Frosty morning in Pingjum Friesland, The Netherlands.
PHOTO:WMO Photostream/Anna Zuidema
Air pollution is the biggest environmental health risk of our time. It also exacerbates climate change, causes economic losses, and reduces agricultural productivity.
It knows no borders – everyone has a responsibility to protect our atmosphere and ensure healthy air for all.
By collaborating across borders, sectors, and silos, we can reduce air pollution through collective investments of time, resources and efforts.
PORTLAND, USA, Sep 4 2025 (IPS)** ––It is becoming increasingly apparent that planet Earth is evolving into the planet of the aged. In nearly every country around the world, the numbers and percentages of the aged, commonly defined as individuals aged 65 years or older, haveincreased rapidly.
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Despite living longer lives, the aged are opposed to raising official retirement ages, reducing retirement benefits, or raising taxes on the elderly. They are increasingly protesting, resisting, and demanding that retirement ages stay the same and benefits remain intact. Credit: Shutterstock
(UN News)* — Governments, academia and other stakeholders must “double down on delivering reparatory justice” for people from the African diaspora, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said in a report published on Wednesday [].
2 September 2025 —More than 1 billion people are living with mental health disorders, according to new data released by the World Health Organization (WHO), with conditions such as anxiety and depression inflicting immense human and economic tolls.
WHO / Christopher Black | Community mental health teams are one way of providing mental health care, Ukraine, 2023.
While many countries have bolstered their mental health policies and programmes, greater investment and action are needed globally to scale up services to protect and promote people’s mental health.
Mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression are highly prevalent in all countries and communities, affecting people of all ages and income levels.
4 September 2025 — In this Q&A, Human Rights Watch examines the application of the right to reparation to redress past and present harms stemming from colonial atrocities, including enslavement,[1]systemic racial inequalities, and other related human rights violations.
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 4 2025 (IPS)* –– 2025 has been marked by a significant escalation of the climate crisis and its effects on vulnerable populations, as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns that average global temperatures could exceed the 1.5°C threshold within the next five years.
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A family prepares a banner to protest the effects of climate change on children outside their house in the village of Patzité, Quiché, Guatemala. Credit: UNICEF/Patricia Willocq
In Latin America and the Caribbean, rising temperatures and emissions continue to strain access to essential services and deepen poverty, particularly among children.
(UN News)* — Global education funding is facing sharp reductions that could leave an extra six million children out of school by 2026, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Wednesday [3 September 2025].
Official Development Assistance (ODA) for education is projected to fall by $3.2 billion – a 24 per cent drop from 2023 – with just three donor governments accounting for nearly 80 per cent of the cuts.
Such a decline would push the number of out-of-school children worldwide from 272 million to 278 million, UNICEF said – the equivalent of shutting every primary school in Germany and Italy combined.
“Every dollar cut from education is not just a budgetary decision, it’s a child’s future hanging in the balance,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 3 2025 (IPS)* –– Over the past decade, major strides have been made in expanding global access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services, with billions of people around the world seeing improvements in overall health and well-being.
A woman pulls a floating toilet into the lake in Kaylar village in Shan State, Myanmar, on June 25, 2025. After the earthquake, the onset of the rainy season made access to safe sanitation challenging for displaced communities. Credit: UNICEF/Maung Nyan
Despite these gains, people largely from low-income countries and marginalized groups still lack access to clean water, leaving them vulnerable to disease and hindering social development and inclusion.
TORONTO, Sep 2 2025 (IPS)* –– If European colonialism had never happened in Canada, matriarchy would still have been strong in Indigenous culture. Matriarchy was the backbone of society’s structure and line of dominance in Turtle Island (North America) before the arrival of Westerners.
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Indigenous People’s Celebration in Canada. Photo courtesy of Chrystal Tabobandung
In practice, Indigenous women in Canada have been victims of violence and discrimination.
UNITED NATIONS, New York – Across the world, wars are being waged on the very systems set up to protect civilian populations: Health workers, hospitals, health centres and ambulances are being targeted in horrifying numbers.
On 30 March 2025, a rescue operation in Tal Al Sultan, Rafah, Gaza,recovered the bodies of 15 humanitarian workers from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, the Palestinian Civil Defense and the United Nations. The available information indicates that they were killed by Israeli forces on 23 March and buried under the sand.
Attacks against health facilities doubled between 2023 and 2024, and more than 900health workers were killed last year.
Humanitarian aid workers dedicated to supporting the most vulnerable in multiple crises were also killed in record numbers in 2024. Yet 2025 is outpacing even these dark statistics.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 