Médecins Sans Frontières

An alarming six out of ten hospitals in Haiti are barely functioning as the recent escalation of violence in the capital, Port-Au-Prince, continues to deprive children of critical health supplies and medicines, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the non-governmental organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) called on the armed groups involved in the fighting and Haitian authorities to facilitate the delivery of medical supplies to those in need.

The United Nations mission in the Central African Republic (CAR) has announced that it is working with local authorities in the Haut-Mbomou Prefecture, in the south-east of the country, to find a rapid solution to persisting insecurity.  The UN mission said Wednesday that clashes between armed groups and attacks against the Central African armed forces (FACA) have aggravated the humanitarian situation and led to massive displacements in the region. 

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.

Amid the unimaginable suffering faced by Palestinians in Gaza, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Monday called for restraint in light of the Israeli military incursion into the city of Rafah. Warning of the risk of further atrocity crimes committed by Israeli forces in the Gaza war, the UN rights chief also urged Israel to comply with legally binding orders from the International Court of Justice and to respect the full range of international humanitarian law.

The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar has strongly condemned the escalation of violence in the country, which has resulted in heavy civilian casualties. There are alarming reports of civilians being killed in recent days in Maungdaw Township, Rakhine State, and Lashio town, northern Shan State, while trying to flee ongoing fighting.

The United States government is attempting to dismantle the world's largest government-run development and humanitarian aid agency, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The USAID website went offline on Saturday, and hundreds of USAID employees and contractors have been reportedly fired or furloughed. USAID headquarters in Washington, D.C. was closed on Monday, and employees were told not to report to work.

As the level of humanitarian support available to respond to the critical needs of people in northern Nigeria dramatically declines, a neglected humanitarian crisis persists in the northwest, with catastrophic levels of malnutrition and recurrent outbreaks of preventable diseases, according to the international humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders, MSF). In a statement Monday, MSF warned that despite the severity of the crisis, the situation is largely being ignored by donors and aid agencies.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) warned Friday that it may end operations in Sudan at a hospital in the capital, Khartoum, after 18 of its workers were “aggressively assaulted,” as the conflict entered its fourth month this week. MSF said the incident happened while the team was moving medical supplies from the organization’s warehouse to the Turkish Hospital in the Sudanese capital.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warns that Palestinians in northern Gaza are experiencing extreme suffering as the Israeli siege of the area continues. OCHA says there are harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north. Meanwhile, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) describe apocalyptic scenes as atrocities against civilians and attacks on hospitals intensify.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned on Thursday that health threats are surging as the war in Sudan escalates and millions of people, many sick and wounded, flee for safety within Sudan and across borders to neighboring countries where health services are fragile and hard to reach. The war, which erupted more than three months ago between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is not contained within the country but has profound regional implications.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk has warned that intensified fighting in Myanmar's Rakhine State between the military and the non-state armed group Arakan Army (AA), as well as tensions between the Rohingya and ethnic Rakhine communities, pose a grave threat to civilians. In a statement on Friday, Türk warned of the grave risk of a repeat of past atrocities, such as the horrific state-backed persecution of the Rohingya in 2017.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, on Friday warned of a further deterioration in the human rights situation in South Sudan, following a sharp increase in hostilities, arbitrary arrests and hate speech in the country since February. The warning comes as South Sudan faces one of the world's most severe humanitarian crises, and one of the worst prospects since independence in 2011.

Hospitals in Gaza are on the verge of total shutdown as more have come under intense bombardment. Almost two thirds of all hospitals in Gaza are now completely out of service, and the rest are struggling to keep functioning while civilian casualties continue to rise. Bombardments and armed clashes around the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City have intensified since Saturday afternoon.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says critical aid lifelines to northern Gaza have been cut off, with no food or other essential supplies entering since October 1. The main crossings into the area remain closed, while the more than 400,000 people who remain there are under increasing pressure to flee southwards in response to Israeli evacuation orders.

The international humanitarian organization Save the Children is warning that "time is running out" for the nearly one million residents of Sudan's largest camp for displaced people, many of them children, as food and medical supplies run out. The relief agency said Wednesday that it had just two days' worth of medical supplies left in its mobile health clinics in Zamzam camp in Sudan's western Darfur region.

Amid the alarming humanitarian situation in Sudan, the UN Security Council on Thursday demanded that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) end their siege of the North Darfur capital, El Fasher, as they move to take the last remaining town in the Western Darfur region from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Meanwhile, the humanitarian emergency remains severely underfunded, despite the United States pledging US$315 million in additional funding to Sudan on Friday.