Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Turkey would react (Al-Monitor) to Russia’s failure to uphold a cease-fire in Syria after Russia-backed regime forces took control of a rebel-held city in the country’s northwestern Idlib province.
 
The regime forces’ capture of Maaret al-Numan led to heavy clashes (Hurriyet Daily News) with Turkey-backed rebel groups and sent thousands of people fleeing, according to a monitoring group. Moscow said its offensive only targeted terrorists (AP) and is thus permitted by international agreements. Syrian army advances in and around Maaret al-Numan put hundreds of thousands of people at risk of displacement (WaPo), the International Rescue Committee said, and the United Nations called for an immediate end to hostilities amid a “dire and deteriorating humanitarian situation.”

Ten thousand Rohingya children up to the age of fourteen will receive formal schooling (Al Jazeera) in the sixth to ninth grades beginning in April under a pilot program led by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Bangladesh’s government, officials said. An estimated one-third of Rohingya child refugees currently receive schooling at temporary centers.
 
CFR’s David J. Scheffer discusses new efforts by international institutions to protect Rohingya in Bangladesh.
 
India: The European Parliament deferred a vote (Mint) on a resolution against India’s controversial new citizenship law after heavy lobbying from the Indian government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit Brussels in March for a bilateral summit with EU leaders.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas plans to address (Reuters) the UN Security Council in the next two weeks about Washington’s proposed peace plan, Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour said.
 
In this In Brief, CFR’s Philip H. Gordon discusses the possible ramifications of the Middle East peace plan.

Kenya’s high court is set to rule today (NYT) on the constitutionality of a new biometric ID program that civil rights groups have argued disenfranchises members of minority groups.
 
Mali: The country plans to hire ten thousand soldiers (Reuters) this year, increasing the size of its army by about 50 percent, in order to combat jihadi violence, the president announced.

Amid calls to ban the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, the European Union has endorsed an approach (TechCrunch) to managing 5G networks in which no suppliers would face outright bans. Instead, member states would assess and mitigate threats to network access from suppliers deemed to be high security risks.
 
France: The country will send warships (Guardian) to the Eastern Mediterranean to support Greek forces in a standoff with Turkey over maritime energy reserves, Greece’s prime minister said.

Colombia will offer work permits (Reuters) to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants living in the country, the federal migration agency announced.
 
El Salvador: The United States sanctioned (State Department) thirteen former Salvadoran military officials for their role in 1989 extrajudicial killings of six Jesuit priests and two others. Washington provided support (WSJ) to El Salvador’s military at the time of the killings.

During the question-and-answer phase of President Donald J. Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, his attorney Alan Dershowitz said that presidents may believe actions to further their own reelection are in the public interest and therefore are not impeachable (NYT). A second round of questions will occur today.

Part of the United Nations’ core IT systems in Geneva and Vienna were targeted in August 2019 in a serious cyberattack, spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in response to an investigation by The New Humanitarian. Dujarric said the United Nations has since implemented new security measures.