Humanitarian Crisis

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called for an urgent and significant scale-up of interventions and funding to respond to the escalating number of cases of sexual violence reported against children and women in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, DR Congo). Gender-based violence (GBV) against girls and women in North Kivu province increased by 37 percent during the first three months of 2023 compared to the same period a year ago, UNICEF said on Thursday.

The United Nation High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has called on journalists to ensure that large-scale human suffering in forgotten crises around the world does not go unreported and that “the demands of the people are amplified so that those with the power, influence and the funds hear it to make a difference.” The comments came on the eve of today’s Human Rights Day, as Mr. Türk launched a yearlong campaign to mark the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 75 years ago.

Gang violence in Haiti continues to have a devastating impact on the country's population, according to a new human rights report by the United Nations political mission in Haiti (BINUH). Tuesday's report, which covers the last quarter of 2024, says at least 1,732 people were killed and 411 injured as a result of direct gang violence, as well as self-defense groups and police operations.

Members of Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya community living as refugees in Bangladesh are again voicing opposition to efforts to repatriate many of them. They say that the Myanmar government has not met their demands over citizenship rights and that it is not safe for them to go back to Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Those concerns come amid a plan for their repatriation to Myanmar in the coming weeks.

Just weeks after thousands of Rohingya refugees lost their homes to Cyclone Mocha, they face another blow as funding shortages force the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to cut food vouchers in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar to just US$ 8, or less than 9 cents per meal. The UN agency said Friday that funding shortfalls had already led to a cut in food aid earlier this year.

The international rights group Amnesty International (AI) says newly arrived Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh need urgent access to food, shelter and health care after enduring the worst violence against their communities since Myanmar's military-led campaign in 2017. Bangladesh must stop sending Rohingya back to Myanmar, where they face attacks by the Arakan Army (AA) or indiscriminate military airstrikes by the Myanmar Armed Forces (MAF), the rights group urges.

A report by the UN human rights office accuses both of Sudan’s warring parties of committing horrific violations and abuses against the country’s civilian population, “some of which may amount to war crimes and possibly other serious crimes under international law.” The UN report holds the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) responsible for the killings of at least 14,600 civilians and the forced displacement of more than 8 million people both inside Sudan and as refugees in five neighboring countries.

Alarming reports are emerging of new atrocities being committed in a concerted campaign of violence and destruction by non-state armed groups and the Myanmar Armed Forces (MAF) against members of the Rohingya people in northern Rakhine State. Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced in recent days in relation to fighting in Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships. Some 45,000 Rohingya have reportedly fled to areas near the border with Bangladesh.

A new United Nations report published Tuesday details a further, shocking rise in gang violence in Haiti as criminal gangs forge alliances and expand to rural areas previously considered safe – killing, raping, kidnapping, and destroying property, among other human rights abuses. The report, released by the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) and the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), calls for the urgent deployment of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission authorized by the UN Security Council in October, in accordance with international human rights norms and standards.

Death, injury and permanent family separation are among the traumatic events that have upended the lives of Ukraine's children in the three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country, according to a report by the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) released on Friday, as a high-level independent inquiry into the invasion also delivered its latest mandated report to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) on Wednesday.

Warring parties in Sudan are using sexual violence as a weapon of war, and gender-based violence has more than doubled since the conflict erupted in April 2023, UN Women, a United Nations agency focused on women's rights and social progress, said in its new report. The emergency in Sudan is one of the worst protection crises in recent history, with alarming levels of sexual and gender-based violence continuing to terrorize civilians, especially women and girls.

Armed groups have killed at least 160 people in central Nigeria over the weekend in a series of attacks on villages, according to media reports. Media outlets reported that bandit groups launched well-coordinated attacks that started in the night of Saturday and continued into Monday against at least 20 different communities in Plateau State, injuring more than 300 people.

The first three months of 2023 were the deadliest first quarter since 2017 for migrants crossing the central Mediterranean Sea in boats, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported Wednesday. The UN agency’s Missing Migrants Project documented 441 migrant deaths on the central Mediterranean route in this period; overall 26,358 dead or missing women, men, or children were recorded since 2014 in the Mediterranean on all routes.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged the international community on Tuesday to create an international body that would assist families of the estimated 100,000 missing persons in Syria to find out the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones. The call came at a time when Syrians, who have suffered 12 years of civil war, are facing the added devastation of the recent earthquake.

Extreme violence and gross human rights abuses, including mass incidents of murder, gang rape and sniper attacks, have sharply increased in Cité Soleil on the outskirts of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, said a UN report published Friday, creating “a living nightmare” for thousands. The report comes as 5.2 million people – nearly half of the Haitian population – are in need of humanitarian aid, including 2.6 million children.

At least 46 people, half of them children, were killed early Monday in a militia attack on a camp for displaced people in the northeastern province of Ituri - the latest in a series of attacks by non-state armed groups on forcibly displaced people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo, DRC). United Nations agencies have condemned the attack and expressed shock and horror at its brutality.