UNITED NATIONS, Dec 23 2025 (IPS)* – Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, once made a highly debatable distinction between “friendly” right-wing “authoritarian” regimes (which were mostly U.S. and Western allies) and “unfriendly” left-wing “totalitarian” dictatorships (which the U.S. abhorred).
Tercer Piso. Source Amnesty International
Around the same time, successive U.S. administrations were cozying up to a rash of authoritarian regimes, mostly in the Middle East, widely accused of instituting emergency laws, detaining dissidents, cracking down on the press, torturing political prisoners and rigorously imposing death penalties.
(UN News)* —As Myanmar approaches elections scheduled for 28 December, the UN’s top human rights official has said that civilians are being coerced from all sides – forced by the military to vote and threatened by armed opposition groups to boycott – in a climate of fear, violence and mass repression.
Unsplash/Kyle Petzer | A pagoda at dawn in downtown Yangon, the commercial hub of Myanmar.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warnedthat the military-controlled ballot is unfolding amid intensified violence, intimidation and arbitrary arrests, leaving no space for free or meaningful participation.
“These elections are clearly taking place in an environment of violence and repression,” Mr. Türk said in a news release.
(UN News)* — Despite the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, humanitarians continue to receive reports of airstrikes, shelling and gunfire in all five governorates, the United Nations said on Monday [].
UN News | As rain falls over Gaza, children take refuge beneath a disabled fishing boat, one of the few places offering shelter in the overcrowded displacement area.
This has resulted in casualties and disruptions to aid operations over the past 24 hours, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told journalists at Headquarters, in New York.
Still, efforts to deliver assistance to the most vulnerable families continue during the cold and wet winter season, although a rescue mission to reach an injured person in Gaza City was denied.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Dec 22 2025 (IPS)** – Myanmar is heading for an election, beginning on 28 December, that’s ostensibly an exercise in democracy – but it has clearly been designed with the aim of conferring more legitimacy on its military junta.
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Credit: Issei Kato/Reuters via Gallo Images
Almost five years after its February 2021 coup, the regime continues to fight pro-democracy forces and ethnic armed organisations, barely controlling a fifth of Myanmar’s territory.
The junta hasacknowledgedthat voting won’t be possible in much of the country.
Some 600 glaciers have already disappeared and many more will vanish if temperatures continue to rise.
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PHOTO:Mark/Adobe Stock
Glaciers, an essential source of life around our mountains
Glaciers, vast reserves of ice and snow found across the planet, are far more than frozen landscapes – they are lifelines for ecosystems and communities, holding around 70 percent of the world’s freshwater.
Their accelerated melting represents not only an environmental crisis but also a humanitarian one, threatening agriculture, clean energy, water security and billions of peoples’ lives.
Their retreat, driven by rising global temperatures, is a stark indicator of the climate crisis.
18 December 2025 — Record heat, record low sea ice, shrinking glaciers, continued warming of the ocean and unprecedented extreme weather events are just some of the disruptive changes reported that are transforming this once reliably frozen region into a warmer, wetter, and unpredictable world.
WMO 2021 Calendar Competition – Henrique Pacini
These are the key findings of the Arctic Report Card 2025, authored by 112 scientists from 13 countries. Now in its 20th year, the report documents ongoing trends, record-setting events, and emerging challenges in a region warming far faster than the rest of the planet.
The findings are a stark warning that the Amazon’s crisis is not only about trees. It is about the air millions of people breathe, and the health of our shared planet.
New evidence shows rangelands are degrading faster than rainforests in some regions, despite bringing multiple benefits and sustaining two billion people
Bonn/Panama City– Stretching from the drylands of Latin America and Africa to the steppes of Central Asia, rangelands underpin food security, climate stability and centuries-old pastoral cultures.
These vast landscapes, covering half the planet, store significant carbon, buffer climate extremes, and regulate water in some of the world’s driest regions.
Yet, despite their immense value, rangelands remain one of the planet’s most overlooked ecosystems.
Oppressive heat. Species extinctions. Pollution-choked skies.
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Courtesy NASA
15 December 2025 —This is the future that awaits the world unless humanity takes dramatic steps to end a series of mushrooming environmental crises, finds a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The seventh edition of the Global Environment Outlook(GEO-7) offers a stark vision of the decades to come.
Explore UN Women’s FAQs on how gender affects migration experiences.
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. Photo: UN Women Cambodia/Women Migrant Workers participatory photography project
Learn about the unique challenges that migrant women and girls face and how these differ to those men experience, from limited access to information and services to risks like trafficking, exploitation and violence.
What is the difference between migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers?
. Photo: UN Women Cambodia/Women Migrant Workers participatory photography project
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 