News headlines in February 2026, page 10

At least 52 people have died after Tropical Cyclone Gezani made landfall on the eastern coast of Madagascar on 10 February, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday, citing the authorities.

Palestinian Walid Al-Assi was playing with his young granddaughter this week, promising to take her to the market in Gaza City with the arrival of the holy month of Ramadan as his family had done before the Israel-Hamas war, but now circumstances had changed.

Migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers in Libya are enduring ruthless and systematic human rights violations, including killings, torture, sexual violence and trafficking, according to a new report published today by the UN human rights office, OHCHR.

The UN has the funds and capacity to scale up relief and reconstruction operations in Gaza but does not have the necessary access to carry out these vital tasks, Alexander De Croo, the head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), told journalists on Tuesday.

The large-scale disclosure of materials known as the “Epstein Files” has revealed “disturbing and credible evidence” of what independent human rights experts describe as a possible global criminal enterprise involving systematic sexual abuse, trafficking and exploitation of women and girls.

As the war in Sudan approaches a fourth year, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and 123 partners appealed on Tuesday for $1.6 billion to support millions of people forced to flee the country in pursuit of safety.

Nearly two thirds of all maternal deaths worldwide occur in countries marked by conflict or fragility, according to a report released on Tuesday by the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners.

Civilian suffering shows no sign of letting up in Ukraine as the four-year-mark of Russia’s full-scale invasion nears amid attacks on energy infrastructure, blackouts and freezing temperatures, UN humanitarians warned on Tuesday.

  CIVICUS discusses the recent protests in Iran with Sohrab Razaghi, executive director of Volunteer Activists, a Netherlands-based diaspora organisation empowering Iranian civil society.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, February 16 (IPS) - 2026 has begun on a deeply troubling note. International law, long regarded as the backbone of global peace and security, is being challenged in ever more brazen ways. Core principles of sovereignty and restraint are being flagrantly breached.