Decades of progress on tackling malnutrition are under threat from funding cuts.
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UNICEF/UNI428897/UNICEF/YPN
Malnutrition is deadly. A child suffering from severe acute malnutrition is nine times more likely to die than a well-nourished child.
But the dire consequences of malnutrition aren’t always immediate or visible from the outside.
Poor diets also inflict devastating damage on the inside, stunting children’s growth, impairing their brain development and leaving them susceptible to disease.
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 25 2025 (IPS)* –– Sexual violence against women and children during wars should not be considered collateral damage. “It is strategy, it is systematic, and it is used more and more,” Permanent Representative of Denmark to the United Nations (UN) Christina Markus Lassen said.
Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, briefs the Security Council during the meeting on women, peace and security. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
Lassen was speaking at the August 19 Security Council meeting on Women and Peace and Security after the 16th annual Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violencerevealed a 25 percent increase in conflict-related sexual violence from the previous year and concerning global trends on the use of sexual violence as a form of torture and against prisoners of war.
Women and girls made up 92 percent of the victims; sexual violence against children increased by 35 percent, the report, which was published on August 14 said.
26 August 2025 — The Israeli military’s extensive and deliberate destruction of civilian property and agricultural land across southern Lebanon must be investigated as war crimes, Amnesty International said in a new briefing.
A frame of a video circulated on social media in November 2024 shows the destruction by manually laid explosives of a mosque and nearby buildings in Dhayra, southern Lebanon.
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Homes and buildings destroyed by explosives and bulldozers
More than 10,000 structures heavily damaged or destroyed, even after ceasefire declared
“Israeli troops deliberately left a trail of devastation as they moved through the region” – Erika Guevara Rosas
31 August 2025 — Hundreds of media outlets, brought together by the campaigning platform Avaaz and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), are waging a campaign calling for the protection of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, the emergency evacuation of reporters seeking to leave the Strip, an end to impunity for Israeli crimes against Gaza’s reporters and that foreign press be granted independent access to the territory.
The families and friends of the victims, experience slow mental anguish, not knowing whether the victim is still alive and, if so, where he or she is being held, under what conditions, and in what state of health. PHOTO:OHCHR Mexcio
Enforced disappearance has frequently been used as a strategy to spread terror within the society.
The feeling of insecurity generated by this practice is not limited to the close relatives of the disappeared, but also affects their communities and society as a whole.
Enforced disappearance has become a global problem and is not restricted to a specific region of the world.
Once largely the product of military dictatorships, enforced disappearances can nowadays be perpetrated in complex situations of internal conflict, especially as a means of political repression of opponents.
(UN News)* — Humanitarians continue to push for more support for Sudan amid ongoing conflict, rising malnutrition and a cholera outbreak, a senior UN aid coordination official said on Thursday [] in New York.
Edem Wosornu, Director of Operations and Advocacy for the humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, briefed journalists on her recent visit to Sudan and neighbouring Chad – a critical entry point for aid and a haven for some 850,000 people who have fled fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia.
The war erupted in April 2023 and she said it has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with some 30 million people needing assistance.
(UN News)* — State authority is crumbling across Haiti while gang violence engulfs the capital Port-au-Prince and beyond, “paralysing daily life and forcing families to flee,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on Thursday [].
Six million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, while 1.3 million people – half of them children – having been forced to flee their homes, he added.
‘Shamefully overlooked’
Haiti now ranks among the five hunger hotspots worldwide that are of “highest concern,” said the UN chief.
Yet it remains the world’s least funded humanitarian appeal. Less than 10 per cent of the $908 million needed has been received.
IOM Calls for International Support as Yemen Faces Deadly Flooding.
IOM supports communities in Yemen with relief, shelter, and essential services during emergencies. Photo: IOM/Haithm Abdulbaqi
Aden, 28 August 2025 (IOM)* –Since early August, torrential rains and violent windstorms have devastated communities across Yemen, destroying homes, sweeping away livelihoods, and displacing thousands of families already living in precarious conditions.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Aug 28 2025 (IPS)** –– On 7 August, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights delivered a groundbreaking decision that could transform women’s lives across the Americas.
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Credit: Corte IDH/Twitter
For the first time in international law, an international tribunal recognised care as an autonomous human right.
Advisory Opinion 31/25, issued in response to a request from Argentina, elevates care – long invisible and relegated to the private sphere – to the level of a universal enforceable entitlement.
BOCAS DEL TORO PROVINCE, Panama (UNFPA)* 29 August 2025 -– “We don’t have special care for women,” said Jakelyn Chiu, a single mother of three from the Bocas del Toro Province in Panama. “Here in the district, we don’t have a permanent gynaecologist. Women have to go to another province for care.”
Ms. Chiu had her first baby at age 17 and now works with UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, to empower adolescent girls and prevent unintended pregnancies in her community.
Across Latin America and the Caribbean, a girl becomes a mother every 20 seconds, according to a recent report by UNFPA.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 