(UN News)* — The United States has cut $377 million worth of funding to the UN reproductive and sexual health agency, UNFPA, it was confirmed on Thursday [], leading to potentially “devasting impacts”, on women and girls.
“At 7pm on 26 February, UNFPA was informed that nearly all of our grants (48 as of now) with USAID and the US State Department have been terminated,” the UN agency said in a statement.
“This decision will have devastating impacts on women and girls and the health and aid workers who serve them in the world’s worst humanitarian crises.”
17 February 2025 — When paramilitary forces entered the city of Geneina in West Darfur, Sudan, in 2023, people fled for their lives – but not 41-year-old Daralssalam. She was nine months pregnant, and the baby was coming. She went into labour by the side of a road.
At the Adré refugee camp in eastern Chad, Daralssalam holds her daughter, born on the roadside while surrounded by militants.
The militants “saw no difference between men, women or children,” Daralssalam says, crying as she recalls the incomprehensible violence she witnessed. “Everyone was getting killed or raped.”
As she gave birth, fighters surrounded her. “A militant pulled my newborn from me, severing the umbilical cord,” she says.
A dramatic rise in Israeli military violence has caused the largest forced displacement in the West Bank since the Israeli occupation began. As the ‘Gazafication’ of the West Bank unfolds, vital humanitarian work and projects are being delayed or destroyed, Oxfam on 25th February 2025 warned.
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Photo from OXFAM International
More than 40,000 people have been forcibly displaced since the Gaza temporary ceasefire came into force on 19 January – the highest number since Israel occupied the Palestinian Territory including the West Bank, in 1967.
(UN News)* — UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Thursday [] called for an end to the “abhorrent, dehumanizing narratives” that continue to hamper a positive outcome to the Middle East crisis.
Mr. Türk – making his closing remarks during the session reporting on the Occupied Palestinian Territory at the Human Rights Council – said he was deeply troubled by the “dangerous manipulation of language” and disinformation that surrounds discussions over the Palestine-Israel conflict.
(UN News)* — Ongoing gang violence in Haiti has displaced more than a million people, nearly a tenth of the population, or three times more than last year, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the country said on Thursday [].
The “unprecedented crisis” in Haiti means that every number presented “is a new record,” said Ulrika Johnson, speaking from neighbouring Dominican Republic to journalists at UN Headquarters in New York.
“The suffering that this is causing is immense, and I would say it is really heartbreaking to see, to witness, to listen to victims of violence,” she added.
(UN News)* — Weeks of deadly Israeli military raids in the occupied West Bank have turned Palestinian communities into “battlefields” and left 40,000 people homeless, UN humanitarians warned on Wednesday [].
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The violence has seen exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants – and the use of bulldozers in refugee camps for the first time in 20 years which have destroyed public services, including vital electricity and water networks.
(UN News)* —A senior UN aid official has called on the Security Council to ensure better protection for civilians in Sudan together with unhindered humanitarian access, as the brutal war between rival militaries approaches a second year.
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WFP | Displaced Sudanese people wait to receive food from the World Food Programme (WFP). (file)
“Now more than ever, two years on, the people of Sudan need your action,” Edem Wosornu of the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, said in a briefing to ambassadors on Wednesday [].
“Nearly two years of relentless conflict in Sudan have inflicted immense suffering and turned parts of the country into a hellscape,” she added, listing some of the impacts.
Mogadishu, 26 February 2025 – New data from Somalia shows that 4.4 million people could face hunger by April 2025, driven by worsening drought conditions, conflict and high food prices.
(UN News)* — More than 6,000 people in Haiti have been forced from their homes by gang violence in almost a month, hampering aid efforts by humanitarian agencies, the United Nations warned on .
Since the end of January, a wave of extreme brutality has led to widespread loss of life and the displacement of over 6,000 people in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
“We are deeply alarmed and appalled by the unacceptable and inhumane intensity of violence in Haiti,” the Haiti Humanitarian Country Team, which is made up of UN agencies, national and international NGOs and donors, said in a statement.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 25 2025 (IPS)* – Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) appeal captured US mass discontent against globalisation.
In recent decades, variations of America First have reflected growing ethnonationalism in the world’s presumptive hegemon.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Deglobalisation?
Trade liberalisation probably peaked at the end of the 20th century with the creation of the multilateral World Trade Organization (WTO), which the West kept outside the UN system.
With deindustrialisation in the North blamed on globalisation, their governments gradually abandoned trade liberalisation, especially after the 2008 global financial crisis.
Free trade mahaguru Jagdish Bhagwati has long complained of the weak commitment to multilateral trade liberalisation. Most recent supposed free trade agreements (FTAs) have been plurilateral or bilateral, undermining multilateralism while promoting non-trade measures.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 