; Whereas in Sudan, the United Nations Panel of Experts reported that at least 15,000 people died as a result of the Rapid Support Forces offensive in West Darfur in 2023, tens of thousands more people are believed to have been killed, and more than 8,000,000 people have been displaced, and where freedom of the press and the safety of journalists has severely deteriorated, as evidenced by attacks on independent media and the killings, arrests, detentions, harassment, and beatings of journalists, which, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, includes— (1) the killing of Halima Idris Salim, a 29-year-old reporter for local independent online news outlet Sudan Bukra, on October 10, 2023, when Rapid Support Forces soldiers ran her over with their car while she was covering health conditions of a hospital’s emergency wing in Omdurman; (2) reports that the Rapid Support Forces has cut access to telecommunications and internet services since early February 2024, leaving civilians in a communications blackout and making reporting on the war nearly impossible; and (3) the forced closure of all print media in the country, the banning of foreign news channels, and forcing journalists into exile; Whereas press freedom continues to face challenges in sub-Saharan Africa, including— (1) in Ethiopia, which, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, is the second-worst jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, and where a crackdown on the press has included— (A) an entrenched pattern of arbitrarily detaining journalists, with at least 8 journalists behind bars as of December 2023; (B) significant due process and fair trial concerns in the cases of detained journalists, such as the May 2023 arrest of online journalist Gobeze Sisay in neighboring Djibouti and subsequent transfer to Ethiopia under unclear circumstances; (C) the detention of journalists arrested under state of emergency provisions at a military camp in eastern Ethiopia without judicial oversight or access to family or legal counsel