Herat, Afghanistan, 12 September 2025 – At the Islam Qala border, the wind never rests. Dust stings the eyes and clings to skin as the 40–degree heat turns the ground into a furnace.
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As night falls, a mother holds her son’s hand as they walk past the truck that brought them from Islam Qala to IOM’s transit centre. Photo: IOM 2025/Mohammad Osman Azizi
Families squeeze into slivers of shade, children beside them shielding their faces with scarves as they wait for assistance. For many, this harsh landscape is their first glimpse of home after years away.
Since September 2023, more than four million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan – over 1.5 million in 2025 alone.
SANTIAGO, Chile, Sep 12 2025 (IPS)** – At eighty, the United Nations is bogged down by structural limitations and political divisions that render it powerless to act decisively – nowhere more clearly than in the Gaza genocide.
There is only one treaty in the world that, despite its limitations, binds nations together: the United Nations Charter. Representatives of fifty nations wrote and ratified the UN Charter in 1945, with others joining in the years that followed.
The charter itself only sets the terms for the behaviour of nations. It does not and cannot create a new world. It depends on individual nations to either live by the charter or die without it.
Women carry out at least two and a half times more unpaid household and care work than men
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Women in the health and care sector face a larger gender pay gap than in other economic sectors, earning on average 24 per cent less than their male peers. PHOTO:ILO
The International Equal Pay Day, celebrated on 18 September, represents the longstanding efforts towards the achievement of equal pay for work of equal value.
It further builds on the United Nations’ commitment to human rights and against all forms of discrimination, including discrimination against women and girls.
Across all regions, women are paid less than men, with the gender pay gap estimated at around 20 per cent globally.
(Beirut) – Hundreds of migrant workers employed in Saudi Arabia by the manufacturing and supply company Sendan International did not receive their salaries for up to eight months, Human Rights Watch said on 10 September 2025.
They include workers employed in state-owned oil company Aramco project sites.
Migrant workers were often stranded without pay for months, forced into undocumented status, or left with no choice but to return home at their own expense, abandoning outstanding wages and benefits.
AMMAN, 12 September 2025 (UNICEF)* – “The escalating military offensive in Gaza City is having devastating consequences for over 450,000 children, already traumatized and exhausted by nearly two years of unrelenting war. They are teetering on the edge of survival as both famine and deadly violence spread.
UNICEF/UNI767014/Nateel2 year old Alma. Gaza City, Al-Rimal, Omar Al-Mukhtar Street March 2025
“UNICEF is warning of an impending catastrophe as the military operation expands. With limited or nonexistent shelter and services, the ongoing escalation is already resulting in disproportionate civilian casualties and driving the near total collapse of the remaining lifelines children need to survive.
(UN News)* — Applause rang out in the UN General Assembly Hall on Friday [] as countries endorsed a declaration on the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and implementation of the two-State solution with Israel.
UN Photo/Loey Felipe | The UN General Assembly votes on whether to back the “New York Declaration,” a resolution that seeks to breathe new life into the two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.
The New York Declaration is the outcome of an international conference held in July at UN Headquarters, organized by France and Saudi Arabia, which resumes later this month.
The General Assembly comprises all 193 UN Member States and 142 countries voted in favour of a resolution backing the document.
Israel voted against it, alongside nine other countries – Argentina, Hungary, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Tonga and the United States – while 12 nations abstained.
In recent weeks, widespread flooding has engulfed large parts of Jonglei, Upper Nile and Unity states in the north of the country.
The agency’s representative in South Sudan, Marie-Helene Verney, said that “if the flooding continues, up to 400,000 people are likely to be displaced by the end of the year, exceeding flood displacement levels seen in 2024.”
(UN News)* — A high-level independent rights probe into the brutal war in Sudan condemned the many grave crimes committed by all combatants, citing evidence indicating that civilians have been “deliberately targeted, displaced and starved”.
Shortly after presenting a mandated report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday [], chair of the Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan, Mohamed Chande Othman, insisted that both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia had carried out atrocity crimes.
Among the testimonies gathered for the report, survivors from RSF detention sites described the locations as “slaughterhouses”.
(UN News)* — Attacks on schools in conflict zones around the world have increased by a “staggering 44 per cent” over the past year according to the United Nations, resulting in the death, abduction and trauma of thousands of teachers and students.
Over 41,000 incidents of violence against school-age children were reported by the UN in 2024.
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Countries with the highest levels of violations in were Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, notably the Gaza Strip, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, Nigeria, and Haiti.
(UN News)* — UN rights chief Volker Türk on Monday [] condemned what he called a worldwide “glorification of violence” which is underway, as well as “coordinated efforts” to undermine fundamental birthrights. “It is time for States to wake up and to act,” he insisted.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 