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Colombia’s EMC rebel group has announced it will stop kidnapping people for ransom.

The EMC is the largest offshoot of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and is made up of rebels who refused to lay down their arms when the Farc signed a peace deal in 2016.

The announcement is a boost for the government of Gustavo Petro, which is engaged in peace talks with the EMC.

Ransom kidnappings have been on the rise in Colombia this year.

Among those seized – and later released – was the father of Liverpool footballer Luis Díaz.

The kidnapping of Mr Díaz Snr and his wife from their home town of Barrancas, in northern Colombia, shone a spotlight on the practice, which several criminal and rebel groups engage in to raise money.

While Tuesday’s announcement by the EMC is a victory for President Petro, who says he aims to achieve “total peace” in Colombia, kidnappings for ransom are likely to continue.

The National Liberation Army (ELN), the rebel group which seized Luis Díaz’s parents, is one of several criminal and rebel groups active in Colombia which have so far refused to stop abducting people for money.

The Ombudsman’s office said this week that 91 people were still being held hostage across the country.

According to a report released by Colombia’s Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation, the number of people kidnapped in the first 10 months of this year was the highest since 2016 – the year when the government signed a peace deal with the Farc.

The EMC – full name Estado Mayor Central (Spanish for Central General Command) – is the largest of the dissident rebel groups to have formed after the 2016 peace deal and has an estimated 3,000 members.

It is most active in the provinces of Caquetá, Guaviare, Meta and Putumayo.

Negotiations with the EMC have been rocky. In May, President Petro suspended a ceasefire with the rebel group after it had killed four indigenous teenagers who had tried to flee after being forcibly recruited by the group.

And it was not until last month that the two sides resumed peace talks.

The United States issued a warning to Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels to drop a series of trumped-up charges against members of the country’s Baha’i community

Sam Brownback, the US Ambassador for International Religious Freedoms, expressed concern about reports that a court in the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa is summoning members of the Baha’i faith to stand trial on charges of apostasy and espionage.

“We urge them to drop these allegations, release those arbitrarily detained, and respect religious freedom for all,” Brownback wrote on Twitter.

The international Baha’i community has denounced the court cases as “religiously-motivated sham trials” and accused the Houthi court of prosecuting the Baha’i community under “directives from the Iranian authorities.”

“The Baha’is that are held in Sanaa are innocent and the physical and mental torture they are experiencing is designed to force them to admit to crimes they have not committed,” Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha’i International Community, said in a statement.

The mainly Shiite Houthis are financed, trained, and armed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which restricts the rights of Baha’is, despite the fact that it allows freedom of religion for Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians in Iran.

Dozens of Baha’i leaders and followers have been arrested and imprisoned by the Houthi movement in recent years, according to religious discrimination advocacy groups.

The current estimates indicate that several thousand Baha’is still live in Yemen despite years of civil war and instability in the country. Hamed bin Haydara, the head of a Baha’i group in Yemen was sentenced to death in 2018 for the same charges of espionage and apostasy.

The international Baha’i community said he was arrested in 2013 and later beaten and tortured. Haydara was later forced to sign, while blindfolded, documents that admitted his guilt.

South Sudan rebels rejected the government’s peace offer to reduce the number of states and create three administrative areas in the country, aiming to pave the way for a unity government.

The country’s president Salva Kiir had said he would compromise by cutting the current 32 regional states back down to the original 10, which is one of the major demands of the rebels. The number of states is controversial because the borders will determine the divisions of power in the country.

However, Kiir also included three “administrative areas” of Pibor, Ruweng and Abyei. Rebel chief Riek Machar said he opposed the idea of three areas, saying it “cannot be referred to as reverting to 10 states” and “as such cannot be accepted”: “We therefore call upon President Kiir to reconsider this idea of creating administrative areas”, Machar said.

Kiir said returning to a system of 10 states was a “painful decision but a necessary one if that is what brings peace”. The most controversial of the three proposed areas is the oil-rich Ruweng, in the north.

Kiir and Machar agreed on a peace deal in 2018. However, they now face international pressure, including by the United States, to resolve their differences before a deadline set till 22 February.