News headlines in 2025, page 300

The civilian death toll in Sudan has surged dramatically, with at least 275 people killed between 31 January and 5 February, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, reported on Friday.

UN peacekeeping must be fit for purpose as the nature of conflict evolves in the 21st century along with new weapons technology, more than 60 nations heard this week at a global forum on the future of peace operations, taking place in Indonesia.

Armed groups in Haiti are inflicting “unimaginable horrors” on children, turning their “bodies into battlegrounds”, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday condemned an executive order signed by United States President Donald Trump imposing punitive sanctions, countering that the order sought to “harm its independent and impartial judicial work.”

The head of UN Palestine refugee agency UNRWA underscored its commitment to assist a population whose rights “continue to be violated”.

The landmark year in the life of the UN has prompted introspection and a fresh impetus for change. How can the organization remains relevant in a world that is almost unrecognizable from the post-World War Two consensus into which it was born?

The US pause in foreign assistance funding has created “confusion” in the vital work of community HIV prevention, despite a waiver issued for HIV/AIDS programmes, the UN agency to combat the still deadly disease said on Friday.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Friday expressed profound concerns at the ongoing violent escalation in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) caused by the ongoing Rwanda-backed M23 offensive. “If nothing is done, the worst may be yet to come, for the people of the eastern DRC, but also beyond the country’s borders,” he told a Special Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

WASHINGTON DC, Feb 06 (IPS) - For centuries, innumerable countries were ruled by an entrenched, typically inherited, political class: the “aristocracy.” The term comes from the Ancient Greek words “aristos”, meaning best, and “kratia,” meaning power. As a result of long and hard-fought democratic struggles, these aristocracies have largely dwindled worldwide (albeit, not everywhere).

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 06 (IPS) - February 6 is the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). A practice deemed a gross violation of human rights, tragically the practice persists across multiple countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Over 230 million women and girls alive today have been subjected to this gruesome practice, and experts warn that at least 27 million more could endure this by 2030.