in order for us to implement our mandate,” he added.