Exclusive: Rights groups denounce negotiations with Rapid Support Forces, accused of ethnic cleansing and war crimes

• Inside South Sudan’s worsening refugee crisis – in pictures

Foreign Office officials are holding secret talks with the paramilitary group that has been waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Sudan for the past year.

News that the British government and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are engaged in clandestine negotiations has prompted warnings that such talks risk legitimising the notorious militia – which continues to commit multiple war crimes – while undermining Britain’s moral credibility in the region.

For Ukraine’s entry in this year’s Venice Biennale, two artists asked refugees to help them create an ‘acceptable’ portrait of a woman ravaged by war. We meet the team behind an astonishing project

In a room inside a Liverpool gallery, Saskia Pay, a young British actor dressed in studiedly ordinary jeans and top, is sitting on a chair in front of a camera. The guy with the camera, Ukrainian artist Andrii Dostliev, briefs a trio of other women, all of them refugees from Ukraine, on the type of image he is trying to create. He indicates the props they can use – a foil blanket, an arm sling, a dirty teddy bear, some makeup. The women nod. They don’t need much in the way of explanation. Everyone knows this kind of picture.

Unhesitatingly they move in, wrapping the foil blanket around Pay’s shoulders. “It would be more natural if she had marks on her face,” one of them points out, and another gets to work with the makeup. Next, hair. One of the women says that when she was living under occupation – in the town of Makariv, west of Kyiv, near Bucha, which fell under Russian control at the start of the full-scale invasion – she just pulled hers into a ponytail and it went unwashed for days on end. Another observes that it would be better if the model had some blood on her face. They give her the teddy bear to clutch to her body; they give her the arm sling.

Families of those who helped British forces could be deported from Pakistan despite promise to resettle them in UK

Afghan families who helped UK forces and then fled to neighbouring Pakistan are in danger of being deported back to the Taliban due to Home Office delays in bringing them to the UK.

In the chaotic evacuation period in the Afghan capital, Kabul, in August 2021 some family members eligible for resettlement in the UK became separated from the rest of their families. Some boarded flights while others were unable to due to crushes at the airport and instead fled over the border to Pakistan.

Alexander Demidenko, who guided refugees back to their homeland, was arrested and tortured by Kremlin forces. One of the many he helped recalls his courage and kindness

Lost and disoriented, Olena Primak stood at Belgorod’s train station, holding tightly to her young daughter’s arm. The scorching summer heat and the long journey had left the Ukrainian refugee on the brink of collapse. Primak had been told to wait for a Russian volunteer called “Alexander” who would help her get back to Ukraine .

“Suddenly, a man with the most generous of smiles appeared at the station,” she recalled. With a gentle countenance, warm eyes and grey hair, the 61-year-old Alexander Demidenko approached Primak, offering to take her bags.

Long-awaited package of measures marks victory for Europe’s centre albeit with ‘doubts and concerns’ over implementation

Almost a decade in the making, the EU’s new migration and asylum pact suffered so many setbacks, stalemates and rewrites that when member states finally announced a deal last year, its passage through parliament seemed assured.

That was, however, to ignore the objections of Europe’s resurgent far-right parties, who felt it was not tough enough (and, perhaps, hoped to profit at the ballot box from allowing the current chaos around migration to continue).

European parliament president says ‘history made’ with vote to pass changes, which have been criticised by NGOs

• Europe live – latest updates

Sweeping changes to the EU’s migration laws have been passed in a knife-edge series of votes in the European parliament, with supporters of the new laws calling the move historic but NGOs saying they are a step back for human rights.

The vote on Wednesday, which is now expected to be rubber-stamped by the member states, ends eight years of deadlock over repeated efforts to tighten up border management and asylum processes in the 27-member bloc.

Government’s aid watchdog says Foreign Office taking ‘financial hit’ for Home Office overspending

• UK politics – latest updates

The UK government’s decision to use the overseas aid budget to pay for supporting refugees in Britain is “wreaking havoc” with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s development partnerships, an official government watchdog said on Wednesday after it was revealed that £4.3bn was diverted to support refugees in 2023.

Official statistics show 27.9% of the total UK aid budget in 2023 was spent on supporting the first-year housing and food costs of refugees in Britain, an increase of £600m.

Comments by Sam Rose, of the UN body for Palestinian refugees, come amid fears Israel plans to squeeze agency out of Gaza

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees must remain “the backbone of any humanitarian response” for the 2 million people in Gaza if mass starvation is to be avoided, the Unrwa director of planning, Sam Rose, says.

Israel is continuing to impede Unrwa convoys to northern Gaza, where 300,000 people are facing famine, he said. “Our space is continuing to be squeezed at a time when the international community urgently needs to get as much assistance as possible to people in the north.”

Guardian Newsroom: Crisis in the Middle East
On Tuesday 30 April, 7-8.15pm GMT, join Devika Bhat, Peter Beaumont, Emma Graham-Harrison and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as they discuss the fast-developing crisis in the Middle East. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

Trhas Tesfay, who fled war in Ethiopia, says she suffers hunger headaches as she cannot eat Home Office hotel meals

One of Ethiopia’s elite female cyclists will be pedalling at the front of one of London’s biggest bike races next month while living in an asylum seeker hotel on less than £10 a week.

Gold medal winner Trhas Teklehaimanot Tesfay, 22, rode a bicycle for the first time when she was 13 years old. She has achieved success in a range of competitions such as the African continental championships and the national championships of Ethiopia.