(UN News)* — The world is entering a new era of crisis for children; climate change, inequality and conflict are disrupting their lives and limiting their futures, an authoritative study from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warns.
At the beginning of each year, UNICEF looks ahead to the risks that children are likely to face and suggests ways to reduce the potential harm.
The latest report, Prospects for Children 2025: Building Resilient Systems for Children’s Futures, demands strengthening national systems that are designed to mitigate the impacts of crises on children and ensure they have access to the support they need.
Here is a breakdown of the main trends to look out for in 2025:
(UN News)* — UN weather experts from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed on Friday [] that 2024 was the hottest year on record, at 1.55 degrees Celsius (C) above pre-industrial temperatures.
“We saw extraordinary land, sea surface temperatures, extraordinary ocean heat accompanied by very extreme weather affecting many countries around the world, destroying lives, livelihoods, hopes and dreams,”WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis said.
(UN News)* —Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday [], following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
(UN News)* — Israeli authorities continue to deny UN-led efforts to reach North Gaza with lifesaving aid, including the most recent attempt on Friday [10], according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
On Thursday [9], only 10 out of 21 planned humanitarian movements were facilitated by the Israeli authorities.
Seven were denied outright, three were impeded and one was cancelled due to security and logistical challenges, said UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, at Friday’s media briefing in New York.
OCHA is also deeply concerned about the impact that dwindling fuel supplies are having on essential services in Gaza.
‘Famine conditions are spreading’ as Sudan’s crisis worsens: UN Security Council
UN Photo/Loey Felipe | OCHA’s Edem Wosornu addresses the Security Council meeting on the protection of civilians in armed conflict in Sudan.
(UN News)* —Human suffering in Sudan has reached devastating levels, with over 11.5 million people internally displaced and 3.2 million seeking refuge in neighbouring countries.
(UN News)* —The horrors in Gaza show no signs of abating, the UN said on Thursday [], noting that the Ministry of Health reports that over 46,000 Palestinians have been killed there since October 2023, most of them women and children.
Tragically in the last month alone, eight newborns have died of hypothermia and 74 children have already died amid the brutal conditions of winter in 2025.
“We enter this New Year carrying the same horrors as the last – there’s been no progress and no solace. Children are now freezing to death,” Louise Tidewater from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, told UN News.
Meanwhile, hostilities continue with relentless operations by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) causing mass casualties and widespread destruction.
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jan 9 2025 (IPS)* – The debt disaster is back. Indeed, the aid agency Cafod reports that developing countries today face “the most acute debt crisis in history”.
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Credit: Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD)
At least 54 countries are in a debt crisis – more than double the number in 2010. A further 57 countries are at risk of debt crisis. In the past decade, interest payments for developing countries overall have risen by 64%, and for Africa by 132%.
African countries are paying over 100 billion dollars a year to creditors. The share of African countries’ budgets going on debt payments is four times higher than in 2010.
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jan 7 2025 (IPS)* – When news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.”
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Displaced Palestinians walk through the Nour Shams camp in the West Bank. Credit: UNRWA/Mohammed Alsharif
Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.
It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous.
But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.
7 January 2025 (UNEP)* —In the unusually hot summer of 2016, a bacterium that causes anthrax killed more than 2,500 reindeer in Siberia’s remote Yamal Peninsula, according to one study.
Credit: AFP/Olivier Morin
Normally locked deep in a layer of permanently frozen land, or permafrost, the once-dormant pathogen eventually spread to humans, claiming the life of a 12-year-old boy and causing dozens of others to fall ill.
Some researchers believe the outbreak is a sign of things to come. As climate change rapidly warms the Artic, scientists say it could unleash a wave of potentially deadly microbes that for centuries have been trapped in ice.
(UN News)* — “We saw dead bodies scattered to the left and right, decomposing in the sun”, recounts Jonathan Dumont, Head of Emergency Communications at the World Food Programme (WFP). A veteran of conflict zones around the world, he says that the destruction and suffering he witnessed in Gaza is on a “different scale”.
Since the fierce bombardment of Gaza by Israel began in October 2023, in response to a deadly Hamas attack on the country, over 45,000 Palestinians have been killed, and over 100,000 injured.
The vast majority of Gazans, around 90 per cent, are internally displaced, forced to relocate several times to avoid airstrikes and fighting.
Credit: AFP/Olivier Morin
© WFP/Jonathan Dumont | Gazans in Khan Younis desperate to receive WFP rice.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 