'Unseen' News and Views
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 27 June 2025 – “I gave birth on the ground at the camp with the help of a woman. She is still asking me for money because I couldn’t pay her,” 18-year-old Jeanette* told UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency.
Credit: World Food Programme (WFP)
The World Food Programme (WFP) warned last week that as many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every night while the number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared — from 135 million to 345 million — since 2019. A total of 50 million people in 45 countries are teetering on the edge of famine.
But in what seems like a cruel paradox the US Department of Agriculture estimates that a staggering $161 billion worth of food is dumped yearly into landfills in the United States.
— The cramped streets of Mogadishu buzz with cars, donkey-drawn carts and three-wheeled vehicles known as tuk-tuks – all competing to navigate the slippery, muddy channels carved out by unexpectedly heavy rains.
Somalia’s unpredictable weather has struck again. The rainy season, marked by a massive and deadly downpour hitting the capital in May, has destroyed homes and infrastructure. But the upcoming dry season risks wreaking even more devastation.
The world’s richest 1% increased their wealth by more than $33.9 trillion in real terms since 2015, reveals new Oxfam analysis ahead of the world’s largest development financing talks in a decade, in Seville, Spain.
Almost a billion of us go to bed hungry every night. Not because there isn’t enough food for everyone, but because of the deep injustice in the way food is produced and accessed. | OXFAM.
This is more than enough to eliminate annual poverty 22 times over at the World Bank’s highest poverty line of $8.30 a day.
The wealth of just 3,000 billionaires has surged $6.5 trillion in real terms since 2015, and now comprises the equivalent of 14.6% of global GDP.
New UN report charts path out of debt crisis threatening global development
After years of hiding under a false identity, a Syrian father in Jordan reclaims his name and secures a future for his family.
Salem Al-Ahmad* fled Syria in 2012, using his cousin’s name to escape arrest as a military deserter. Once in Jordan, he was able to register as an asylum seeker and obtain a Ministry of Interior card.
He settled in Al Lubban, west of Amman, where he married Buthainah, a fellow refugee. Together, they had five children: Tasneem, Nidal, Omar, Sinan, and Ameer, all registered under Salem’s assumed name.
(UN News)* — UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday [] reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, warning that the humanitarian crisis has reached “horrific proportions” and that the world must not let the suffering of Palestinians be overshadowed by other regional conflicts.
© UNRWA/Ashraf Amra | People search for their belongings in the rubble in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters at UN Headquarters ahead of his departure to Spain for the International Conference on Financing for Development, the UN Secretary-General said that while the Israel-Iran conflict had dominated recent headlines, the plight of civilians in Gaza remained urgent and dire.
“Families have been displaced again and again – and are now confined to less than one-fifth of Gaza’s land,” he said.
“Even these shrinking spaces are under threat. Bombs are falling – on tents, on families, on those with nowhere left to run.”
(UN News)* — The first delivery earlier this week of urgently needed medical goods to enter Gaza in months will provide scant relief to the enclave’s people, who continue to be shot and killed in their search for food, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday [].
© UNICEF/Mohammed Nateel | Rubbish is often used as stove fuel in the shattered enclave today.
A new era of global instability has intensified challenges in addressing the world drug problem, empowering organized crime groups and pushing drug use to historically high levels, says the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in the World Drug Report 2025 launched on 26 June 2025.
“This edition of the World Drug Report shows that organized drug trafficking groups continue to adapt, exploit global crises, and target vulnerable populations,” said Ghada Waly, Executive Director of UNODC.
Jewish protest against Benjamin Netanyahu, 24 Mar 2023 Alisdare Hickson from Woolwich, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
16 Jun 2025 – For nearly 30 years, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has driven the Middle East into war and destruction. The man is a powder keg of violence.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 