The UN agency has revealed shocking figures related to attacks on healthcare facilities in Sudan, stressing that the country is recording the largest percentage of global deaths linked to the targeting of the health sector, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. In a conversation with Abdelmonem Makki from UN...
According to the Myanmar Opium Survey 2025, poppy cultivation rose by 17 per cent over the past year, from 45,200 hectares in 2024 to 53,100 hectares in 2025 – reversing a brief dip and confirming a steady upward trend since 2020. A ‘critical moment’ Opium derived from poppies is the...
Speaking at the launch of UNCTAD’s 2025 Report on the Economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the agency’s Deputy Secretary-General Pedro Manuel Moreno said decades of movement restrictions, combined with the latest military operations, had “wiped out decades of progress” and left both Gaza and the West Bank facing long-term...
Meanwhile, UN agencies confirmed the deaths of three Palestinians from Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), a rare auto-immune disease that can cause sudden muscle weakness and even paralysis. Before war erupted in Gaza in October 2023, only a handful of cases surfaced every year. Mass casualties now the norm “Hospitals are overwhelmed...
“Fuel is the backbone of survival in Gaza,” said the statement. “Without fuel, these lifelines will vanish for 2.1 million people.” UN humanitarian workers stressed that fuel powers everything from hospitals and water systems to bakeries and ambulances. Without a steady supply, “maternity, neonatal and intensive care units are failing,...
Speaking at a high-level open debate in the Security Council on protection of civilians in armed conflict on Thursday, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher described a grim picture of accelerating harm, disintegrating norms and growing impunity. “The scaffolding built last century to protect us from inhumanity is crumbling,” he...
Since September 2023, some three million Afghans have returned – many having been forcibly deported from neighbouring Pakistan and Iran. Often, they arrive exhausted, disoriented, and stripped of their belongings. “They return to a homeland that is dramatically unprepared to receive them,” warned Arafat Jamal, the UNHCR Representative in Afghanistan....
The Caribbean island nation is facing humanitarian, economic and political crises in addition to the break-down of law and order. In the last week, three media houses were targeted, in what appears to be a change in gang tactics in order to isolate the population. UN News asked Frantz Duval, the...
In a Security Council meeting on Friday, Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, World Health Organization (WHO) representative for the West Bank and Gaza, painted a grim picture of the situation, emphasising that over 25 per cent of the 105,000 injured civilians now face life-changing injuries. “At the current rate, it would take five...
The UN Security Council met on Friday morning in New York to debate the collapse of health services in Gaza. The meeting was called by Algeria, the leading voice for the Arab world on the Council which has just taken the gavel as president for the month of January. Senior...
A report published by the Office documents attacks carried out between 12 October 2023 and 30 June 2024, raises serious concerns about Israel’s compliance with international law. Medical personnel and hospitals are specifically protected under international humanitarian law, provided they do not commit – or are not used to commit, outside their...
“Today, Israeli airstrikes hit the town of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, yet again… As the theatre and intensity of the exchanges of fire continue to expand, civilian suffering is reaching unprecedented heights,” said UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert in a statement. Five people were killed in the attack and there...
