(UN News)* — A decade after the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), development is facing serious headwinds – including what UN officials describe as a “silent crisis” of surging debt service payments in low-income countries.
After years of hiding under a false identity, a Syrian father in Jordan reclaims his name and secures a future for his family.
Outside of Salem Al-Ahmed’s tent in Lubban. Photo: Shaden Abdulrahman/NRC
Life in hiding
Salem Al-Ahmad* fled Syria in 2012, using his cousin’s name to escape arrest as a military deserter. Once in Jordan, he was able to register as an asylum seeker and obtain a Ministry of Interior card.
He settled in Al Lubban, west of Amman, where he married Buthainah, a fellow refugee. Together, they had five children: Tasneem, Nidal, Omar, Sinan, and Ameer, all registered under Salem’s assumed name.
(UN News)* — UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday [] reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, warning that the humanitarian crisis has reached “horrific proportions” and that the world must not let the suffering of Palestinians be overshadowed by other regional conflicts.
Speaking to reporters at UN Headquarters ahead of his departure to Spain for the International Conference on Financing for Development, the UN Secretary-General said that while the Israel-Iran conflict had dominated recent headlines, the plight of civilians in Gaza remained urgent and dire.
“Families have been displaced again and again – and are now confined to less than one-fifth of Gaza’s land,” he said.
“Even these shrinking spaces are under threat. Bombs are falling – on tents, on families, on those with nowhere left to run.”
(UN News)* — The first delivery earlier this week of urgently needed medical goods to enter Gaza in months will provide scant relief to the enclave’s people, who continue to be shot and killed in their search for food, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday [].
“Definitely, people get shot,” said Gaza-based medic Dr. Luca Pigozzi, WHO Emergency Medical Team Coordinator. “They are victim of blast injuries as well and bodily injuries.”
Jewish protest against Benjamin Netanyahu, 24 Mar 2023 Alisdare Hickson from Woolwich, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
16 Jun 2025 – For nearly 30 years, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has driven the Middle East into war and destruction. The man is a powder keg of violence.
(UN News)* —Most families in the Gaza Strip are surviving on one meal a day and one-third go entire days without eating as a result of Israel’s continued bombardment of the enclave, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and partners.
The meals which families are able to obtain are nutritiously poor — thin broths, lentils or rice, one piece of bread or sometimes just a combination of herbs and olive oil known as duqqa.
(UN News)* — Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are increasingly being subjected to forced displacement and land seizures, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, reported on Thursday .
Israeli authorities have stepped up measures to transfer large numbers of people from long-standing Palestinian towns and communities, according to OHCHR’s office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
—Helping those with less isn’t charity – it’s a shared investment in a better future. Yet global development financing is under strain. An upcoming UN conference in Sevilla, Spain, aims to change that by mobilizing large-scale investment for a more just and sustainable world.
(UN News)* — According to the United Nations, the world needs an extra $4 trillion every year to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges – ending poverty and hunger, fighting climate change, and reducing inequality.
ATLANTA, USA, Jun 26 2025 ( IPS)* –Chest thumping “Mission Accomplished” claims by President Trump that he ordered the world’s biggest conventional bombs to be dropped on a sleeping nation of 90 million people, were premature.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said Iran has reported no increase inradiation levels outside Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites. After surprise US bombing raids on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities over the weekend, the head of the UN-backed nuclear watchdog on Monday appealed for immediate access to the targeted sites to assess the damage that is likely “very significant”. 23 June 2025. Credit: Dean Calma/IAEA
To top it off he bragged that Iran’s nuclear capacity was devastated and that the whole nation fired “not a single shot” back.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 