(UN News)* —The United Nations on warned that escalating hostilities and access constraints in Gaza are exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis, displacing hundreds of thousands and depriving civilians of shelter, food and medicine.
More than 500,000 people are reported to have been newly displaced since 18 March 2025, many of them uprooted multiple times due to ongoing military operations across the Gaza Strip.
The war in the Gaza Strip has taken an unconscionable toll on children. At least 15,600 have been reported killed, with thousands more injured. Nearly every child in Gaza knows what it is to be displaced: Their families have been torn apart, their homes destroyed.
()* —Haiti is on the verge of “total chaos” as coordinated gang violence continues to escalate, threatening the State’s ability to maintain public order, the UN’s top envoy for the country warned on Monday .
Special Representative María Isabel Salvador told ambassadors in the Security Council that a “deliberate and coordinated” campaign is being waged by organized crime groups to expand territorial control and paralyse the capital, Port-au-Prince.
(UN News)* —Two centuries to the day after France imposed a crippling debt on Haiti in exchange for its independence, a UN forum has heard calls for the restitution of what has long been described as a “ransom” extorted under the threat of force from the Caribbean nation that still bears the scars of colonialism and slavery.
UN Photo/Mark Garten | Shackles used to bind slaves on display at the Transatlantic Slave Trade exhibition at UN Headquarters in New York. (file)
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The first country ever to free itself from slavery through a successful uprising, Haiti gained independence from France in 1804. But the price for defying the colonial order was steep.
On April 17, 1825, besieged by French warships, Haiti agreed to pay an indemnity of 150 million gold francs to the European power.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 