Gráinne Harrington

Independent consultant & reporter, based in Brussels after nine years in East Africa. Formerly Paris & London for BBC News. 🇮🇪

[Gráinne Harrington @GIHarrington]

@YousraElbagir So well deserved.

[Gráinne Harrington @GIHarrington]

@heathcliffom It’s not an authored article, it’s an announcement from the AFP union.

[Gráinne Harrington @GIHarrington]

African autocrats now know they can count on Meta to crack down on anyone they perceive to be an enemy. This is a very dark precedent, and what happens in Africa doesn’t always stay in Africa.

Also: this is the best advertisement I’ve seen yet for @signalapp

[Benjamin Strick @BenDoBrown]

Meta giving in to Tanzania's requests to take down activist accounts really isn't the best move at the same time as the UN and western governments are condemning the post-election violence and digital blackout.

[Gráinne Harrington @GIHarrington]

It’s astonishing how long this brutality went on in plain sight. I interviewed women who escaped the siege of Al-Fasher in August 2024. Everyone who worked on this dreaded the fall of the city. This interview, spelling out the number of warnings @HRL_YaleSPH gave, is devastating

[Gráinne Harrington @GIHarrington]

.@nattyray11 -whose team does sterling work on Darfur: “Al-Fasher was under siege for 3 and a half times Stalingrad…three quarters the siege of Leningrad during World War II. Gaza was under IPC-5 for, I think, a month to 2 months…We were under IPC-5 in al-Fasher…for 15 months”

[Amgad Fareid Eltayeb @Amgad_Fareid]

Nathaniel Raymond, Executive Director at Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) at Yale School of Public Health @nattyray11 :
“For what happens in al-Fashr. And so I’m going to say some things that I’ve never said publicly before here in a second. We got ground photos from al-Janina pretty early on in the killing that we had not made public. And that became very important, because we were using them to measure the bodies, because there were so many body piles of Masalit men and boys. They basically caught this one neighborhood and blocked it off. And they raped the women and the girls, but the women and the girls would gather the bodies and put them in basically a mausoleum they created out of a schoolhouse. And so we could navigate and follow the RSF killing from space using the body piles as navigation points. They were killing so many. And so we got very good measurement that the average dead Masalit boy was 1.3 meters and dead Masalit man was 2 meters in 30-centimeter, very high-resolution satellite imagery. And so we then detect, through NASA sensors, thermal plumes exploding to the north and a little bit to the south, but mostly the north-northwest. The village of Serba goes up. We watch that from space as they attack like hyenas. They come in on one side to lead the people in one direction. Then they attack from the other direction very closely. And so what I’m saying is we assessed at that point for the US government that the RSF was using the fighting in the capital to finish the Darfur genocide beginning with the Masalit. And we sent a very important secret warning saying that al-Fasher would likely be under attack by the end of the 2023-2024 dry season. So an important thing here. Any Sudanese people in the house? Yeah. So you guys know that the fighting in Sudan is seasonal. And the weather patterns are essential to assessing and predicting what people are going to do. And so we sent a message to the US government up to National Security Council, National Intelligence Council, that al-Fasher was going to be under attack probably earliest November ‘23 into the beginning of ‘24. And we briefed the UN Security Council in private session in July 2023. So we were two and a half years from the massacre in al-Fasher that would happen on October 26 until now. And so we had two and a half years of warning. And we could see from how they were moving the forces out of Jenana. They were attacking the critical SAF garrisons, but also the communities around Zalengi, Nyala, Kass, Ardmada, the Bulbul massacre. And so they were basically creating this net that the focus was al-Fasher. And the reason why al-Fasher was so important to go back to the first genocide is that the Zagawa and the four, really because of, in a way, success of UN peacekeeping, had run to al-Fasher as the safe haven. And around al-Fasher, you have al-Salam, Abu Shuk, and most importantly, Zamzam camp, 12 kilometers to the south. So on one hand, they go into the safe haven, and they become sitting ducks. And so we could see, by the time we get to the spring of 2024, so we sat the siege watching from space for 18 months. The siege lasted 18 months. I want to put this in perspective. Al-Fasher was under siege for three and a half times Stalingrad, and three quarters the siege of Leningrad during World War II. Gaza was under IPC-5 for, I think, a month to two months. Correct me if I’m wrong. We were under IPC-5 and al-Fasher, integrated phase classification level five, highest level of famine, for 15 months, OK, 15 months. And now that the massacre has happened and the city has fallen to the RSF, the aid workers that we talk to, and this is a good lead-in to my friend, that those who have arrived in Tawila, which Nick mentioned, which is the last safe haven out of al-Fasher, those very few that have arrived have one of the highest rates of malnutrition we have ever recorded in my knowledge as a humanitarian. And who arrived out of the massacre?…

Continued below

[Gráinne Harrington @GIHarrington]

A very important reminder for anyone on social media who’s ever lived in Uganda, spent a holiday in Uganda, had a layover in Uganda…

[Jordan Tumwesigye @JTumwesigye]

Have you remembered to post Mamdani on your status?

[Gráinne Harrington @GIHarrington]

#censorship #Uganda

[International Press Association of Uganda @IPAUganda]

As Uganda's elections approach, government agencies have a responsibility to uphold press freedom. We condemn the censorship of Nation Media Group journalists covering parliamentary politics.

#Uganda #Journalismisnotacrime

[CPJ Africa @CPJAfrica]

Ugandan authorities ban Nation Media Group from parliamentary, presidential coverage

https://t.co/NhIhEQ352G

CPJ calls on Ugandan authorities to lift restrictions barring the privately owned Nation Media Group-Uganda (NMG-U) from covering parliament and presidential events, and to ensure that journalists can report freely and in the public interest ahead of the country’s January 2026 elections.

[Nathaniel Raymond @nattyray11]

When @HRL_YaleSPH saw apparent pools of blood in satellite imagery from El Fasher, I at first couldn’t believe it. However, it is what we are seeing. The horror, scale, and velocity of killing happening now unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a quarter century of doing this work.

[Nathaniel Raymond @nattyray11]

Only safe passage @HRL_YaleSPH can see the RSF giving civilians in El Fasher so far is into body piles in the streets and trenches near the earthen berm they built as a kill box to keep people trapped inside. We have confirmed a campaign of house to house killing appears underway

[Jeremy Konyndyk @JeremyKonyndyk]

Ethnic cleansing is underway in El Fasher as the RSF takes over.

I spoke today with Sudanese civil society leaders about what they are seeing and hearing.

It is grimly horrifying - exactly as long feared and predicted.

Reminder (again) that the #UAE shares in these crimes.
🧵

[Gráinne Harrington @GIHarrington]

@afrikarabia C’est un vrai tweet, mais ça date de 2022: https://t.co/Vbh8ZndM0N

[Muhoozi Kainerugaba @mkainerugaba]

I have achieved my first goal in my military life. The reunification of UPDF and RDF! Now that we are reunited our enemies will pay!!

[Gráinne Harrington @GIHarrington]

ICJ Justice Julia Sebutinde tells the congregation of her evangelical church in Uganda that the End Times are coming, that God is counting on her to "stand by Israel", and that criticism of her judgement on Gaza "can only come from the pit of hell"
https://t.co/NRlWmmA5xN

[Nesrine Malik @NesrineMalik]

From Anas’s pre-written final message, to be posted upon his killing.

‘May God be a witness to those who remained silent, who accepted our killing, and whose hearts were not moved by the remains of our children and women, and who did not stop the massacre of our people.’

[Sana Saeed @SanaSaeed]

At a complete, utter loss.

Journalists @AnasAlSharif0, Anas Al-Hasi, and Mohammed Quraiqa were killed after the IDF bombed the Al-Jazeera tent at Al-Shifa Hospital.

It was 673 days of non-stop coverage by Anas and his team. The Israelis have killed over 250 journalists in Gaza & killed one of the most prolific voices because now the plan is to clean up the crime scene in front of a world that has allowed every crime to be committed against the Palestinians.

Innalilahi wa Innalilahi raji’un.

[Gráinne Harrington @GIHarrington]

“We are desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families. They are now facing the same dire circumstances as those they are covering”.

[Jeremy Bowen @BowenBBC]

Joint statement on Gaza from AFP, AP, BBC News and Reuters https://t.co/tu3K4Br0Ug

[Barry Malone @malonebarry]

Al Jazeera has published the names of every journalist killed since Oct 7th.

231 Palestinian journalists have been slaughtered in Gaza. A whole generation of reporters wiped out while many of their colleagues in the West simply shrugged.

[Gráinne Harrington @GIHarrington]

Congratulations, @sophie_neiman for all of your dedication to this story - very well deserved 🏆

[News From Amnesty @NewsFromAmnesty]

And the winner of the #AmnestyMediaAwards 2025 ✨GABY RADO ✨award is...

🏆@sophie_neiman 🏆

Read her piece on women's agency in the DRC war for @newint here: https://t.co/lwr1FErWCi

#AmnestyMediaAwards 2025