The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a bill last week, calling for accountability for perpetrators of genocide in Iraq and Syria.

The bill, entitled the “Iraq and Syria Genocide Emergency Relief and Accountability Act of 2017”, calls for greater action to tackle Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), accusing the group of committing genocide in the region. 

The United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution last week that will see the appointment of a panel to investigate reports of war crimes in Yemen.

The resolution, passed without a vote last week, will see a group of "eminent international and regional experts" appointed by the UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein to investigate “all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights and other appropriate and applicable fields of international law".

Catalonia’s leader Carles Puigdemont delayed the official declaration of Catalonia’s independence to allow for an opportunity for talks and negations to reach a solution with Spain.

Addressing regional parliament in Barcelona on Tuesday, Mr Puigdemont said,

Iraq will reopen a crude oil pipeline to Turkey which bypasses one operated by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), said the country’s oil ministry on Tuesday.

In a statement Iraq’s oil minister Jabar al-Luaibi asked state owned North Oil Co. to begin the restoring and reopening the Kirkuk Ceyhan pipeline reports Reuters.

The pipeline crosses territory formerly held by Islamic State militants in 2014 and recaptured by US backed Iraqi forces over the past two years.

Independence movements in Cameroon and Nigeria have been met by strong military crack downs in recent weeks reports the New York Times.

In Nigeria, the Biafra movement seeking independence in the southeast of the country saw Nigeria’s military storm the house of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra movement.

At least six civilians were killed during the military crackdown said supporters of the group. The movement sparked a civil war in the late 60’s after the after declaring a separate state in the late 1960s.

Iraq’s government will move to impose control over Kurdistan based mobile phone operators and move their headquarters to Bagdad it announced on Monday.

The announcement was made following a meeting of top security officials reports Reuters.

“The government committee for national security issued a decision that all mobile phone networks must be under federal control and should be moved to Baghdad,” it said.

The Elders have expressed their “deep concern at the recent violent confrontation in Catalonia” and called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

In a statement released on Sunday, the group called for “both sides to pursue a peaceful resolution through dialogue”.

“The Elders applauded the progress that Spain has made since its democratic transition in 1975,” the statement continued. “This achievement should not be put at risk.”

The former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been accused of leaking sensitive information to a possible Libyan war crimes suspect, who was paying him for consultancy work.

Catalan ministers will be outlawed if they defy courts and declare independence warned Spanish Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Ildefonso Castro.

Speaking in an interview with Sky News, Mr Castro said,

“You can disagree with the law, but you cannot disobey the law. If you disobey the law, you become an outlaw.”

Commenting on Spain’s response to the Catalonia independence referendum last week, that saw hundreds of voters injured by police brutality, he said,

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) warned that crimes against humanity may be underway in Myanmar, as the military continues its offensive against Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine state.

A joint statement issued by the experts stated they were “particularly worried about the fate of Rohingya women and children subject to serious violations of their human rights, including killings, rape and forced displacement.”