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?
A new global synthesis report and refugee voices from East Africa and the Middle East warn that reductions in humanitarian footprints risks breaking the refugee protection system.
Sahrawi refugees walk near the Awserd Refugee Camp in the Tindouf Province of Algeria. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
SRINAGAR, India, Dec 16 2025 (IPS)* –– The global refugee system is entering a period of deep strain. The delivery of protection and assistance is undergoing a transformation due to funding cuts, institutional reforms, and shifting donor priorities.
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 11 2025 (IPS)* –When there was widespread speculation that a UN Under-Secretary-General (USG), a product of two prestigious universities—Oxford and Cambridge—was planning to run for the post of Secretary-General back in the 1980s, I pointedly asked him to confirm or deny the rumor during an interview in the UN delegate’s lounge.
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The Security Council in session. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
“I don’t think”, he declared, “anyone in his right mind will ever want that job”.
Fast forward to 2026.
As a financially stricken UN is looking for a new Secretary-General, who will take office beginning January 2027, the USG’s remark in a bygone era was a reflection of a disaster waiting to happen.
NAIROBI, Dec 10 2025 (IPS)* –– A new study and interactive dashboard released today in Nairobi at the seventh session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) finds that current international financial flows remain billions of dollars short of what is required to achieve the global biodiversity target of protecting and conserving at least 30 percent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030 (30×30).
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New report finds that current international financial flows remain billions of dollars short of what is required to protect and conserve at least 30 percent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. Photo: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
Around 100 hectares of Palestinian land have been reportedly confiscated to make way for the new route.
This would mark another step towards the progressive fragmentation of the West Bank, warned the head of the OHCHR’s Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ajith Sunghay.
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“We are alarmed to hear that Israel has actually started building a new barrier and a road in the heart of the Jordan Valley,” he said on Friday [].
Geneva, 12 December 2025 – Storm Byron, a severe storm system that triggered flooding in Greece and Cyprus before reaching Gaza earlier this week, has now made landfall, bringing heavy rainfall that has already flooded multiple displacement sites and placed nearly 795,000* displaced Palestinians at heightened risk.
Flooding in Gaza has damaged shelters and left families exposed to rising risks. Photo: IOM 2025
Rainfall is expected to continue in the hours ahead, further straining conditions for families already living in unsafe shelters.
(UN News)* —Three women in Jamaica whose lives were upended by the destructive force of a hurricane which battered the Caribbean island are looking to rebuild their future.
Right before Hurricane Melissa swept across Jamaica in late October 2025, Rose* took her two children to a friend’s sturdy concrete home to keep them safe.
When they returned the next morning, everything had vanished. “The house was gone,” she said. “I didn’t even see the roof, just a piece of lumber.”
(UN News)* — A spike in Israeli military raids and settler violence across the occupied West Bank is driving new displacement, shutting schools and disrupting essential services for tens of thousands of Palestinians, the UN relief coordination office, OCHA, said in its latest humanitarian update Friday [].
Between 25 November and 1 December, four Palestinians, including one child, were killed by Israeli forces, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank so far this year to 227. Nearly half of all fatalities in 2025 were recorded in the Jenin and Nablus governorates.
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Large-scale operations in Jenin and Tubas governorates alone affected more than 95,000 Palestinians last week.
(UN News)* — Nearly two months after the latest ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on 10 October, a fragile calm has brought much-needed relief to families who have endured unimaginable suffering and repeated displacement.
For months on end, thousands of families remain without a roof over their heads, laying beneath the open sky — the stars above offering both solace and a haunting reminder of everything they have lost.
Sabah, her husband Ahmad, and their seven children spent weeks sleeping in the open after losing their home.
“We fled from Shuja’iya to Rimal, then to the south – Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – and then back to Shuja’iya,” Ahmad explains.
“Every time we move, we lose more of what little we have.”
(UN News)* — Israeli airstrikes took place within the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon’s (UNIFIL) area of operations, the mission said in a statement issued on Friday [].
The strikes come as the Lebanese Armed Forces continue operations to control unauthorised weapons and infrastructure in south Lebanon a year after a cessation of hostilities was announced in the country.
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“We urge the Israel Defense Forces to avail of the liaison and coordination mechanisms available to them,” UNIFIL said. “We caution Lebanese actors against any reaction that could aggravate the situation further.”
. Photo: UN Women Cambodia/Women Migrant Workers participatory photography project
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 