(UN News)* — The world of work is undergoing rapid and destabilising change, with widening inequality and job insecurity leaving millions without stable livelihoods or basic protections.
ESCAP/Anthony Into | On Santiago Island in Bolinao, Philippines, a woman tends to sun-dried rabbitfish (‘danggit’), a livelihood that supports many households.
That is the warning outlined in a new assessment released on Friday by the UN International Labour Organization (ILO), which urges governments, employers and labour organizations to put dignity and workers’ rights at the centre of economic decision-making.
BULAWAYO & BANGKOK, Oct 31 2025 (IPS)* – From the streets of Bangkok to power corridors in Washington, the civil society space for dissent is fast shrinking.
Mandeep Tiwana, Secretary General, CIVICUS Global Alliance. Credit: CIVICUS
Authoritarian regimes are silencing opposition but indirectly fueling corruption and widening inequality, according to a leading global civil society alliance.
The warning is from Mandeep Tiwana, Secretary General of CIVICUSGlobal Alliance, who points to a troubling trend: civil society is increasingly considered a threat to those in power.
That is a sobering assessment from CIVICUS, which reports that a wave of repression by authoritarian regimes is directly fueling corruption and exploding inequality.
Waste collectors and informal economy workers navigate daily risks and hardships, making social protection an essential lifeline during crises, emergencies and economic shocks in the Philippines.
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MANILA, 29 October 2025 – Danger was a childhood companion for Mark Angelo Jacob. At just 12 years old, while trying to stay in school, he began scavenging at the Payatas dumpsite in Quezon City, Philippines. Child labour shaped his early years living and working in the dumpsite.
Funding cuts are forcing WFP to sharply shrink assistance to hundreds of thousands asylum seekers
Nyibol (carrying baby) and her children arrive in Gambella, Ethiopia, after a days-long trek from South Sudan. Photo: WFP/Michael Tewelde
– Nyibol and her four children crossed from their native South Sudan into Ethiopia last April, feeling weak from hunger. It had been days since their last meal.
“My children are small; the journey was difficult for them,” recalls Nyibol, describing struggling with sickness during a two-week long journey
More details continued to emerge on Friday of atrocities committed during and after the fall of El Fasher to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Since the powerful paramilitary group made a major incursion into the city last week, the UN human rights office has received “horrendous accounts of summary executions, mass killings, rapes, attacks against humanitarian workers, looting, abductions and forced displacement,” said Seif Magango, spokesperson for the UN human rights office (OHCHR).
El Fasher has “descended into an even darker hell,” senior UN officials warned on Thursday, as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia seized control of the North Darfur capital after a 500-day siege, forcing tens of thousands to flee on foot amid reports of mass executions, rape and starvation.
Briefing ambassadors in the Security Council, the UN’s top relief official Tom Fletcher said “women and girls are being raped, people being mutilated and killed – with utter impunity,” adding: “We cannot hear the screams, but – as we sit here today – the horror is continuing.”
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31 2025 (IPS)* – The United States, the largest single contributor to the UN budget, is using its financial clout to threaten the United Nations by cutting off funds and withdrawing from several UN agencies.
Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe
In an interview with Breitbart News U.S. Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Mike Waltz said last week “a quarter of everything the UN does, the United States pays for”.
“Is there money being well spent? I’d say right now, no, because it’s being spent on all of these other woke projects, rather than what it was originally intended to do, what President Trump wants it to do, and what I want it to do, which is focus on peace.” Continue reading →
Women in the health and care sector face a larger gender pay gap than in other economic sectors, earning on average 24 per cent less than their male peers. PHOTO:ILO
The care economy
Care work, both paid and unpaid, is crucial to the future of decent work.
Growing populations, ageing societies, changing families, women’s secondary status in labour markets and shortcomings in social policies demand urgent action on the organization of care work from governments, employers, trade unions and individual citizens.
As Hurricane Melissa moved north of Jamaica on Wednesday, the head of the UN team there said that preliminary damage assessments from the category 5 storm showed a level of devastation “never seen before” on the Caribbean island.
As Hurricane Melissa moved north of Jamaica on Wednesday, the head of the UN team there said that preliminary damage assessments from the category 5 storm showed a level of devastation “never seen before” on the Caribbean island.
29 October 2025 (UN News)* —Horrific stories of mass-atrocities committed by the RSF militia continue to emerge, along with the tens of thousands of civilians who have fled the North Darfur city of El Fasher in Sudan.
The World Health Organization says it’s appalled and deeply shocked by reports that 460 patients and their companions have been killed at Saudi Maternity Hospital in the city.
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that prior to this latest attack, WHO has verified 285 attacks on healthcare in Sudan with at least 1,204 deaths and over 400 injuries of health workers and patients, since the start of the conflict.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 