'Unseen' News and Views
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.”
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.
Women are girls suffered the most.
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.
(UN News)* — For many countries in crisis, brain drain can feel like an unbreakable loop.
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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks after being sworn in by Vice President JD Vance near the White House in Washington, DC, January 21, 2025. © 2025 AP Photo/Evan Vucci(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.
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.
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.
– The EU likes to think of itself as a normative power — a community of values, committed to upholding international law, promoting peace, protecting civilians and building a rules-based global order.
These are not just lofty ideals; they are enshrined in EU treaties, declarations and Council conclusions.
Credit: alliance/Anadolu/Moiz Salhi
But when it comes to the brutal, drawn-out destruction of Gaza and the continued illegal occupation of Palestine, these principles seem to have become hollow rhetoric.
Worse, they are being actively undermined by the craven inaction of the EU’s institutions and the blockage of governments like Germany, Italy, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
The European Commission has been shamefully absent as well.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 