(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.
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.
(New York) –The United States should not forcibly transfer migrants to Libya, where inhumane detention conditions are well-documented, including torture, ill-treatment, sexual assault, and unlawful killings, Human Rights Watch said today [9 May 2025].
Based on numerous media reports citing US officials, the Trump administration may be poised to imminently deport an unknown number of detained migrants to Libya.
(UN News)* — The UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, has strongly condemned the forced entry by Israeli security forces into three of its schools in occupied East Jerusalem, describing it as a violation of children’s right to education and safety.
WFP Video | Gaza faces severe shortages of food, water and medicine. (file)
According to the agency, heavily armed personnel entered the schools in Shu’fat refugee camp on Thursday [] while classes were in session, forcing more than 550 Palestinian girls and boys – some as young as six – out of their classrooms.
(UN News)* — Students displaced by the war in Gaza have been channeling their anguish into art in psychosocial support sessions provided by the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA.
UN News | Fatima Al-Za’anin, a displaced Palestinian girl from Beit Hanoun (Gaza), speaks about her drawings in an art exhibition organized by UNRWA in Gaza City as part of its mental health and psychosocial support services.
Their paintings and drawings range from a portrait of an esteemed Palestinian poet and family members killed in conflict, to a sky blackened by thick smoke – and a child crying in front of his mother’s corpse.
(UN News)* — Grim details emerged on Wednesday of Israeli airstrikes on a UN-run school in Gaza sheltering 2,000 displaced people, which reportedly killed 30 Palestinians sheltering there.
The UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, maintained that Israeli forces hit the school in Al Bureij, Middle Gaza, at around 6pm on Tuesday and again at 10.20pm
“The school sustained severe damage and a fire broke out in the shelter, making it difficult to evacuate the casualties. Residents had to open a hole in the wall to evacuate the dead and wounded,” UNRWA told UN News.
Yu Yu, a midwife, provides care for a newborn baby and the mother after her delivery in an emergency.© UNFPA
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 