(UN News)* — Children, refugees and displaced people worldwide are paying the price for the deep-seated funding crisis that has engulfed the international aid sector, made worse by pronounced cuts in Washington, the UN children’s and refugee agencies said on Friday .
20 March 2025 — Somalia is enduring a drought of crippling intensity, driven by failed rains and a brutal dry season, known as Jilal. The projections are dire: over four million people could face crisis-level hunger by April 2025.
Hawa Ali collects water from a newly renovated shallow well in Shamindo village, Jowhar district. Photo: Abdulkadir Mohamed/NRC
Berlin/ Geneva, 21 March 2025 – At least 8,938 people died on migration routes worldwide in 2024, making it the deadliest year on record, according to new data collected by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Omar, an Ethiopian migrant, is treated for dehydration and exhaustion by IOM’s Mobile Unit in the Djiboutian desert. Chances of survival are low for migrants crossing the desert in extreme temperatures and the weakest are often left behind. Photo: IOM 2020/Alexander Bee
(UN News)* — Glaciers in many regions will not survive the 21st century if they keep melting at the current rate, potentially jeopardising hundreds of millions of people living downstream, UN climate experts said on the first World Day for Glaciers.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay / LONDON, Mar 20 2025 (IPS)* – In a world of overlapping crises, from brutal conflicts and democratic regression to climate breakdown and astronomic levels of economic inequality, one vital force stands as a shield and solution: civil society.
Credit: Bryan Dozier/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
12 March 2025 — “She can’t sit or walk. And she hasn’t started talking,” Anowara says of 14-month-old Rifa. “I want my baby to smile, walk, and talk.”
UNICEF/UNI622146/Njiokiktjien
Rifa is one of thousands of young children who are dangerously malnourished in the world’s largest refugee settlement, in Cox’s Bazar, southern Bangladesh.
(UN News)* —Israeli bombardments continued across Gaza on Wednesday , killing hundreds more people – many of them women and children – and leaving widespread destruction in its wake, according to local authorities.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that leaflets were dropped over Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in the shattered-north, as well as eastern Khan Younis in the south, ordering residents once again to leave their homes.
Rome (FAO)* –World coffee prices reached a multi-year high in 2024 – increasing 38.8 percent on the previous year’s average – mostly driven by inclement weather affecting key producing countries, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on 14 March 2025 said.
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 14 2025 (IPS)* –In these turbulent and sad times, it is hard to keep quiet about abuses and violations of human rights taking place around the world; in eastern DR Congo, South Sudan, Ukraine, and Gaza.
Among the most egregious examples of incomprehensible stances on such abuses is the behaviour displayed by the Trump Administration, not least the President’s behaviour against the lawfully elected president of Ukraine.
Trump’s doubts about the validity of a nation’s desperate struggle against the forces of a dictatorial regime, which destroys their country and aims at taking over its richest territory.