Underfunded Emergency

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.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Wednesday expressed deep concern about the impact of ongoing airstrikes on civilians in Yemen and the infrastructure they rely on, including health facilities. More than two dozen airstrikes have been reported since Monday. Meanwhile, humanitarian agencies continue to receive updates on the devastating impact of the attacks in recent days.

Hunger and malnutrition are on the rise in Ethiopia as ongoing conflict, regional instability, displacement, drought and economic shocks leave millions without enough food, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday. WFP warned that its life-saving response has been severely hampered by critical funding shortfalls, with 3.6 million of the most vulnerable people at imminent risk of losing food assistance.

Since the beginning of the year, renewed fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, DR Congo) has led to a dramatic deterioration of the humanitarian situation and mass displacement, particularly in North and South Kivu provinces. Widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law have been reported, including summary executions, indiscriminate attacks, sexual violence, and the recruitment of children.

The latest food security report on Haiti - out this week - shows that a record 5.7 million people - more than half of all Haitians - are expected to experience acute hunger between now and June 2025, driven by relentless gang violence and ongoing economic collapse. Rising armed violence has also fueled massive displacement as armed gangs seek to expand their control, forcing more than one million people from their homes.

A sharp deterioration in the political and security situation in South Sudan threatens to undermine the peace gains achieved so far and plunge the country back into war, the head of the United Nations mission in the country warned the UN Security Council on Wednesday, stressing the need for all parties to cease hostilities and respect the 2018 Revitalized Peace Agreement in South Sudan, where three quarters of the population are in need of humanitarian assistance.

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.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Friday that some 400,000 Syrians have returned from neighboring countries since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad government on December 8 last year. Over the same period, more than one million internally displaced persons (IDPs) inside Syria have also returned, bringing the total number of Syrians who have gone home to over 1.4 million.

Nearly two years after war broke out in Sudan, the heads of five international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have called on world leaders to take immediate, concrete action to end the conflict, protect civilians, and ensure aid reaches those who need it. In a joint statement on Thursday, the humanitarian leaders said "slow, too timid and dangerously inadequate" action has claimed countless lives already.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) continues to sound the alarm about rising violence and deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Haiti, particularly in the department of Centre and the department of Ouest, where the capital Port-au-Prince is located. Since the beginning of the year, more than 1,500 people have been killed and more than 570 others injured in gang-related violence, according to a new UN human rights report.

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) says its peacekeepers have stepped up their presence around and inside displacement camps to provide additional security, amid growing fears that the peace agreement will collapse and South Sudan will slide back into war. Meanwhile, high-level political negotiations are underway to convince the country's leaders to avoid the outbreak of a new war, as fighting continues around Ulang in Upper Nile State.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that recent fighting in Puntland State in northeastern Somalia, as well as in Middle and Lower Shabelle regions in the center of the country, has forced at least 110,000 people to flee their homes. According to OCHA, tens of thousands of people have also been displaced in recent months by ongoing inter-clan clashes in several other areas of the East African country.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Friday that violent clashes in parts of the eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, DR Congo) continue to harm civilians and force them to flee their homes. In parallel, the ongoing conflict in the east of the country has exacerbated the food crisis, with an estimated 27.7 million Congolese facing acute hunger.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, on Wednesday expressed shock at reports that as many as hundreds of civilians were killed and many others injured in air strikes by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on a crowded market in Tora village, Sudan's North Darfur State, on Monday. There are conflicting reports on the number of casualties, ranging from several dozen to hundreds.

As Yemen marks ten years of war, humanitarian organizations including the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warn that a widening gap between humanitarian needs and the funding needed to meet them risks leaving millions of Yemenis without access to food, health care and protection. After a decade of crisis, humanitarian needs in Yemen continue to rise, particularly among children.

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.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), together with the Government of Bangladesh, on Monday launched their Joint Response Plan (JRP) for one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. The plan calls for US$934.5 million from the international community to fund protection, shelter, and basic needs for refugees in camps, and to support opportunities for self-reliance.

Children, refugees and internally displaced people around the world are paying the price for the funding crisis that has gripped the international aid sector - made much worse by radical cuts by the United States - the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warned on Friday. Brutal funding cutbacks to the humanitarian sector are putting millions of lives at risk, with immediate and devastating consequences for the most vulnerable.

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) says it is deeply concerned by the current political tensions and deteriorating security situation in the country, including the aerial bombardment of the town of Nasir in Upper Nile State, resulting in civilian casualties. Nicholas Haysom, the head of UNMISS, has warned that the country is on the brink of a return to civil war.

The non-governmental organization (NGO) Danish Refugee Council (DRC) predicts that global forced displacement will surge in the next two years, with 4.2 million people newly displaced in 2025 alone, and a further 2.5 million people expected to flee their communities in search of safety and protection in 2026. The grim forecast comes at a time when global displacement is already at an all-time high, with some 123 million people currently forcibly displaced around the world.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that clashes and insecurity continue to kill and injure civilians in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, DR Congo). Ongoing fighting between non-state armed groups (NSAGs) and the Congolese army, and attacks by NSAGs against civilians, are also causing record displacement, with eastern DRC facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Friday that more than one million people in Myanmar will be cut off from life-saving food assistance from April due to a critical funding shortfall. The warning comes as escalating conflict, displacement and restricted access are driving up food aid needs, with an estimated 15.2 million people - nearly a third of Myanmar's population - threatened by hunger in 2025.

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.

The number of people killed in several days of clashes between Syrian security forces and loyalists of former President Bashar al-Assad, followed by large-scale massacres, has risen to more than 1,000, a human rights monitoring group said on Saturday, marking some of the deadliest violence since Syria's civil war began 14 years ago. Since Thursday, escalating hostilities in the governorates of Tartus, Lattakia, Homs and Hama have also resulted in civilian injuries, displacement and damage to civilian infrastructure.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Friday that without urgent funding, life-saving food aid in Africa's Sahel region will come to a halt in April 2025. The warning comes as the lean season, the period between harvests when hunger peaks, is expected to arrive earlier than usual across the region this year. Millions of children, women and men, including refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), continue to rely on WFP food assistance to survive.

As global humanitarian funding plummets due to extreme funding cuts by the United States, the United Nations on Thursday released US$110 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to scale up life-saving assistance in ten of the world's most underfunded and neglected crises in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In total, more than 307 million people around the world are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

Armed groups, including one linked to the Armed Forces of the Central African Republic (CAR), have committed grave human rights violations in the Haut Oubangui region in the south-east of the country, mainly against Muslim communities and Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers, according to a new UN report. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in CAR remains critical as the population continues to face insecurity, while the ongoing war in Sudan exacerbates the situation.

Insecurity and horrific sexual violence in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo, DRC) have forced tens of thousands to flee across borders, with no sign of the exodus stopping, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday. UNHCR reiterated its call on all countries to allow access to their territories for civilians fleeing conflict and violence in DRC, to guarantee the right to seek asylum and to ensure respect for the principle of non-refoulement.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says the devastating human rights crisis in Sudan has created the world's largest humanitarian catastrophe. Speaking at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva on Thursday, Volker Türk also warned of an increasing risk of atrocity crimes and mass deaths from famine as a result of the conflict, which began in April 2023.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has ruled out the possibility of transforming the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) in Haiti into a UN peacekeeping force for the time being, recommending instead the creation of a UN support mission to assist the MSS, funded through the UN peacekeeping budget. 

United Nations relief chief Tom Fletcher is warning that the post-war international system is facing its "greatest test since its creation" and that the humanitarian community is confronting a massive crisis of "funding, morale and legitimacy". The stark warning comes as extreme funding cuts to humanitarian aid by the United States are starting to have a devastating impact around the world, putting hundreds of thousands of lives at risk and leaving tens of millions without access to the aid they desperately need.

The United Nations and humanitarian partners on Monday launched the 2025 humanitarian and refugee response plans for Sudan, appealing for a combined US$6 billion to support nearly 26 million people inside the country and in the wider region. Nearly two years of war have created a catastrophic crisis, uprooting more than 12.6 million people inside Sudan and across borders into other countries.

The Mouvement du 23 mars (M23) rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has reportedly advanced into the region's second largest city, Bukavu, after capturing the key town of Goma in January. The advance is causing chaos and panic among residents. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of displaced women, men and children in Goma, with nowhere to go, are being driven from their homes by the M23.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is warning that several areas of Somalia are at risk of drought due to prolonged extreme dry conditions, with hundreds of thousands of families likely to be hit.  Already, 4.4 million people in the East African country are facing hunger - and conditions are expected to worsen as the April to June rainy season is forecast to start late and receive below-normal rainfall.

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.

The United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) warns that the civilian death toll in Sudan continues to mount as hostilities between the warring parties sharply escalate. The dire warning comes as Sudan remains in a dire humanitarian situation, with famine spreading, people starving to death and 30 million people - two-thirds of Sudan's population - in need of humanitarian assistance as a result of the war.

Nearly 3,000 people have been killed in fighting between the Mouvement du 23 mars (M23) rebel group and the Congolese army for control of Goma, a key eastern city and the capital of North Kivu province, a senior United Nations official in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, DR Congo) said on Wednesday. The fighting has displaced at least 700,000 people in Goma and surrounding areas since early January, creating a dire humanitarian situation.

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.

The United Nations peacekeeping chief said Friday that the Mouvement du 23 mars (M23) rebel group is advancing on the South Kivu provincial capital of Bukavu, after seizing control of Goma in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, DR Congo) earlier this week. Meanwhile, UN agencies warn that the situation continues to deteriorate for civilians trapped by days of intense fighting in and around Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

Hunger has reached alarming levels in Myanmar and the situation is set to deteriorate further in 2025, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) warned on Wednesday. A staggering 15 million people are expected to go hungry this year, rising from 13.3 million in 2024. The warning comes as Myanmar nears four years since the military seized power in the Southeast Asian country.

At the end of a visit to Syria, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, on Monday called on the international community to take bold and decisive action to help Syrians rebuild their war-torn country and support displaced Syrians returning home. More than 500,000 refugees have returned to Syria since September, including 200,000 after the fall of the Assad government in early December.

International rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has expressed concern for civilians in the town of Goma, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), after M23 rebels reportedly took control of the city. The rebel group's capture of Goma further threatens the lives of civilians and could lead to further displacement, the rights group said.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Nigerian government officials have launched an appeal for US$910 million to address the escalating humanitarian crisis in the north-eastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe (BAY states), where a total of 7.8 million people are estimated to be in need of humanitarian assistance.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has expressed grave concern for the safety of civilians and internally displaced people (IDPs) in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, DR Congo) as fighting between the Mouvement du 23 mars (M23) rebel group and the Congolese army further intensifies in South and North Kivu provinces, with the armed group advancing on the North Kivu capital of Goma.

The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced on Thursday that he is seeking arrest warrants for senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan accused of crimes against humanity, citing widespread persecution of the country's female population and its LGBTQI+ population. The request comes as Afghanistan continues to suffer from one of the world's largest human rights and humanitarian crises.

The United Nations and its humanitarian partners, together with the Government of Somalia, launched the 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) for Somalia on Wednesday. The plan, which requires US$1.43 billion, aims to support some 4.6 million of the country's most vulnerable people out of 5.98 million in need of life-saving humanitarian assistance and protection this year.

The United Nations and its humanitarian partners, together with the Government of Mali, launched on Tuesday a $770 million Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) to help millions of people across Mali this year. The plan aims to respond to the urgent needs of 4.7 million people affected by conflict, displacement, health emergencies and climate shocks, out of a projected 6.4 million people in need of assistance in 2025.