Al-Kufra, Libya, 11 August 2025 – Khartoum mornings once carried a familiar rhythm. The call to prayer echoed softly through the narrow streets, blending with the clatter of market stalls opening and the sound of children shuffling to school.
For 45-year-old NourAlhuda, life pulsed with structure and meaning.
She had spent 16 years teaching Arabic and Islamic studies, her voice steady and firm in the classroom, her presence respected in the community.
“Teaching was more than a job for me,” she explains. “It gave me purpose.”
IOM’s health centre in Al-Kufra provides critical care and hope to displaced Sudanese women like NourAlhuda and Arafa. Photo: IOM 2024/Mouaid Tariq Duffani
(UN News)* — Adam Ibrahim was working with the UN humanitarian agency, OCHA, in his home country, Sudan, when conflict between rival armed forces erupted in early 2023 and he became a refugee alongside thousands of others who continue to flee the ongoing violence.
Sudan is one of the world’s largest and most complex humanitarian crises, with more than 30.4 million people – over half the population – urgently needing humanitarian assistance.
Yet the 2025 Sudan humanitarian needs and response plan is severely underfunded, with only 13.3 per cent of the required resources received so far.
12 August 2025 — For 14-year-old Atsede Tesfay, each morning began with a jerrycan and a three-kilometre walk to the nearest water source. The journey was open, exposed, and unsafe. The road was long, the risks familiar. She spent more hours searching for water and fewer hours in class.
“It was painful,” Atsede recalls. “But we had no other choice.”
Rehabilitated well. | Photo: NRC | In Fiyelwuha village in northern Ethiopia, water once flowed within reach of every home. Then came conflict, and the wells that sustained the community were intentionally destroyed by troops in the contested area. The lifeline ran dry.
In Dima District, the destruction of water infrastructure during the conflict cut off clean water access for over 2,900 people.
Families were left with few options like using unsafe water or embarking on dangerous journeys to obtain it.
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 15 2025 (IPS)* — Asia-Pacific’s midwives are a healthcare lifeline capable of delivering nearly 90 percent of essential maternal and newborn services. Yet the region grapples with severe shortages, underinvestment, and systemic neglect.
Strong health systems start with midwives. Credit: Unsplash
The newly released State of Asia’s Midwifery 2024 Report, released by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), reveals that despite midwives’ lifesaving potential, many countries lack enough workers, face poor training and support systems, and struggle with weak policy backing.
The findings underscore an urgent need to elevate midwives from auxiliary roles to central pillars of health systems across the region.
Armed conflict, climate shocks and economic downturn drive out local experts who take with them the know-how that is essential to reversing the crisis.
So the crisis continues. And the brain drain intensifies.
(Washington, DC) – The Trump administration’s omission of key sections and manipulation of certain countries’ rights abuses degrade and politicize the 2025 US State Department human rights report, Human Rights Watch on 12 August 2025 said.
(UN News)* — When Israeli forces in Gaza issue a new displacement order ahead of an incursion into a neighbourhood or city, Palestinian civilians are expected to pack their bags and flee – perhaps for the third, fourth, or tenth time.
But for an increasing number of Palestinians, including those who cannot hear the orders or whose mobility is impaired, following these orders may be impossible. Yet, failure to do so, could cost them their lives.
“In a normal situation, people with disabilities suffer the most. And in wartime, of course, the situation is heightened further,” said Muhannad Salah Al-Azzeh, member of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at a public dialogue this week in Geneva.
With the number of disabled people in Gaza increasing every day, Mr. Al-Azzeh said that the minimum level of safety for people with disabilities is not being upheld.
JNOUB, Lebanon, Aug 15 2025 (IPS)* ––“Special, targeted operations in southern Lebanon,” a phrase that has echoed repeatedly over the past two years in Israeli Defence Force (IDF) statements.
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But behind these clinical military terms lies a human cost that statistics cannot capture.
Morning after an Israeli attack in Tyre, Lebanon. Credit: Nour
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The residents of southern Lebanon—mothers, fathers, children, and elders—are the ones who face the daily reality of displacement, loss, and uncertainty.
Their homes become coordinates on military maps; their neighborhoods, theaters of “operations.”
It’s this vicious cycle that as long as the institutions are still so weak, you have the Wild West like in old American movies, where the sheriff is the judge, jury and executioner, all in one.
(UN News)* — With armed gangs expanding their influence, self-defence groups morphing into gang-like entities and public officials acting with impunity, Haiti is slowly becoming something like the Wild West, according to William O’Neill, the UN’s designated expert on human rights forthe Caribbean island nation.
And if you ask Mr. O’Neill what is creating conditions akin to the Wild West, the answer is desperation.
With over 1.3 million Haitians displaced and half of the country going hungry, desperation is not some abstract idea in Haiti — it is a lived reality.
(UN News)* — Sexual violence in conflict zones rose sharply in 2024, increasing by a quarter compared to the previous year, the UN reported on Thursday [].
More than 4,600 survivors endured abuses used as weapons of war, torture, terrorism and political repression.
According to the annual Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, both State and non-State actors were responsible for violations in 21 countries, with the highest numbers recorded in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Haiti, Somalia and South Sudan.
Women and girls made up 92% of victims, but men, boys, people with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, racial and ethnic minorities – together with some persons with disabilities – were also targeted, ranging in age from one to 75.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 