War

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called Wednesday for Israel and Hamas to prolong a temporary truce, saying a “true humanitarian cease-fire” is needed in the eight-week-old war. Meanwhile, a last-minute deal was struck on Thursday between Israel and Hamas to continue their cease-fire for a seventh day.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) reported on Friday that it had made some breakthroughs in humanitarian access in recent weeks, reaching regions in Sudan that had been largely cut off from aid, including people facing or at risk of famine. WFP stressed the importance of pre-positioning food close to vulnerable populations now, as the rainy season is just weeks away, which will make it extremely difficult for large trucks to travel.

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.

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 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.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warns the potential spillover of dozens of conflicts around the world is threatening global peace and causing human rights violations to surge in all regions. He says that widespread violations of international humanitarian and human rights law are generating devastating impact on millions of civilians, while displacement and humanitarian crises have already reached an unprecedented scale.

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.

More than ten months into the Gaza war, civilians are crammed into an ever-shrinking space without adequate access to water, food, sanitation or health care. They are repeatedly uprooted by evacuation orders, which also disrupt the aid centers that are supposed to assist them. More than 88 percent of Gaza has been placed under evacuation orders or declared a "no-go zone" by Israeli security forces, confining up to 1.9 million internally displaced people (IDPs) to about 11 percent of the tiny territory.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says malnutrition among children is spreading fast and reaching devastating and unprecedented levels in the Gaza Strip due to the wide-reaching impacts of Israel’s war and its ongoing blocking of aid deliveries. At least 31 people - including 27 children - have died of hunger and dehydration in recent weeks. Since October 7, more than 13,450 children have been killed in the tiny territory, according to Gaza officials.

Hours before the first anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 141 of 193 United Nations member states have passed a resolution calling for an immediate Russian troop withdrawal and a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace” in Ukraine. Seven states voted Thursday against the resolution text at a special session of the UN General Assembly (UN-GA): Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua, Syria and Russia. 32 countries abstained, including China, India, South Africa and Iran.

While the world's attention is focused on armed conflicts elsewhere, some 15.6 million people have been displaced by conflict in Sudan, making the situation by far the largest displacement crisis in the world. The vast majority of the displaced - more than 12.3 million women, children and men - have been uprooted by the war, which began in April 2023 and continues unabated. Yet the emergency receives almost no media, diplomatic, or political attention, and the humanitarian response is grossly underfunded.

Alarming new food security projections for Sudan released on Thursday show that the country is facing a devastating hunger catastrophe on a scale not seen since the Darfur crisis in the early 2000s, the heads of three United Nations agencies have warned. New data shows that more than 750,000 people are experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity, with 25.6 million people at crisis levels of hunger and the threat of famine in several regions.

Nearly 900 of conflict-related detainees are being released by the warring parties in Yemen in an operation that began Friday, raising hopes for a broader political solution to the conflict. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is managing the implementation of the release operation, which includes flights between six airports in Yemen and Saudi Arabia over the period of three days, to repatriate the detainees.

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 Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is warning that hundreds of thousands of people in South Sudan are at risk of going without life-saving assistance unless additional funding for the humanitarian response is received without delay. Some 9 million people - including 4.9 million children - in the country are in need of humanitarian aid, and the outlook for the coming months is worrying.

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.

Fifteen months into Israel's war on Gaza, more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, according to the territory's health ministry. The horror of the situation in Gaza shows no signs of abating as the world looks the other way. Meanwhile, Israeli officials continue to systematically deny the delivery of life-saving aid in flagrant violation of international law.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the escalation of hostilities in north-west Syria has developed rapidly since Tuesday night. Shelling and airstrikes on front lines in the cities of Idleb and western Aleppo have escalated, leading to clashes and changes of control between warring parties. The renewed fighting has exacerbated the already dire humanitarian situation.

The United Nations humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, and the Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, on Thursday welcomed the news that the crucial Adre crossing between eastern Chad and the western region of Darfur in Sudan will remain open for the movement of humanitarian personnel and life-saving supplies. Since its reopening eight months ago, the Adre crossing has been a vital lifeline for millions of people in dire need in the region.