Corinne Fleischer, WFP’s regional director for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, describes Gaza as “a terrible situation getting worse.” Over the past two weeks, 21 United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) food distribution points have been closed under evacuation orders.
On 18 March 2020,
Philippe Lazzarini was appointed Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. He took up his post with UNRWA on 1 April 2020.
Thirteen years since becoming an independent state, South Sudan faces profound humanitarian challenges. South Sudan’s first Independence Day was imbued with a great sense of hope.
We live in a divided world of the haves and the have nots. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. There is learning poverty, technology poverty, healthcare poverty, and food poverty. When you think about the dynamics of the world today, there is even empathy and humanity poverty.
The growing number of killings of Palestinian journalists in Gaza has triggered a demand for a cut-off in US arms supplies to Israel.
Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), told IPS despite pleas of the international community to suspend arms to Israel in the face of its unprecedented atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza, including the killing of over 165 Palestinian journalists, it beggars the imagination that Biden is now seeking to sell Israel new weaponry to facilitate even more slaughter.
Since October 2023, 625,000 children enrolled in schools across Gaza have had no access to education, and more than 370 schools have sustained damage from attacks, according to the United Nations.
It’s risky to try to protect the environment in authoritarian Cambodia. Ten young activists from the Mother Nature environmental group
have recently been given long jail sentences. Two were sentenced to eight years on charges of plotting and insulting the king. Another seven were sentenced to six years for plotting, while one, a Spanish national banned from entering Cambodia, was sentenced in absentia.
Haiti is witnessing unprecedented levels of lawlessness and brutality from armed gangs, which target schools and hospitals. The groups have plunged the country into a crisis and apart from the gun violence accusations, disturbing reports of ruthless sexual violence, including gang rape. Millions of children are in harm's way; many are out of school and it is estimated that between 30 and 50 percent of armed group members are children.
Many low-income countries (LICs) continue to slip further behind the rest of the world. Meanwhile, people in extreme poverty have been increasing again after decades of decline.
Today, we are facing a growing and unprecedented array of nuclear weapons dangers. At the same time, this year’s presidential election is also unprecedented, unpredictable, and extremely consequential.
On the heels of a new alliance announced this summer by Russia and North Korea for a pact pledging mutual defense, with the support of China, it is now shockingly being suggested in South Korea that it review its security policy with the US and end its reliance on the US guarantee, to employ on South Koreas’ behalf, US nuclear weapons as part of its “nuclear umbrella”.
The Palestinians in Gaza have been victims of a double tragedy: killings by Israel’s mostly American-made weapons and deaths by starvation.
And now comes a revelation of a new weapon of war: how Israel has been systematically weaponizing water against Palestinians in Gaza, according to a new report from the global human rights organization, Oxfam.
The Biden administration, which has come under heavy fire for its unyielding pro-Israeli stand on the nine-month-old war in Gaza, is facing a rebellion within its own bureaucratic ranks—12 and counting.
The 12 government officials, who recently resigned, have accused the US of providing diplomatic cover for the continuous flow of arms to Israel ensuring “our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza.”
Usama bin Laden once claimed that the seeds of 9/11 were planted in 1982 as he watched the scenes of mass slaughter emerging out of Beirut's Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps, the bloody conclusion of that summer's US-supported Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
As the sun sets, its golden hues piece through the dusty haze, creating a dazzling display when a herd of livestock lazily roams on the arid landscape as they return home from grazing.
Dressed in shiny red robes, the youthful Maasai pastoralists routinely whistle as they steer cattle, goats and sheep to maintain a unified path.
Each year the international community comes together at the UN’s headquarters in New York to take stock of progress on sustainable development. This year’s
High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) is being held between 8 and 18 July. Representatives from 36 countries,
as per the UN HLPF website, will showcase their achievements on commitments outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, presenting their Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs).
For nine months, over 2 million people in the Gaza Strip have been forcibly displaced in the wake of the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas. The ongoing fighting and displacement have put significant strain on humanitarian organizations on the ground to address even basic health needs.
The United Nations and other humanitarian organizations have stressed that the healthcare system in Gaza has collapsed or has suffered undue pressure as a result of the fighting. Out of 36 hospitals in the area, 13 remain open, operating with partial functionality.
Sudan is the scene of unimaginable suffering. As war between army and militia continues, civilians are paying the highest price. Both sides are killing non-combatants and committing gross human rights crimes.
Herman Wouk’s 1971 novel The Winds of War traced the romance, bravery, fear, and faith required for American youths to join the military, deploy to the war zones, and confront the mighty Axis threat in the lead-up to WW II. It later became a dramatic TV series.
An overwhelmingly staggering 186,000 killings in Gaza –- compared with the official figure of over 37,000—has resurrected accusations of genocide and war crimes in the devastating nine-month-old war between Israel and Hamas, with no signs of a cease-fire.
The new estimates have come from The Lancet, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed British medical journals.
Myanmar’s army, at war with pro-democracy forces and ethnic militias, must know it’s nowhere near victory. It recently
came close to losing control of Myawaddy, one of the country’s biggest cities, at a key location on the border with Thailand. Many areas are outside its control.