By Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights*
10 December 2025 (OHCHR)* — Human rights are underfunded, undermined and under attack. And yet. Powerful. Undeterred. Mobilizing.
UN Photo/Mark Garten | Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in an interview with UN News.
This year no doubt has been a difficult one. And one full of dangerous contradictions. Funding for human rights has been slashed, while anti-rights movements are increasingly well-funded.
Profits for the arms industry are soaring, while funding for humanitarian aid and grassroots civil society plummets.
Those defending rights and justice are attacked, sanctioned and hauled before courts, even as those ordering the commission of atrocity crimes continue to enjoy impunity.
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 11 2025 (IPS)*– Over the course of 2025, global civic space conditions have deteriorated sharply, with most countries experiencing some degree of obstructed civil liberties.
The panelists at the CIVICUS press briefing on the 2025 People Power Under Attack Report. Credit: Oritro Karim/IPS
As authoritarian governments strengthen their hold and have even escalated the use of military force to suppress public dissent, civilians report facing increasing limitations of freedoms of association, peaceful assembly, petition and religion, as well as notable crackdowns on press freedoms.
(UN News)* — Gaza’s health system for mothers and newborns has been “decimated”, the UN said on Thursday [], with Israeli attacks destroying almost all hospitals, cutting off medical supplies and driving sharp rises in maternal deaths, miscarriages and newborn fatalities amid mass displacement and hunger.
United Nations | Medical equipment destroyed in an attack on a hospital in Gaza.
According to the UN human rights office (OHCHR), more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October 2023, when Palestinian armed groups attacked communities in southern Israel, triggering Israel’s full-scale military assault on the enclave.
OHCHR said 94 per cent of Gaza’s hospitals have been damaged or destroyed, leaving pregnant women and newborns without essential care.
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.
Responding to EU home affairs ministers’ position on the EU Return Regulation agreed in Brussels on , Olivia Sundberg Diez, EU Advocate on Migration and Asylum at Amnesty International, said:
“EU ministers’ position on the Return Regulation reveals the EU’s dogged and misguided insistence on ramping up deportations, raids, surveillance, and detention at any cost…
… These punitive measures amount to an unprecedented stripping of rights based on migration status and will leave more people in precarious situations and legal limbo.
(UN News)* — Intensifying fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has claimed more than 70 civilian lives, displaced over 200,000 people and cut thousands off from food assistance, prompting UN warnings of a rapidly expanding humanitarian emergency spilling across borders.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the situation in South Kivu province has deteriorated sharply since 2 December due to heavy fighting across multiple territories, including Uvira, Walungu, Mwenga, Shabunda, Kabare, Fizi and Kalehe.
Gaza City, 8 December 2025 – One month into the latest ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, a fragile calm has brought long-awaited relief for families who have endured unimaginable suffering and repeated displacement.
For the third time in over two years, after previously collapsed ceasefires, there is a small space for hope – a renewed opportunity for survival, safety, and dignity for nearly 2 million Palestinians.
Thousands of families remain without a roof over their heads. For months on end, many have lain awake beneath the open sky.
Ensuring full humanitarian access is essential for Gaza’s fragile ceasefire to lead to meaningful recovery. Photo: IOM 2025
Select your languagEnsuring full humanitarian access is essential for Gaza’s fragile ceasefire to lead to meaningful recovery. Photo: IOM 2025
(Washington, DC) – Human rights groups on 8 December 2025 urged US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to end immigration detention at Camp East Montana, a massive tent camp at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas.
In their letter, advocates summarized accounts of horrific conditions, including beatings and sexual abuse by officers against detained immigrants, beatings and coercive threats to compel deportation to third countries, medical neglect, hunger and insufficient food, and denial of meaningful access to counsel, among other rights violations.
(UN News)* —Mothers who’ve been left starving in Gaza are now giving birth to underweight or premature babies who die in intensive care units or struggle to survive as they endure acute malnutrition, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday [].
Speaking from the shattered enclave, UNICEF Communication Manager Tess Ingram said that at least 165 children are reported to have died “painful, preventable deaths” related to malnutrition during the war between Hamas fighters and Israel.
A lesser-known scourge is acute hunger among pregnant and breastfeeding women and “the devastating domino effect” of this lack of a healthy diet on thousands of newborns.
UN Photo/Mark Garten | Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in an interview with UN News.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 