UNICEF

Over 735 million people were facing hunger in the world in 2022, according to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report published Wednesday jointly by five United Nations agencies. The new estimates indicate hunger is no longer on the rise at the global level, but is still far above pre-pandemic levels and far off track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of Zero Hunger by 2030.

The United Nations says no goods for humanitarian operations are entering the Gaza Strip through either the Rafah or Kerem Shalom crossings because of Israeli military operations around the crossings, with bombardments throughout the day. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says this is disastrous for the relief effort in the embattled territory, where 2.3 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is warning that the humanitarian crisis in Haiti continues to worsen, largely due to ongoing violence. According to an OCHA update on Friday, more than 700,000 people are displaced in the country, more than half of whom are children, with the latest violence in the capital, Port-au-Prince, displacing an additional 12,000 people in recent weeks.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that Israeli displacement orders followed by airstrikes continue to drive panic among civilians in Lebanon, particularly in the suburbs of the capital Beirut. According to Lebanese officials, more than 3,300 people, including more than 200 children, have been killed and more than 14,000 injured by Israeli airstrikes since October 2023, most of them within the past six weeks.

Children are being denied access to life-saving humanitarian aid in conflict zones around the world in blatant disregard for international law, a senior United Nations official told the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday. Speakers at the hearing focused in particular on the alarming situation for children in Gaza and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), Sudan, Haiti, Yemen, Myanmar, Mali, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Amid continuing uncertainty over the impact of deep cuts in United States funding for humanitarian work worldwide, the head of the United Nations program coordinating the fight against HIV/AIDS warned on Monday that an additional 6.3 million people will die over the next four years if support is not restored. Several UN agencies have also recently warned that the radical cut in US support - on top of chronic underinvestment in humanitarian work worldwide - is putting millions of lives at risk across the globe.

This Sunday marks 100 days since the devastating war in the Gaza Strip began, killing tens of thousands of civilians – among them more than 10,000 children - and displacing millions of people, following the major attacks that Palestinian armed groups carried out against Israel on October 7 last year. United Nations officials say Palestinians in Gaza are in a state of desperation after three months of being militarily battered and left without sufficient supplies of food, water and medicine. 

Retaliatory attacks by Israeli security forces have killed more than 25,000 civilians in the Gaza Strip, including about 70 percent women and children, and injured more than 62,000 others. The carnage follows a large-scale attack on Israelis and foreign nationals by Palestinian armed groups on October 7 last year.  Meanwhile, heavy Israeli bombardments from air, land, and sea continue across much of Gaza, causing more and more civilian casualties, displacement, and destruction.

The United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) reports that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have carried out brutal attacks on the besieged city of El Fasher and the Abu Shouk camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Sudan’s North Darfur State which hosts some 25,000 children, women, and men. These attacks resulted in the killing of at least 89 civilians over a ten-day period until Wednesday.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) — the world’s leading authority on acute food security — says that the worst-case scenario of famine is currently unfolding in the Gaza Strip, where access to food and other essential goods and services has plummeted to unprecedented levels. An IPC alert published Tuesday highlights that two out of three famine thresholds have been exceeded in parts of the territory.

The United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has allocated $5.9 million to support the rapid response to urgent humanitarian needs in Burkina Faso, particularly those of displaced people. This allocation comes amid the ongoing global funding crisis, and Burkina Faso being one of the most neglected displacement crises worldwide driven by insecurity and climate-related factors, such as drought and flooding.

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 the death toll in Myanmar continues to rise following Friday's historic earthquake, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in the country said on Tuesday that the scale and scope of the earthquake's impact is vast, spanning multiple states and regions, particularly the central part of Myanmar. The death toll is expected to rise to more than 3,000, according to the country's military junta, while thousands are reportedly injured and hundreds missing.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is urgently calling for $629.7 million to sustain and scale up life-saving assistance in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, DR Congo). The UN agency reported Tuesday that conditions for those housed in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have fled conflict in the provinces of Ituri, North and South Kivu have become dire with the advent of the rainy season. 

A local "humanitarian pause" allowed the launch of the emergency polio immunization campaign, with nearly 87,000 children vaccinated in central Gaza on the first day of the campaign on Sunday. Hundreds of thousands of young Palestinian children are on track to be vaccinated. Despite this, Israeli air and land bombardment continues throughout the Gaza Strip, resulting in further civilian deaths, injuries, maiming, displacement and destruction of civilian infrastructure.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says it is deeply concerned about the escalating humanitarian crisis in Mozambique's northern Cabo Delgado province, as a recent upsurge in violence by non-state armed groups (NSAGs) continues to force thousands of people to flee to southern districts in search of safety. Since the latest outbreak of violence and attacks against civilians in early February, more than 70,000 women, children and men have been forcibly displaced.