Geneva, 5 March 2025 (WHO)* – In the past two decades, tuberculosis (TB) prevention, testing and treatment services have saved more than 79 million lives – averting approximately 3.65 million deaths last year alone from the world’s deadliest infectious disease.
This progress has been driven by critical foreign aid especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly from USAID. However, abrupt funding cuts now threaten to undo these hard-won gains, putting millions – especially the most vulnerable – at grave risk.
(UN News)* — A UN report released on has uncovered a pattern of grave human rights violations committed by armed groups in southeast Central African Republic (CAR), targeting Muslim communities and Sudanese refugees
OCHA/Lauren Paletta | Displaced people set up makeshift shelters at an IDP camp in Haut-Mbomou, Central African Republic. (file)
Investigations by the UN human rights office (OHCHR) and the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, MINUSCA, found evidence of summary executions, sexual violence and torture. Other violations included cruel and degrading treatment, forced labour, and looting of homes and shops.
(UN News)* — In the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), insecurity and horrific sexual violence have left tens of thousands fleeing across borders with no sign of the exodus stopping, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on
()* —As conflict rages across Sudan, armed men are raping and sexually assaulting children, including some infants as young as one, according to the UN children’s agency (UNICEF).
Data from gender-based violence service providers in Sudan reveals the scale of the horror: more than 220 reported cases of child rape since the start of 2024.
“Children as young as one being raped by armed men should shock anyone to their core and compel immediate action,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
(UN News)* —“The time to step up is now” for the people of Somalia, where drought threatens 1.7 million young children at risk of acute malnutrition, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Tuesday [].
The East African country faced famine in 2022, but a scale-up in humanitarian assistance helped to avert catastrophe.
Today, food insecurity on the increase once again, with 3.4 million people already acutely food insecure. That number is projected to rise by a full million, to 4.4 million between April and June – nearly a quarter of the population.
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2025 (IPS)* –The United Nations, in its nearly 80-year-old history, is on the verge of fighting for its survival, as the Trump administration continues with its threats to drastically cut funding and pull out of several UN agencies which provide mostly humanitarian assistance worldwide.
President Donald Trump addresses the General Assembly’s 75th sessions back in September 2020. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas
(UN News)* — The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and partners in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are providing lifesaving clean water supplies to 700,000 people a day – around 364,000 of them children – in the regional capital Goma after breaks in the water supply due to the uptick in fighting.
The intense conflict at the end of January, which saw the city overrun by Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, left many of the city’s two million residents without access to clean water, sanitation or power. A third of them have only recently been displaced.
(UN News)* — Synthetic drugs are rapidly transforming the global drug trade, fuelling an escalating public health crisis, according to the UN administered International Narcotics Control Board (INCB).
In its 2024 Annual Report, released on Tuesday [], the INCB explains that unlike plant-based drugs, these substances can be made anywhere, without the need for large-scale cultivation, making them easier and cheaper for traffickers to produce and distribute.
(UN News)* —The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan presented its latest report to the Human Rights Council on 28 February 2025 in Geneva, detailing widespread violations, including extrajudicial killings, forced recruitment of children and systematic sexual violence.
Despite South Sudan winning independence over a decade ago and repeated commitments to peace during years of civil war, the Commission found that the same patterns of abuses persist, often implicating high-ranking officials.
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 27 2025 (IPS)* –Renewable energy and climate change activists have challenged African heads of state to take a united stance to safeguard essential mineral resources, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and other parts of the continent, which are selfishly exploited by foreign miners with disregard for poverty-stricken local communities.
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Dr. Augustine Njamnshi of ACSEA addresses a group of civil society organizations ahead of the AUC Summit in Addis Ababa. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 