(UNICEF)* — Measles is a highly contagious virus. For young children, it can be deadly. In too many places, low vaccination coverage is creating opportunities for measles to spread.
UNICEF/UNI578946/Saleh Elaiwa
Over the last five years, measles outbreaks have hit over 100 countries, home to roughly three-quarters of the world’s children.
But we know how to stop it. Measles vaccines are safe and effective. They are the best way to protect children from getting sick with measles and spreading it to others.
As measles cases surge, here are five things you need to know:
8 May 2025 (openDemocracy)* —Since entering office in January, Donald Trump’s repeated threats to seize control of the Panama Canal, a critical passage for global freight traffic, have dominated headlines around the world. | ESPAÑOL
“Respect our land”, one of many the signs rejecting the planned reservoir on the road to the community of Limón de Chagres, in Colón province, Panamá | Pich Urdaneta / Dialogue Earth
But two hours west of Panama City, 12,000 locals have a more pressing concern: their government plans to flood their lands and relocate them to create an artificial lake to ensure water supply to the canal.
Monitoring in Motion for Migrants in the Darien Gap
8 May 2025 —The Darien jungle on the border between Panama and Colombia is a labyrinth of rivers, filled with wild animals and oppressive, humid heat that envelops everything. It is a transit and destination route for migrants and asylum seekers, where fear, despair, and danger are constant.
It is also the main entry point for people heading towards Canada, Mexico and the United States of America. Yet, the greatest danger does not come from nature itself, but from traffickers and criminals who prey on people on the move.
(UN News)* —Israel’s plan to take control of relief assistance in Gaza would put civilian lives in danger and cause mass displacement while using aid as “bait”, UN humanitarians said on Friday .
UNRWA | A displaced girl waits her turn to fetch water for her family in the southern city of Rafah in Gaza.
UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder insisted that the Israeli proposal to create a handful of aid hubs exclusively in the south of the Strip would create an “impossible choice between displacement and death”.
The plan “contravenes basic humanitarian principles” and appears designed to “reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic”, he told journalists in Geneva.
(Athens) –Greece faces a media freedom crisis as a result of actions and failures by the Greek government, threatening democracy and the rule of law, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on 8 May 2026.
The 101-page report, “From Bad to Worse: The Deterioration of Media Freedom in Greece,” documents the hostile environment for independent media and journalists since the New Democracy government took office in July 2019, including harassment, intimidation, surveillance, and abusive lawsuits, all of which contribute to self-censorship and chill media freedom.
(UN News)* — An estimated 3,800 people have died as a result of the devastating earthquakes that struck Myanmar on 28 March. Six weeks on, the situation in Myanmar remains dire, with whole communities still traumatised and vulnerable.
“I hate earthquakes. Earthquakes took my mother and my aunt away,” five-year-old Khin Yadanar told the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), after both her mother and aunt were killed when a brick wall collapsed on them.
Around 6.5 million children were already in need of humanitarian assistance before the earthquake, which compounded existing vulnerabilities resulting from the brutal civil war between multiple armed opposition groups and the military junta which seized power in a February 2021 coup.
(UN News)* —Shattered by her husband’s death during the rising tide of gang violence in Haiti last year, Christiana and her six children fled 223 kilometres from their hometown to the city of Mirebalais, where her six-year-old daughter, Leineda, began treatment for malnutrition.
UNITED NATIONS, May 7 2025 (IPS)* – Since the Western Sahara War in 1975, Sahrawi refugees have resided in a collection of refugee shelters in the Tindouf province of Algeria.
Sahrawi refugees walk near the Awserd Refugee Camp in the Tindouf Province of Algeria. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
For over 50 years, these communities have struggled to develop self-sufficiency and have been solely dependent on humanitarian aid for survival, marking one of the most protracted refugee crises in the world.
(UN News)* — Thousands of exhausted Sudanese refugees continue to flee fighting in search of safety in neighbouring Chad, aid teams said on Tuesday , as a third day of drone strikes ripped into the city of Port Sudan.
This refrain echoes through centuries of struggle—from the plantations of Saint Domingue to the besieged neighborhoods of Gaza, from the mineral-rich soil of the Congo to the burning plains of Southern Africa.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 