Humanitarian Organizations

United Nations relief chief Tom Fletcher on Monday called on the international community to defend international humanitarian law (IHL), demand the protection of all civilians and break the cycle of violence in Gaza. Meanwhile, a growing number of legal experts and organizations are concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza and those targeting Palestinians as a group in the territory amount to genocide.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has instructed UN agencies, funds and programs to suspend all activities in Yemen's Houthi-controlled Saada governorate for security reasons, his spokesperson said on Monday. The measure follows the recent detention by Houthi rebels of eight more United Nations staff members, including six working in the governorate.

Hunger has reached unprecedented levels in Haiti amid a deepening security crisis. Nearly five million people - almost half of the country's population - are now facing acute food insecurity, including more than 1.6 million people at the emergency level, according to an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released Friday.  Meanwhile, gangs have extended their control and influence to more than 90 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

As humanitarians around the world marked two years since the start of Sudan's relentless and widely neglected war, large-scale atrocities involving hundreds of civilian deaths and mass displacement have been reported from the Zamzam displacement camp near the town of El Fasher in Sudan's North Darfur state. This follows reports that armed groups affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of the camp over the weekend.

After 22 months of relentless conflict, more than half a million people in the Gaza Strip are in the grips of famine, marked by widespread starvation, destitution, and preventable deaths, according to a new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released Friday. Projections indicate that famine conditions will spread from Gaza Governorate to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis Governorates in the coming weeks.

The United Nations says Israel continues to block aid from reaching northern Gaza, where famine is imminent and people, mostly children, are already dying of malnutrition and starvation. A senior UN official is warning of a catastrophic outcome for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in precarious conditions in the war-torn Gaza Strip unless humanitarian aid deliveries into the territory are massively expanded in the coming days.

The ongoing ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is allowing United Nations agencies to provide life-saving food to more desperate people, but the UN warns that greater access is necessary to prevent famine from spreading. Since the ceasefire took effect on October 10, the World Food Programme (WFP) has brought in over 6,700 metric tons of food — enough to feed nearly half a million people for two weeks. However, this falls far short of the daily target of around 2,000 tons.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that the sudden escalation of hostilities in Alamata town and surrounding rural towns in northern Ethiopia since mid-April has displaced about 50,000 civilians - the majority of whom are women, children and the elderly - to neighboring Kobo district in North Wello zone and Sekota town in Wag Hamra zone. An undetermined number of casualties were reported in the fighting.

The United Nations estimates more than 578,000 people have been displaced due to the clashes and aerial bombardments since the end of October in Myanmar, although communication blackouts are making numbers difficult to verify.  In its latest situation report released Friday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said more than two thirds of the country are affected by fighting between the Myanmar Armed Forces (MAF) and non-state armed groups, including Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) as well as People's Defense Forces (PDFs).

The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution Thursday condemning the decision of the Taliban to ban Afghan women from working for the United Nations in Afghanistan, saying that it undermines human rights and humanitarian principles. The resolution also demands that Afghanistan's de facto leaders swiftly reverse their restrictions on women's access to education and work.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Friday urged all actors in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, DR Congo) to stop the violence that is taking an enormous toll on the civilian population, in particular children. Violent clashes between non-state armed groups (NSAGs) and government forces have forcibly displaced more than 450,000 people in the last six weeks in Rutshuru and Masisi territories in North Kivu Province. 

The UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) reports that more than 216,000 people were forcibly returned to Haiti in 2023, despite the ongoing humanitarian and security crisis, and despite repeated calls that Haitians should not be forcibly returned to the Caribbean nation. According to an IOM report released Monday, most of the Haitians were returned from the neighboring Dominican Republic - 96 percent - but also from the United States, Cuba, the Bahamas, Turkey, and Jamaica as well as Turks and Caicos.

The United Nations says there are growing concerns for the protection of civilians in Myanmar as armed conflict continues to spread across the country. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), landmine contamination, explosive hazards, fighting with heavy weapons, and aerial bombardment continue to drive people from their homes in several states, exacerbating an already dire humanitarian situation.

Acute food insecurity is on track to reach a ten-year high in the Sahel and West Africa by June of this year - a new study shows - with a worrying expansion of food insecurity into coastal countries, and catastrophic levels of hunger hitting conflict-affected areas of Burkina Faso and Mali where humanitarian assistance is severely hindered by insecurity.