anti-refugee rhetoric, sometimes fuelled by local authorities and politicians, intensified the hostile environment for refugees. In April and May, Lebanese armed forces raided Syrian refugees’ houses, deporting most of them; in September they raided refugee camps in the Bekaa region and Arsal town and confiscated property. In Jordan, 2 million Palestinian and approximately 750,000 other refugees faced poverty and deteriorating conditions, partly due to international aid cuts. From July, Tunisian authorities forcibly expelled thousands of Black migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, including children, to the desert along the Libyan and Algerian borders, leaving them without food or water, resulting in at least 28 deaths. The authorities, including President Saied, instigated an unprecedented level of racist violence against Black migrants. Police used tear gas against migrants, asylum seekers and refugees staging a sit-in outside UN offices in Tunis and tortured protesters in custody. In Libya, refugees and migrants, including those intercepted at sea by EU-backed coastguards and armed groups and forcibly returned to Libya, were subjected to indefinite arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment, extortion and forced labour; and over 22,000 were forcibly and summarily expelled towards Chad, Egypt, Niger and Sudan. Saudi Arabia forcibly returned to their home countries hundreds of thousands of people in a crackdown on undocumented migrants. In Iran, the estimated 5 million Afghan nationals living there faced deep-rooted discrimination, including barriers to basic services. Authorities threatened to deport Afghans who entered Iran irregularly and prohibited Afghans from living and/or working in some provinces. Governments must take concrete steps to ensure the voluntary, safe and dignified return of internally displaced people to their areas of origin. They must also end the arbitrary detention of refugees and migrants on the basis of their migration status, and protect them from torture and other ill-treatment in detention, refoulement and mass expulsions. DEATH PENALTY Most states retained the death penalty and some handed down death sentences, including for offences or acts protected under international law such as consensual same-sex sexual relations and apostasy, and for bogus or overly broad charges brought to silence dissent. Executions were carried out in Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In Egypt, the number of executions fell, but in Iran it rose, and in Libya there were threats to resume executions halted since 2011. A Saudi Arabian court handed down for the first time a death sentence imposed for social media activity. Governments must immediately establish an official moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty. CLIMATE CRISIS 2023 exposed the terrible consequences of climate change regionally, including water shortages and extreme weather conditions that increasingly affected vulnerable areas and populations, and revealed the poor preparedness of many countries for such impacts. Storm Daniel triggered the collapse of two poorly maintained dams in Libya’s Derna city. Resulting torrents left 4,540 people dead, 8,500 missing and over 44,000 displaced. Unprecedented heatwaves in Algeria, triggered at least 140 fires that killed some 34 people and displaced 1,500. Record high temperatures were recorded in Morocco, reaching over 50°C in Agadir. Iraq and Syria faced sustained drought. Meanwhile, regional states generally maintained a business-as-usual approach to fossil fuel production, contributing to the likelihood of an overshoot of the target to keep global warming 66 The State of the World’s Human Rights