DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — The International Committee of the Red Cross announced the closure of its offices in Niger and the departure of its foreign staff, four months after the ruling junta ordered the organization to leave the country.
The ICRC confirmed the closure and departure in a statement on Thursday.
“We reiterate our willingness to maintain constructive dialogue with the authorities of Niger with a view to resuming our strictly humanitarian protection and assistance activities," Patrick Youssef, the ICRC’s regional director for Africa, said in the statement.
In February, Niger’s Foreign Affairs Ministry had ordered the ICRC to close its offices and leave the country. No official reason was given for the military junta’s decision to shut down the organization's operations in the country at the time.
The ICRC said it had been in dialogue with Niger's authorities since February to understand the reasons for their decision and provide any necessary clarification but that these efforts were unsuccessful.
On May 31, Niger’s junta leader, Abdourahamane Tchiani, justified the ICRC expulsion on Nigerien state television, accusing the organization of having met with “terrorist leaders” and funding armed groups.
The ICRC refuted the accusations in its statement on Thursday, saying that dialogue with all sides in the conflict is necessary to carry out its humanitarian mandate and that it “never provides financial, logistical, or any other form of support" to armed groups.
The humanitarian organization had been active in the West African country since 1990, mainly helping people displaced by violence by Islamic extremists, food insecurity and natural disasters. According to the organization, it provided humanitarian aid to more than 2 million people in Niger.
Niger’s military rulers took power in a coup two years ago, the latest of several military takeovers in Africa’s Sahel, the vast, arid expanse south of the Sahara Desert that has become a hotspot for extremist violence by militant groups.
Since the coup, Niger has pulled away from its Western partners, such as France and the United States, turning instead to Russia for security.
Last November, the country's military junta banned the French aid group Acted from working in the country amid tensions with France.
FILE - Medical staff with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and South Sudan Red Cross, move a wounded patient to an ambulance in Akobo, South Sudan, Saturday, May 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Joseph Falzetta, file)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Frank Gehry, who designed some of most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96.
Gehry died Friday in his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners LLP.
Gehry won every major prize that architecture has to offer.
Gehry’s fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of some of the most wildly imaginative buildings ever constructed and brought him a measure of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect.
Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Berlin’s DZ Bank Building.
Gehry was awarded every major prize architecture has to offer, including the field’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize, for what has been described as “refreshingly original and totally American” work.
Other honors include the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award, and his native country’s highest honor, the Companion of the Order of Canada.
Years after he stopped designing ordinary looking buildings, word surfaced in 2006 that the pedestrian Santa Monica mall project that had led to his career epiphany might be headed for the wrecking ball. Gehry admirers were aghast, but the man himself was amused.
“They’re going to tear it down now and build the kind of original idea I had,” he said with a laugh.
Eventually Santa Monica Place was remodeled, giving it a more contemporary, airy outdoor look. Still, it’s no Gehry masterpiece.
Gehry, meanwhile, continued to work well into his 80s, turning out heralded buildings that remade skylines around the world.
The headquarters of InerActiveCorp, known as the IAC Building, took the shape of a shimmering beehive when it was completed in New York City’s Chelsea district in 2007. The 76-story New York By Gehry building, one of the world’s tallest residential structures, was a stunning addition to the Lower Manhattan skyline when it opened in 2011.
That same year, Gehry joined the faculty of his alma mater, the University of Southern California, as a professor of architecture. He also taught at Yale and Columbia University over the years.
Not everyone was a fan of Gehry’s work. Some naysayers dismissed it as not much more than gigantic, lopsided reincarnations of the little scrap-wood cities he said he spent hours building when he was growing up in the mining town of Timmins, Ontario.
Princeton art critic Hal Foster dismissed many of his later efforts as “oppressive,” arguing they were designed primarily to be tourist attractions. Some denounced Disney Hall as looking like a collection of cardboard boxes that had been left out in the rain.
Still other critics included Dwight D. Eisenhower’s family, who objected to Gehry’s flamboyant proposal for a memorial honoring the nation’s 34th president. Although the family said it wanted a simple memorial and not the one Gehry had proposed, with its multiple statues and billowing metal tapestries depicting Eisenhower’s life, the architect declined to change his design significantly. As of 2014 the memorial remained unbuilt, with local planning officials again asking Gehry to make revisions.
Gehry did agree to tone down a proposed expansion for Facebook’s Northern California headquarters at the insistence of the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who said he wanted a more anonymous look.
FILE - Honoree and Walt Disney Concert Hall architect Frank Gehry poses at the 2023 Los Angeles Philharmonic Gala, Thursday, Oct. 5, 2023, at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
FILE - The Louis Vuitton Foundation building designed by American architect Frank Gehry is pictured before the presentation of Louis Vuitton's Spring/Summer 2015 ready-to-wear fashion collection in Paris, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File)
FILE - Architect Frank Gehry describes his concert hall design at the Colburn School during an unveiling in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, March 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
