A report ‘Oil and Gas Expansion in the Colombian Amazon: Navigating Risks, Economics, and Pathways to a Sustainable Future, warns oil and gas projects threaten over 483,000 km² of Colombian Amazon forest, home to more than 70 indigenous groups, and risk becoming stranded assets as global fossil fuel demand declines.
BOGOTÁ and SRINAGAR, India, Aug 27 2025 (IPS)* –– A report has warned about the risks of expanding oil and gas exploration in the Colombian Amazon, which may undermine environmental goals, Indigenous rights, and long-term economic stability, unless the government pivots toward sustainable development pathways.
Eight years of displacement for Abu and the Rohingya people
Abu, 18, has spent nearly half his life in this refugee camp.
“Today I am eighteen. I grew up in this refugee camp, waiting for education, waiting for a future, waiting to return home with dignity and rights.”
Abu*, an 18-year-old boy, was only 10 when he and his family fled Myanmar in 2017. Eight years on, he reflects on his life as a refugee and his hopes and fears for the future.
It was a Thursday in August. After lunch, we were resting when suddenly we heard shouting around our house. Our peaceful village, Thingana, surrounded by green fields and trees, turned into chaos.
An armed group was ordering people to leave their homes. They threatened to set fire to the houses and kill anyone who stayed.
(UN News)* — Some 2.2 billion people worldwide still lack access to safely managed drinking water services, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) – an increasingly urgent challenge as demand for safer access to the vital resource grows.
Currently underway in Stockholm from 24 to 28 August, the 35th World Water Week meeting highlights the crucial link between water and global warming, under the theme, Water For Climate Action.
(UN News)* —From Gaza to Sudan, wars are being waged on the very systems set up to protect civilian populations, with health workers, hospitals, health centres and ambulances being targeted in horrifying numbers, according to the UN agency for reproductive health and rights, UNFPA.
Attacks against health facilities doubled between 2023 and 2024, and more than 900 health workers were killed last year, the agency reported.
Humanitarian aid workers were also killed in record numbers in 2024.
Yet, 2025 is outpacing even these dark statistics at a time when funding for humanitarian work is shrinking and support services established over decades are struggling to operate.
(UN News)* — Extreme heat is fast becoming one of the biggest threats to workers’ health and livelihoods, the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned on Friday [].
The new joint report, Climate change and workplace heat stress, underscores the mounting risks as climate change fuels longer, more extreme, and more frequent heatwaves.
Stressing that workers in agriculture, construction, and fisheries are already suffering the impacts of dangerous temperatures, the report points out that vulnerable groups in developing countries – includingchildren, older adults, and low-income communities – face increasing dangers.
GENEVA, Aug 21 2025 (IPS)* – On August 7, a tar-like slurry glistened on the roads leading up to the gate of the Palais Des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
Greenpeace protest at the recent Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC 5.2) on plastic pollution held in Geneva. Credit: Ravleen Kaur/IPS
For fear of sticky substances sticking to tires, no vehicles were allowed to go inside for a while, forcing officials arriving from different parts of the world to disembark and walk through a side entrance.
Four people swiftly climbed the gates of the Palais, where the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC 5.2) on plastic pollution was taking place in Geneva, with yellow fluorescent banners that read “Big Oil polluting inside” and “Plastic treaty not for sale.”
(UN News)* — Heavy monsoon rains and flash floods have killed at least 739 people across Pakistan since late June, displacing thousands and destroying homes and crops, with more severe weather expected in the weeks ahead, according to UN agencies and national authorities.
The National Disaster Management Authority has also reported 978 injuries and the destruction or damage of more than 2,400 houses, while over 1,000 livestock have been lost as of Thursday, 21 August.
Severe weather is forecast to continue into early September, raising the risk of further flooding, landslides and crop losses, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
18 August 2025 — Hundreds of thousands of Somalis have been cut off from safe water supplies in recent months due to severe humanitarian funding shortfalls, putting entire communities at heightened risk of deadly disease outbreaks, warns the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).
A woman carries a jerrycan of water on her back as she makes her way home in Qaydar-adde displacement camp, Baidoa, Somalia. Photo: Abdulkadir Mohamed/NRC
With just a trickle of the humanitarian appeal set at the start of this year for Somalia funded, the collapse of water, sanitation, and hygiene services is accelerating the spread of preventable diseases including cholera and acute watery diarrhoea.
(UN News)* —UN aid teams in Gaza say that they’re only able to get less than half the lifesaving food support that is needed into the war-torn enclave.
In an alert from the World Food Programme (WFP), the agency said that half a million people “are on the brink of famine”, a claim backed up by multiple humanitarian agencies.
The latest worrying data is showing widespread acute malnutrition.
13 Aug 2025 – But did you know? Is this discussed now when the UN turn 80 in October? No, politicians, media and scholars generally focus on war and ignore humanity’s most important peace-maker.
“UNITED NATIONS, Aug 12 2025 (IPS) – The United Nations, facing a liquidity crisis, has been threatening to lay-off about 20 percent of its estimated 37,000 employees world-wide: a proposed move that has triggered widespread protests from staff unions both in New York and Geneva.”
.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 