(UN News)* — With nearly $1.6 billion in unpaid dues, the UN Secretary-General warned on Monday [] that chronic late payments are hampering the world body’s ability to function, even as sweeping cuts move forward through the General Assembly’s main budget committee.
António Guterres told the Fifth Committee the UN is facing its most fragile cash position in years, despite sharp reductions already built into next year’s budget plans.
UN News/Vibhu Mishra | The United Nations Headquarters as seen from First Avenue in New York City.
MANILA, Philippines, Nov 11 2025 (IPS)* –US President Trump’s economic strategy for his second term aims to get the rest of the world, especially its wealthy allies with greater means, to pay more to help strengthen the US economy.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Recent US initiatives have undoubtedly accelerated de-dollarisation but these have largely been unavoidable consequences of its own actions rather than due to any conspiracy by others to that end.
De-dollarisation distraction
Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff recently observed, “We are absolutely at the biggest inflection point in the global currency system since the Nixon shock to end the last vestige of the gold standard.”
After the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the gold price was set at $35 per ounce. In August 1971, US President Richard Nixon ended this gold-dollar parity.
(UN News)* —The UN human rights office, OHCHR said on Friday [] that it was “appalled” by the “brazen killing” of two Palestinian men by Israeli border police in the West Bank, describing it as “an apparent summary execution.
The shooting occurred on Thursday [] in Jenin and was apparently caught on film by a TV channel, OHCHR Spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told journalists in Geneva.
(UN News)* — Aid deliveries into Gaza continue to face difficulties as fighting continues across the territory, with the UN warning that most hospitals are only partially functioning and more than 16,500 patients still require urgent medical evacuation.
Briefing reporters in New York on Wednesday [], UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarricsaidhostilities in parts of the Gaza Strip are still resulting in casualties and repeated disruptions to humanitarian operations.
(UN News)* — For over two years, tens of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza. The enclave faces its most severe economic collapse in history, and even amid a fragile ceasefire, children continue to die.
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UNOCHA/ Olga Cherevko | Children queue for food at a community kitchen in Deir al Balah, Gaza, prior to the ceasefire agreement.
(UN News)* — The Occupied Palestinian Territory is now in its deepest economic crisis ever recorded, with Gaza suffering an “unprecedented and catastrophic” collapse, according to a new report from the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) presented in Geneva on Tuesday [].
UN News | People walk through a destroyed neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Speaking at the launch of UNCTAD’s 2025 Report on the Economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the agency’s Deputy Secretary-General Pedro Manuel Moreno said decades of movement restrictions, combined with the latest military operations, had “wiped out decades of progress” and left both Gaza and the West Bank facing long-term devastation.
(UN News)* — Women in Gaza are ensuring their families’ survival “with nothing but courage and exhausted hands” while violence continues and essentials remain in short supply, the UN’s gender equality agency warned on Tuesday [].
UN Women’s Chief of Humanitarian Action Sofia Calltorp, who just returned from a visit to the enclave last week, said that women there repeatedly told her “there may be a cease-fire, but the war is not over”.
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“The attacks are fewer, but the killings continue,” she said.
–In Belem, Brazil, as the United Nations climate summit (COP30) convened, I marched alongside thousands of activists and Indigenous peoples calling on governments to urgently address climate change and protect human rights.
21 November 2025 — In response to the latest ‘Mutirão’ text, Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International Climate Policy Lead, said:
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Climate activists Cynthia Houniuhi, Hilda Nakabuye, Marinel Ubaldo, and Pavel Martiarena at the Climate Justice Camp. (Photo: Tim Zijlstra/Oxfam).
“As COP30 races toward its close, world leaders are gambling with the planet — and with the lives of the poorest. Rich countries are treating adaptation finance as a bargaining chip.
Yet adaptation finance is a lifeline for all people, from farmers facing failed harvests to families already uprooted by climate disasters.
UN News/Vibhu Mishra | The United Nations Headquarters as seen from First Avenue in New York City.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 