(UN News)* — Nearly two months after the latest ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on 10 October, a fragile calm has brought much-needed relief to families who have endured unimaginable suffering and repeated displacement.
For months on end, thousands of families remain without a roof over their heads, laying beneath the open sky — the stars above offering both solace and a haunting reminder of everything they have lost.
Sabah, her husband Ahmad, and their seven children spent weeks sleeping in the open after losing their home.
“We fled from Shuja’iya to Rimal, then to the south – Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – and then back to Shuja’iya,” Ahmad explains.
“Every time we move, we lose more of what little we have.”
Nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. Both in the scale of the devastation they cause, and in their uniquely persistent, spreading, genetically damaging radioactive fallout, they are unlike any other weapons.
A mushroom cloud after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killing over 73,000 people. Keystone / Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum
A single nuclear bomb detonated over a large city could kill millions of people. The use of tens or hundreds of nuclear bombs would disrupt the global climate, causing widespread famine.
(Stockholm) Revenues from sales of arms and military services by the 100 largest arms-producing companies rose by 5.9 per cent in 2024, reaching a record $679 billion, according to new data released on 1 December 2025 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), available at www.sipri.org.
The Lockheed Martin and Rheinmetall partnered Global Mobile Artillery Rocket System (GMARS) live fired for the first time at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, August 2025. Photo: US Army
Global arms revenues rose sharply in 2024, as demand was boosted by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, global and regional geopolitical tensions, and ever-higher military expenditure.
For the first time since 2018, all of the five largest arms companies increased their arms revenues.
(UN News)* — The Arab region is heating at nearly twice the global average, UN weather experts warned on , after 2024 saw unprecedented heat, destructive storms and worsening water scarcity impact some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.
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Unsplash/Ali Guddam | People across the Arab region including in the city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia, face increasing pressure from climate extremes.
The World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) first State of the Climate in the Arab Region reportpaints a stark picture of a region under constant pressure from rising temperatures and increasingly extreme weather.
(UN News)* — From Sri Lanka’s central highlands to Indonesia’s flood-swollen river basins, a wave of climate-fuelled cyclones and monsoon rains has unleashed one of the deadliest weather patterns south and southeast Asia has seen in years, killing more than 1,600 people, displacing hundreds of thousands and affecting millions.
Since mid-November, overlapping tropical storms and intensified monsoon systems have triggered catastrophic flooding and landslides across Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Viet Nam.
Tens of thousands of children displaced as families forced to flee in wake of attacks by armed non-state actors
UNICEF
NEW YORK/MAPUTO, 5 December 2025 (UNICEF)* – Over 100,000 people, around two thirds of them children, have been displaced in northern Mozambique during the month of November, following attacks against civilians.
The latest wave of displacement follows months of continued and expanding attacks by armed non-state actors in the north of the country, triggering repeated population movements in Cabo Delgado and Nampula provinces.
(UN News)* — Every week in Gaza, at least 15 women give birth outside any health facility, often without a trained midwife, pain relief or basic medical supplies.
Some are forced to deliver alone. Others rely on neighbours with no medical training. For many, childbirth has become a matter of survival.
Before the fragile ceasefire got underway in October, the UN reproductive health agency, UNFPA, estimated that 55,000 pregnant women were trapped in “a spiral of displacement, bombardment and acute hunger”, with no reliable access to care.
Annalena Baerbock In her address as President of the UN General Assembly
Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe September 2025
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 2025 (IPS)* – For seventy-eight years, the question of Palestine has been on the agenda of this General Assembly, almost as long as the institution itself.
Resolution 181 (II) was adopted by the General Assembly on November 29 1947 – laying the foundation for the Two State Solution and calling for the establishment of both an Arab State and a Jewish State in Palestine.
But while the Jewish State, the State of Israel, is a recognized Member State of the United Nations, the Arab State, the State of Palestine, is not.
Seventy-eight years later, Palestine has still not been admitted to the UN as a full Member.
(UN News)* — The UN has called for an investigation into the recent “horrific” killing by Israeli forces of two young brothers in Gaza who were reportedly targeted by a drone while collecting firewood.
This comes as humanitarians continue to receive reports that air strikes, shelling, gunfire and other continuing Israeli military operations in the enclave are causing more civilian casualties, displacement and destruction.
In recent days, hundreds of families were reportedly displaced in two neighbourhoods in eastern Gaza City following strikes and movement of military equipment, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarrictold journalists in New York on Wednesday.
(UN News)* — The UN human rights office, OHCHR, has condemned an Israeli raid on the Union of Agricultural Work Committees in the occupied West Bank, warning that pressure on Palestinian civil society has reached alarming levels.
Olive harvest season in the Occupied West Bank in Palestine, October 2025.
Israeli security forces raided the organisation’s offices in Ramallah and Hebron on 1 December, vandalising property and detaining staff.
According to OHCHR, people present in the buildings were blindfolded, handcuffed and made to kneel or lie on the floor for several hours. Eight men were detained.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 