(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.
The report shows that shifts in financial markets move global trade almost as strongly as real economic activity, influencing development prospects worldwide.
(UN News)* —Across southeast Asia, record-breaking rains and flooding caused by back-to-back tropical storms have claimed hundreds of lives and brought devastation and displacement upon entire communities, UN agencies said on Tuesday [].
WMO/Daniel Pavlinovic | Across the world, more incidents of extreme weather events are being recorded.
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) spokesperson Clare Nullis told reporters in Geneva that Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Viet Nam are among the countries most affected by what she described as “a combination of monsoon-related rainfall and tropical cyclone activity”.
(UN News)* — Millions of jobs across Asia could be at risk as the AI industry booms at the expense of poorer nations still struggling to provide basic digital access and literacy, UN economists said on Tuesday [].
Just as industrialisation in the 19th century “split the world into a wealthy few and the impoverished”, the AI revolution could do the same.
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“Countries that invest in skills, computing power and sound governance systems will benefit, others risk being left far behind,” warned Philip Schellekens, Chief Economist for the UN Development Programme for the Asia and Pacific region.
(UN News)* — More than 260 media professionals were killed in the recent hostilities in Gaza – the deadliest conflict for journalists in decades.
UN News | Mourners perform the funeral prayer for Palestinian journalists killed in an Israeli airstrike on August 10.
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The issue was in the spotlight at UN Headquarters on Monday [] during a forum focused on the dangers and complexities of reporting from the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 