(UN News)* —Floods, heatwaves, droughts and storms are forcing millions from their homes every year. Most never cross a border; they remain internally displaced yet uprooted all the same. But experts warn that in the not-so-distant future, entire nations could disappear beneath rising seas or become uninhabitable through drought.
IOM/Muse Mohammed | Natural disasters trigger the displacement of millions of people each year.
At COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) is pressing negotiators to make climate mobility a core part of adaptation plans.
Woumpou, Mauritania – On a humid October afternoon in Woumpou, Kadia stands where her front yard used to be. Around her, the ground is still damp, the air thick with the smell of mud.
In Mauritania, communities are working to preserve their way of life as the climate becomes increasingly unpredictable. Photo: IOM/Alexander Bee
She points to a dark line along her neighbors’ walls – a mark left by the floods that came without warning. Families had only minutes to escape before the water swallowed everything.
“Everything happened so fast,” she says. “We lost everything in a matter of hours.”
GENEVA –As temperatures start to drop in many regions, millions of refugees and people displaced within their own countries are facing a gruelling winter with far less assistance as humanitarian giving plummets, and many will be left with little to protect them from the bitter cold, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, warned on 11 November 2025.
“Humanitarian budgets are stretched to breaking point and the winter support that we offer will be much less this year,” said Dominique Hyde, UNHCR’s Director of External Relations, who just returned from Syria and Jordan.
10 November 2025 — In northern Ethiopia, Ayenew looks after his daughter with a disability, and Tarik faces life alone in darkness. Living in remote, forgotten villages, both have discovered a lifeline through the Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) multi-purpose cash assistance.
In Adi-Goshu, a remote village caught between the Tigray and Amhara regions, the gunfire has stopped, but the suffering continues.
Alphonsine sits on the spot where her home once stood before the floods tore through her community in Rumonge. Photo: IOM 2025/Kenny B. Irakoze
Rumonge, Burundi, 10 November 2025 – In the dead of night, the waters of Lake Tanganyika broke into Alphonsine’s home, swallowing everything in their path. Within hours, floods triggered by El Niño had destroyed her house, her business, and the life she had built, along with those of thousands of others.
“We woke up completely submerged and surrounded by water,” recalls Alphonsine. “We ran for our lives. A few days later, our house was gone – completely destroyed and swept away as if it had never existed. We lost everything.”
(UN News)* —South Sudan is entering a period of rising instability marked by political polarisation, renewed armed clashes, and severe humanitarian strain, senior UN officials told the Security Council on Tuesday [].
A “breaking point is becoming visible” in the peace process, they cautioned, as core commitments under a landmark 2018 peace agreement stall or go into reverse.
(UN News)* — In war-torn Sudan, rape is likely being used as a weapon of war and simply being a woman there is “a strong predictor” of hunger, violence and death, the UN’s gender equality agency warned on Tuesday [].
“Women speaking to us from El Fasher, the heart of Sudan’s latest catastrophe, tell us that they’ve endured starvation…displacement, rape and bombardment,” Anna Mutavati, UN Women Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, told reporters in Geneva
“Pregnant women have given birth in the streets as the last remaining maternity hospitals were looted and destroyed.”
Organized crimethrives worldwide, affecting governance and political processes, and weakening the advancement of the rule of law. It encompasses, inter alia, illicit trafficking of firearms, drugs, protected species, cultural property, or falsified medical products and, among its most severe manifestations, human trafficking and the smuggling of migrants.
With all forms of organized crime shifting ever more to being dependent on or incorporating online aspects, including the use of virtual assets, its reach and capability of harm is increasing. PHOTO:eugenegg / Generated with AI
(UN News)* —The world is facing a cross-border “chain of violence” driven by small arms and light weapons, UN disarmament and law enforcement officials told the Security Council on Monday [].
UNICEF/Rich | Illicit trade of small arms and light weapons fuels armed violence, terrorism and organized crime in regions across the world.
They urged coordinated global action to stop the illicit flows that are driving conflict, organized crime and displacement – from Haiti to the Sahel.
Adedeji Ebo, deputy disarmament chief, highlighted that despite recent steps to strengthen arms control frameworks, “more than one billion firearms are in circulation globally,” sustaining conflict, terrorism and criminal networks across multiple regions.
(UN News)* — The UN aid coordination office (OCHA) on Monday [] warned of a deepening crisis in Sudan’s North Darfur as violence spreads beyond the city of El Fasher.
Since the Rapid Support Forces militia – which has been battling the military government – captured El Fasher after more than 500 days of siege in late October, nearly 89,000 people have fled from Tawila, Melit, Saraf Omra, and other localities.
Some families have sought refuge in Tina, near the Sudan-Chad border, where already overwhelmed host communities and UN partners are preparing for new arrivals, UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told correspondents in New York.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 