August 2025

Amid reports of increased Israeli military operations across Gaza City on Friday, United Nations aid agencies reiterated their urgent warnings about the ongoing famine and rising preventable diseases linked to the catastrophic living conditions in the war-torn enclave. Famine is currently occurring in the Gaza Governorate and is expected to spread to Deir al Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September.

In a briefing to the UN Security Council on Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres painted a devastating portrait of Haiti’s ongoing humanitarian crisis. He described the nation as caught in a "perfect storm of suffering" and urged the international community to act before time runs out, stressing that Haiti remains "shamefully overlooked and woefully underfunded."

According to a joint report released on Tuesday by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) remains out of reach for billions of people worldwide. Despite improvements over the last decade, 2.1 billion people globally lack access to safely managed drinking water, which puts them at risk of disease and deeper social exclusion.

August 25 marked the eighth anniversary of the beginning of a campaign of mass atrocities by Myanmar's security forces in Rakhine State in 2017, which forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.  Eight years later, Rohingya people — both refugees and those remaining in Myanmar — face a further deterioration of their bleak circumstances.

Over the last ten days, heavy rains and flash floods in areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwar, Gilgit-Baltistan and Kashmir have killed 400 people and injured more than 190 others, according to authorities. While more than 20,000 people remain displaced due to the flooding, Pakistan’s Meteorological Department says that a new monsoon system is forecast, andd heavy rainfall is expected to continue in the coming days.

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.

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 International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warns that urgent action is needed to save lives in Nigeria, where the malnutrition crisis is escalating. Without immediate intervention, 1.8 million children could die from severe acute malnutrition (SAM). The Nigeria Red Cross Society (NRCS) reports that 84 percent of healthcare facilities in six northern states have insufficient supplies of lifesaving ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF).

A new shocking record of 383 aid workers killed in 2024 must be a wake-up call to protect all civilians in conflict and crisis, and to end impunity, said the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Tuesday, marking World Humanitarian Day. Most of the aid workers killed last year were national staff members who were attacked in the line of duty or in their homes while serving their communities.

Severe humanitarian funding shortfalls have cut off hundreds of thousands of Somalis from safe water supplies in recent months, putting entire communities at heightened risk of deadly disease outbreaks, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) warned on Monday. Meanwhile, the United Nations reported that the ongoing severe drought in northern Somalia has affected an estimated 2.5 million people across 26 districts.

Children from displaced families are dying of starvation in parts of Yemen, according to the United Nations, as extreme hunger and malnutrition take hold. Over 17 million people in Yemen are acutely food insecure, a figure expected to surpass 18 million by February 2026 amid a critical crisis in humanitarian funding.

According to a new United Nations report released on Thursday, sexual violence reached "unprecedented levels" in armed conflicts last year, with the highest number of cases recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, and Haiti. The report warns of the devastating health and social consequences faced by survivors amid shrinking access to humanitarian assistance.

More than 100 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) joined forces on Wednesday to demand an end to Israel’s weaponization of aid, which exacerbates the appalling suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. While famine unfolds in the territory, with people dying daily due to malnutrition and starvation, the Israeli government's threat to ban major aid organizations from operating in Gaza worsens the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe even further.

Amid the ongoing humanitarian and human rights crisis in Afghanistan, United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are urgently calling for international support as the country faces one of the largest return movements in recent history. According to the latest UN figures, more than 2.2 million Afghans returned or were forced to return from Iran and Pakistan in 2025 alone. Over 1.8 million came from Iran and nearly 400,000 arrived from Pakistan.

According to the latest data from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), cholera has been surging across the continent since January 2025, with 206,789 cases and 4,330 deaths reported. The outbreak is affecting nearly half of the continent's countries, marking a sharp rise in both cases and geographical spread compared to 2024. The overall case fatality rate (CFR) stands at 2.1 percent, underscoring the deadly nature of the outbreak.

On Wednesday, United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk condemned the recent surge in deadly attacks by the Rwandan-backed M23 and other armed groups against civilians in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, DR Congo). According to the UN human rights office (OHCHR), at least 490 civilians were killed in these attacks in July alone.

Despite the tactical pauses that Israel introduced last week to allow some safe passage for humanitarian convoys, the amount of aid that has entered the Gaza Strip remains vastly insufficient for its starving population. United Nations aid trucks continue to face impediments on their way to deliver aid, while UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) continue to face obstructions that prevent them from bringing in and distributing aid at scale.

One year after famine was first confirmed in Sudan's North Darfur state, and 843 days after the war erupted, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warns that families trapped in the besieged state capital of El Fasher face starvation. The town is cut off from humanitarian access, leaving the remaining population with little choice but to fend for survival with whatever limited supplies are left.

According to reports from the humanitarian office of the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 50,000 people have been forced to flee in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province following escalating attacks by non-state armed groups (NSAGs) and heightened fear of violence. The province is the epicenter of an ongoing armed conflict, and internal displacement is prevalent.

The abrupt suspension of foreign aid by the United States has fueled a global humanitarian catastrophe, according to UN human rights experts. The extreme cuts in funding are expected to cost millions of lives worldwide. On Thursday, the experts said the situation was made worse by the US administration’s failure to publish a mandatory review of contracts and disbursements by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).