Nairobi, 23 September 2025 –Two years of escalating conflict have caused unprecedented levels of environmental damage in the Gaza Strip, damaging its soils, freshwater supplies and coastline, finds a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 19 2025 (IPS)** –Thousands of Afghans who fled to the USA when the Taliban took over in August 2021 now face the prospect of deportation to countries they’ve never been to.
Credit: Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters via Gallo Images
People who risked everything to escape persecution, often because they helped US forces, now find themselves treated as unwanted cargo under the Trump administration’s anti-migration policy.
Trump’s expanded deportation programme targets an estimated 10 million foreign-born people who live in the USA but lack proper legal documentation.
(UN News)* —The United Nations has sounded the alarm over Sudan’s spiralling crisis, warning that deadly attacks in El Fasher, the collapse of essential services, and mass displacement are pushing millions in Darfur and beyond closer to catastrophe.
According to local reports, heavy shelling and assaults late last week in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, killed at least six civilians and injured scores more, triggering fresh displacement from the already besieged city.
(UN News)* —A senior UN humanitarian official in Pakistan has warned that “the needs are huge” as massive floods across Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan continue to leave millions homeless, destroying vital crops and pushing fragile communities to the brink.
More than six million people have been affected since the unusually heavy monsoon rains began in late June, with nearly 1,000 lives lost – 250 of them children.
Around 2.5 million people have been displaced, many sheltering in Government-run camps or with host families who are already stretched to their limit.
16 September 2025 — Greece’s Migration Minister Thanos Plevris recently announced his intention to adopt new measures to silence criticism of the government’s migration policies.
The move, which came in the wake of a victory by civil society groups at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), is part of the Greek government’s broader assault on civil society and is likely to worsen the already hostile environmentfor nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), particularly those working on migration.
PORTLAND, USA, Sep 15 2025 (IPS)** –Most of the population in this country wants immigrants, but the current government does not share the same sentiment.
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Opinion polls show that the majority of the U.S. population holds positive views on immigration. Credit: Shutterstock.
The country in question is the United States, often referred to as “a nation of immigrants”, home to more immigrants than any other country worldwide, having received over 100 million immigrants since its founding in 1776.
Opinion polls show that the majority of the U.S. population holds positive views on immigration.
(UN News)* — “Underfunded, overstretched and under attack” is how the United Nation’s top aid official has referred to the UN and the support it is providing to the humanitarian sector.
Speaking on Monday [] to journalists at UN Headquarters in New York, Tom Fletcher, who heads up the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said “we have only 19 per cent of what we need.”
The international community is currently dealing with multiple humanitarian crises across the world, including conflict-driven crises in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gaza, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen.
Other crisis hotspots includeAfghanistan, Haiti, Myanmar and the Sahel.
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 15 2025 (IPS)* – When the high-level meeting of over 150 world political leaders takes place September 22-30, thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their accredited UN representatives will either be banned from the UN premises or permitted into the building on a strictly restricted basis– as it happens every year.
This year will not be an exception to the rule.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in over 100 countries promoting adherence to, and implementation of, the United Nations nuclear weapons ban treaty. Credit: ICAN
Herat, Afghanistan, 12 September 2025 – At the Islam Qala border, the wind never rests. Dust stings the eyes and clings to skin as the 40–degree heat turns the ground into a furnace.
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As night falls, a mother holds her son’s hand as they walk past the truck that brought them from Islam Qala to IOM’s transit centre. Photo: IOM 2025/Mohammad Osman Azizi
Families squeeze into slivers of shade, children beside them shielding their faces with scarves as they wait for assistance. For many, this harsh landscape is their first glimpse of home after years away.
Since September 2023, more than four million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan – over 1.5 million in 2025 alone.
SANTIAGO, Chile, Sep 12 2025 (IPS)** – At eighty, the United Nations is bogged down by structural limitations and political divisions that render it powerless to act decisively – nowhere more clearly than in the Gaza genocide.
There is only one treaty in the world that, despite its limitations, binds nations together: the United Nations Charter. Representatives of fifty nations wrote and ratified the UN Charter in 1945, with others joining in the years that followed.
The charter itself only sets the terms for the behaviour of nations. It does not and cannot create a new world. It depends on individual nations to either live by the charter or die without it.