A quater of a million newly displaced persons in the Middle East and South Asia
Today's headlines: China lowers its GDP growth target for 2026 to below 5% for the first time. Nepal goes to the polls, results announced for tomorrow. Hong Kong court does not admit Taiwanese academic as witness in Tiananmen Square vigil trial. Two unpublished novels by Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe discovered in Japan.
MIDDLE EAST-PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN
The outbreak of two conflicts in the Middle East and on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan in one week has already created at least 250,000 new internally displaced persons in two regions that already had a total of 24.6 million at the end of 2025. The data emerges from an update released yesterday by the UNHCR based on the situation recorded in its camps. The highest numbers are in Afghanistan (115,000), Iran (100,000), and Lebanon (58,000).
CHINA
China has lowered its annual economic growth target to between 4.5% and 5%, the lowest expansion target since 1991, as it faces both domestic and international challenges. This is the first time the target has been lowered since it was set at “around 5%” in 2023. No target was set in 2020 due to the pandemic. The details were announced during China's most important political meeting, known as the “two sessions,” along with the release of some elements of the 15th Five-Year Plan for the world's second-largest economy.
NEPAL
In Nepal, 18.9 million voters are voting today in the long-awaited elections, which come six months after youth protests led to the fall of Sharma Oli's government. The elections will determine the 275 new members of the lower house of parliament. Polls will close at 5 p.m. local time, and according to the Election Commission, the results will be announced within 24 hours of the start of the count.
HONG KONG
The Hong Kong court trying the organizers of vigils in memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre under the National Security Law has excluded from the witness list a Taiwanese academic called to testify in favor of activist Chow Hang-tung. According to Hong Kong judges, Ho Ming-sho, a sociology professor at National Taiwan University, lacks “independence and objectivity” because he has criticized the Chinese Communist Party in the past.
SOUTH KOREA-PHILIPPINES
During his visit to Manila, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met with Ariel Galac, a Filipino worker whom he had once represented as a lawyer. In 1992, Galac lost an arm in a factory accident in Korea and was repatriated without receiving any compensation. Lee, then a human rights lawyer, helped him obtain medical treatment and compensation for the workplace accident through a new trial. Lee himself suffered a permanent injury to his left arm while working as a teenage laborer after his arm was crushed by an industrial press.
JAPAN
Two unpublished novels by Japanese Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe (1935–2023), written before his official debut, have been discovered and are now his earliest known works. The University of Tokyo's Faculty of Letters, which manages Oe's autograph manuscripts, announced the discovery on March 2. The novels contain many of the motifs that would later characterize his writing, offering valuable insights into the formation of Oe's literary world. Both will be published in the April issue of the literary magazine Gunzo.
RUSSIA
Russian environmentalists attempted to travel to the banks of the Moskva River in the Khimki suburb of the Russian capital to defend the “Workers' Reserve” park from the construction of new buildings, which would require the removal of many trees. They were met by a line of police vehicles, which had intercepted the activists' messages on the social media channel Beregnaš, ‘Our Shore’, which also opposed the construction of the Dinamo sports academy in the area.
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