In a report published on Tuesday [], UN Women – the UN agency for gender equality – warned that 47 per cent of these groups may be forced to close within the next six months.
Across 73 countries, 308 million people now rely on humanitarian aid – a number that continues to rise.
Women and girls are disproportionately affected by these crises, facing preventable pregnancy-related deaths, malnutrition, and alarming levels of sexual violence.
(UN News)* —No aid has entered Gaza for more than 10 weeks and every single one of the 2.1 million people there faces famine conditions, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher said on Tuesday [] in a briefing to the Security Council in New York.
UN News | A Palestinian child in Gaza after receiving a meal during food distribution in central Gaza.
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Mr. Fletcher began his remarks by asking the international community to reflect on what it will tell future generations about action taken “to stop the 21st century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza.”
He wondered, for example, if “we will use those empty words: ‘We did all we could,’” and urged the Council to act decisively to prevent genocide from happening.
Bonn – Accelerating progress to restore 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land around the world and jumpstarting a trillion-dollar land restoration economy will be the focus of this year’s Desertification and Drought Day on 17 June.
The theme of Desertification and Drought Day 2025 is “Restore the land. Unlock the opportunities”, underscoring multiple benefits linked to land restoration.
BALTIMORE, Maryland, May 14 2025 (IPS)* – Here’s a question: Over the past 40 years, what natural disaster has affected more people around the globe than any other?
Livestock in eastern Mauritania are dying due to drought. Credit: UNHCR/Caroline Irby
The past 10 years have been the hottest 10 years on record, and higher temperatures and drier conditions are making more regions vulnerable to drought and arid land degradation, or desertification.
(UN News)* — Gazans remain at “critical risk of famine,” UN-backed food security experts warned on Monday 12 May 2025, a full 19 months since war began with Israel and 70 days since deliveries stopped of all aid and commercial supplies.
UN News | All 25 bakeries supported by the UN World Food Programme have been closed for weeks as stocks of wheat flour and cooking fuel ran out.
“Goods indispensable for people’s survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks…The entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity,” said the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) platform.
In its latest update, the IPC estimated that one in five people in Gaza – 500,000 – faces starvation.
12 May 2025 –Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, the physicist known for his pioneering work in the field, told LBC’s Andrew Marr that artificial intelligences had developed consciousness – and could one day take over the world.
Mr Hinton, who has been criticised by some in the world of artificial intelligence for having a pessimistic view of the future of AI, also said that no one knew how to put in effective safeguards and regulation.
(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:
(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.
(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.
Yu Yu, a midwife, provides care for a newborn baby and the mother after her delivery in an emergency.© UNFPA
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 