KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Apr 22 2025 (IPS)* – Donald Trump’s top economic advisor claims the President has weaponised tariffs to ‘persuade’ other nations to pay the US to maintain its supposedly mutually beneficial global empire.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Geopolitical economist Ben Norton was among the first to highlight the significance of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers chairman Stephen Miran’s briefing at the Hudson Institute.
The Institute is funded by financiers such as media czar Rupert Murdoch, who controls Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and other conservative media.
Miran made his case just after Trump’s electoral victory in A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System. Miran attempts to rationalise Trump’s economic policies, which are widely seen as at odds with conventional wisdom and reason.
(UN News)* —The United Nations on warned that escalating hostilities and access constraints in Gaza are exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis, displacing hundreds of thousands and depriving civilians of shelter, food and medicine.
More than 500,000 people are reported to have been newly displaced since 18 March 2025, many of them uprooted multiple times due to ongoing military operations across the Gaza Strip.
The war in the Gaza Strip has taken an unconscionable toll on children. At least 15,600 have been reported killed, with thousands more injured. Nearly every child in Gaza knows what it is to be displaced: Their families have been torn apart, their homes destroyed.
()* —Haiti is on the verge of “total chaos” as coordinated gang violence continues to escalate, threatening the State’s ability to maintain public order, the UN’s top envoy for the country warned on Monday .
Special Representative María Isabel Salvador told ambassadors in the Security Council that a “deliberate and coordinated” campaign is being waged by organized crime groups to expand territorial control and paralyse the capital, Port-au-Prince.
(UN News)* —Two centuries to the day after France imposed a crippling debt on Haiti in exchange for its independence, a UN forum has heard calls for the restitution of what has long been described as a “ransom” extorted under the threat of force from the Caribbean nation that still bears the scars of colonialism and slavery.
UN Photo/Mark Garten | Shackles used to bind slaves on display at the Transatlantic Slave Trade exhibition at UN Headquarters in New York. (file)
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The first country ever to free itself from slavery through a successful uprising, Haiti gained independence from France in 1804. But the price for defying the colonial order was steep.
On April 17, 1825, besieged by French warships, Haiti agreed to pay an indemnity of 150 million gold francs to the European power.
New UNDP remote sensing analysis shows massive, immediate reconstruction is vital in Myanmar due to widespread damage to homes, hospitals, and critical infrastructure.
UNDP Myanmar
New York/Yangon, 14 April 2025 –At least two and half million tonnes of debris, roughly 125,000 truckloads – must be removed in Myanmar.
“The children are the breadwinners of the family, and we have no other source of income.”
18 April 2025 — In a makeshift settlement on the outskirts of Herat City, we meet 75-year-old Bibi Gul. Each day, her four grandchildren roam the streets in search of plastic to sell for recycling, to help the family survive.
They were forced to flee their home due to drought and conflict.
Now, with aid drying up, they’re left with nothing.
()* — A mass wave of displacement in Sudan’s North Darfur state is pushing hundreds of thousands into precarious conditions far from lifesaving aid, as overstretched operations struggle to keep pace with the growing emergency.
Renewed attacks on camps – including Zamzam and Abu Shouk – that were sheltering those displaced by earlier violence have now forced an estimated 400,000 to 450,000 people to flee again.
16 April 2025 – Two years into Sudan’s war, millions of lives have been uprooted – and millions more hang in the balance. Behind the staggering statistics of displacement, hunger and loss, there are people like Khaled, Um Adam, Zainab and Mariam – each carrying the burden of a conflict they never chose.
Zainab, 35, fled with her four children from Nyala to West Darfur, seeking safety from relentless airstrikes and fighting.
These are not just stories of loss. They are urgent reminders of why the crisis in Sudan can’t be ignored.
The protracted conflict and economic collapse in Yemen have created one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, affecting over 18 million people.
With the war entering its eleventh year, countless Yemenis are still waiting for a chance to rebuild their lives. Photo: IOM/Majed Mohammed
Eighty per cent of Yemenites live in poverty, and more than half struggle to access basic necessities including food, health care and safe water.
Displacement remains widespread, and there are millions of internally displaced persons, many of whom have been forced to move multiple times.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 