On 10 December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Declaration setting out, for the first time, the fundamental human rights that should to be universally protected.
UN Photo/Greg Kinch | An early draft of Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” states the Declaration’s Article 1.
Indeed, it enshrines “the inalienable rights that everyone is entitled to as a human being – regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
(UN News)* — People continue to stream back into Gaza City in the wake of the temporary ceasefire across the Strip, with some 500,000 reportedly returning so far, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported on Thursday [].
Tess Ingram, Communications Manager for UNICEF Middle East and North Africa, is in the northern city where she witnessed people moving through the streets on donkeys, in cars, or by bicycle.
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“There’s a lot of people with shovels trying to remove rubble, and of course you can see people setting up makeshift shelters or tents on what I’m guessing used to be their homes,” she told UN News.
ATLANTA, USA, Jan 31 2025 (IPS)* – Either the new US President, Mr. Trump, is ignorant of international law or thinks he’s so brilliant that he doesn’t care about it.
Either way, he seems to have stumbled into proposing an extension of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s clearly documented crime of genocide by suggesting that somebody “clear out” the people in Gaza, in effect advocating the ethnic cleansing of the territory.
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Families begin their journey back home from the south of Gaza to Gaza City and the northern areas. 30 January 2025. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba
In the nearly two years since war broke out in Sudan, almost one million people have fled into neighbouring Chad, including more than 720,000 Sudanese refugees and more than 220,000 Chadians who returned home because of the conflict.
Metche Camp in Chad has become a crucial refuge for Sudanese civilians fleeing the devastating conflict in Darfur. Photo: Karl Schembri/NRC
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Nine out of ten people forced into displacement are women and children and many have endured terrible acts of violence, including torture, rape and sexual slavery.
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Twenty-three international humanitarian organisations operating in eastern Chad warn that the majority of those refugees and returnees do not have access to the protection and education assistance they direly need.
(UN News)* — As more than 423,000 displaced Palestinians return to their homes in northern Gaza following the opening of key roads, UN agencies are scaling up humanitarian aid and addressing the growing risks posed by unexploded ordnance such as landmines (UXO).
(UN News)* —The implementation of new Israeli laws banning the UN Palestine refugee agency, UNRWA – set to take effect on Thursday – will heighten instability and deepen despair in the occupied Palestinian territory, the Security Council has heard.
Briefing ambassadors in New York on Tuesday [], UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini warned that the laws passed in October last year in the Knesset jeopardize the lives of millions of Palestinians and risks undermining the fragile ceasefire in Gaza.
ABUJA, Jan 29 2025 (IPS)* –In June 2024, 26-year-old Zainab Abdul noticed her two-year-old daughter growing pale, losing weight, and battling diarrhea. She wasn’t surprised.
Children beg for food in Gusau, the capital of Zamfara, Nigeria. Credit: Promise Eze/IPS
Since jihadist-linked bandits had forced them out of their village in Kadadaba, Zamfara State, in northwestern Nigeria, her family had been living in a refugee camp with limited access to food.
(Jerusalem, January 28, 2025) – The Israeli government’s blockade of Gaza and attacks on healthcare facilities have created serious and sometimes life-threatening danger for women and girls during and after pregnancy and delivery since hostilities began in October 2023, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on 28 January 2025.
(UN News)* — The latest reports from Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from UN teams on the ground indicate a fast-deteriorating situation on Tuesday [] amid an ongoing assault by M23 rebels on the provincial capital.
Dead bodies lie in the streets, hospitals are overwhelmed and there has been an uptick in reports of sexual violence, rape and looting.
“Roads are blocked, ports are closed and those crossing Lake Kivu risk their lives in makeshift boats,” said Shelley Thakral, spokesperson for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) – one of many UN agencies on the ground striving to provide assistance and protection wherever possible.
(UN News)* — At least one girl and three boys were killed, and three boys injured, during an attack on the Saudi Hospital in the besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher, North Darfur, on Friday.
The children were among the patients being treated in the hospital’s emergency ward for injuries from previous bombings in the area, said the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF.
“This heinous attack is a blatant violation of children’s rights. Children are being killed and injured in the very places where they should be safest from harm,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
UN Photo/Greg Kinch | An early draft of Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 