Gaza disintegration, Rohingya starvation, and US authoritarianism: The Cheat Sheet

A weekly read to keep you in the loop on humanitarian issues.

Louise O'brien/TNH

GENEVA

Our editors’ weekly take on humanitarian news, trends, and developments from around the globe.

On our radar

Israeli actions precipitating social collapse in Gaza, as aid violence continues

Israeli-engineered chaos around aid distribution in the Gaza Strip is spiralling further out of control. Despite reports that the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was shuttering its distribution sites until further notice, it has continued to operate, and the deadly violence surrounding its activities has not stopped. More than 245 people have been killed and over 2,150 injured as the Israeli military has opened fire on Palestinians attempting to get assistance after being subjected to a three-month blockade that caused widespread starvation. Hamas has reportedly attacked Palestinians working for a Gaza-based company supporting GHF’s operations, killing and injuring several. UN convoys are also being looted by armed gangs, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that Israel has been arming Palestinian militias in Gaza, including a group led by a man behind the violent looting of aid. Both the GHF and the arming of Palestinian militias is part of a plan to engineer Gaza’s social “disintegration”, analysts say. It is the dangerous acceleration of a strategy Israel has pursued throughout the war. In a rare and belated sign of pushback to Israel, several Western countries – Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway – imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli ministers, although the measures were mostly in response to their incitement of violence in the West Bank. Meanwhile, the Israeli military intercepted a boat carrying international activists – including Greta Thunberg – that was aiming to reach Gaza, and Egypt detained nearly 200 people who arrived in Cairo to participate in a march to Gaza aimed at breaking Israel’s blockade. The UN’s former top humanitarian official, Martin Griffiths, also became the latest expert to label Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide. “Of course it is genocide,” he said in an interview with Sky News.

Myanmar military accused of starving Rohingya in Rakhine state

Dozens of internally displaced Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine state have died of starvation this year, according to a report released on 12 June by the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK). Nearly 150,000 Rohingya have been confined to internment camps in the state since 2012, relying on humanitarian assistance to survive. Tens of thousands are experiencing starvation as a result of a trade blockade and severe humanitarian access restrictions imposed by the ruling junta in response to escalating clashes with the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine militia. The AA has also been accused of atrocities against Rohingya living under its control. The BROUK report builds on a 2024 one by the UN Development Programme, which documented “severe lack of income, hyperinflation, and significantly reduced domestic food production”, bringing Rakhine state’s economy to the brink of collapse and placing two million people at risk of starvation. The same day BROUK released its report, UN Special Envoy on Myanmar Julie Bishop warned the General Assembly that without ceasefires and improved aid access, Myanmar would remain “on a path to self-destruction”. More than 20 million people in Myanmar are in need of humanitarian assistance.

Militarised response to LA protests flags US slide to authoritarianism

More than 2,000 national guard soldiers and 700 marines have been deployed to Los Angeles by the administration of US President Donald Trump, roiling America’s already inflamed political climate. The move appears to be calculated to escalate tensions with protesters who took to the streets in the country’s second largest city following immigration raids described by the American Civil Liberties Union as a “vile paramilitary operation”. Uniformed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents streamed through the city on 6 June in unmarked military-style vehicles, apprehending dozens of allegedly undocumented people. Protesters later gathered outside a jail where some of the detained people were thought to be held. LA police used teargas and batons to try to disperse the protest, sparking confrontations. The protests against Trump’s immigration crackdown snowballed throughout the week and have since spread across the country. This comes ahead of nationwide so-called “No kings” protests that were already planned for 14 June – Trump’s birthday and the date of a $25 to $45 million military parade in Washington DC, organised at the president’s request. The draconian immigration raids and militarised response by the federal government are only the latest actions highlighting what experts have described as a rapid slide towards authoritarianism under Trump’s presidency.

Protest crackdown in Kenya after police deny teacher murder

The US is hardly the only country on the planet moonwalking its way into authoritarianism and cracking down on protests. On 12 June, police in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, lobbed teargas and clashed with hundreds of demonstrators angered by the death in police custody of a 31-year old teacher, Albert Ojwang, after he was accused of having “insulted a senior person on X”. Police initially claimed Ojwang had committed suicide but have been forced to apologise after an autopsy contradicted their account. The protests coincided with the reading in parliament of the latest budget, the passage of which last year galvanised youth protests that forced President William Ruto to veto the legislation, fire his cabinet, and invite opposition into government. Fearful of a repeat, the Kenyan authorities are prosecuting a young woman, Rose Njeri, for creating a website to ease public participation in the bill. And last month, police in neighbouring Tanzania arrested, and allegedly tortured and raped visiting Kenyan and Ugandan activists Boniface Mwangi and Agather Atuhaire, with President Suluhu Hassan accusing them of meddling in Tanzanian affairs to cause chaos after they tried to attend the arraignment of opposition leader Tundu Lisu on charges of treason.

The reset is nigh

The so-called “reset” is lurching forward, but many humanitarians are already asking: What comes next? Leaders of UN agencies and a few big NGOs meet in Geneva on 17 June to plot out the next steps for the closed-door process dubbed the “humanitarian reset”. Billed in part as a collective answer to the sector’s Trump-worsened crisis of funding and legitimacy, the “reset” has included a proposal to tweak coordination structures, a sweeping “reprioritisation” of humanitarian plans, some old promises, a handful of floated ideas, and this infographic. What’s missing? The list includes: wider consultation with grassroots responders, communities, rank-and-file humanitarians; and a big picture vision for a new humanitarianism. More significant to people who use aid than any decision made on 17 June, observers say, will be how individual aid groups enact their cuts, how local responders adapt, and what donor and recipient governments do. The “reset” meeting takes place amid the UN Economic and Social Council’s annual humanitarian affairs segment, where humanitarians and member states, including donors, will roam the austerity-ridden hallways of the UN complex in Geneva. Humanitarians looking for a cash infusion might be disappointed. “2025 will likely go down in history as the year donors set fire to their international development commitments,” the Center for Global Development said in a new analysis.

Mixed news in UN report on displacement trends

Buried within the UNHCR Global Trends report released this week by the UN’s refugee agency are rare indicators of potential – albeit fraught – progress. Amid a surge in internal displacement, driven by intensified conflicts in Sudan, Myanmar, Haiti, and Colombia, more refugees returned home in 2024 than at any time in the last two decades, with 1.6 million people braving ongoing conflicts – as well as perilous conditions – to go back to their home countries. Over 90% of them headed to just four nations: Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan, and Ukraine. While refugees returning home is considered a “solution” by UNHCR, the factors behind those movements reflect more complex realities: changing dynamics in long-running conflict; hostile policies towards refugees in host countries; and dwindling aid and support due to the slashing of humanitarian budgets. 2024 also saw nearly 200,000 refugees resettled in third countries – the highest number in 40 years. That number will likely drop dramatically this year due to the Trump administration’s shuttering of the US resettlement programme. And while more than 8.2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) returned to their homes, the second highest total ever recorded, the total number of forced displacements – both refugees and IDPs – rose by 6% in 2024 compared to 2023, to reach a record 123.2 million. That number, however, has been slowly falling this year, dropping by 1% by the end of April 2025.

In case you missed it

AID WORKER SAFETY: Protecting friends instead of defending international humanitarian law is “unacceptable”, a parliamentary inquiry warned the UK government in a 12 June report on supporting aid access and protecting civilians and aid workers. A record 366 aid workers were killed last year. More than half were in Palestine, where Israeli forces have killed unprecedented numbers of aid workers, including in targeted killings.

COLOMBIA: Colombia faces a new surge of political violence. On 7 June, senator and presidential contender Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot during a public event and remains in a critical condition. Three days later, an armed group led a series of more than 20 attacks with car bombs and explosive devices in the south of the country, killing seven people and injuring dozens. For more on the rising violence and the challenges of peacebuilding in Colombia, read this story.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO: The US is pushing hard for a peace deal in eastern Congo, where Rwandan-backed M23 rebels have made significant territorial gains in recent months. According to Reuters, the latest draft deal would see Rwanda withdraw any military assets before the formation of a joint security team of international observers and Rwandan personnel to monitor a ceasefire between the M23 and Congolese security forces. Adjacent to the deal, Washington is trying to secure a minerals-for-security arrangement with the Congolese government.

GERMANY: A court in Berlin has ruled that one of the tough migration policies put in place by the country’s new government likely violates EU law. After entering office at the beginning of May, Germany’s new government began turning people seeking asylum away from the country’s borders. The Berlin court found that there was insufficient evidence to support the government’s claim that immigration had created a national “emergency”, which formed the legal basis of the policy.

GUATEMALA: According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project, the number of violent events in Guatemala doubled in May compared to the previous month due to turf wars between gangs. A report by the Centre of National Economic Investigations (CIEN) also shows a worrying trend, with the number of homicides rising by 26% in the first four months of this year compared to the same period in 2024. For more on the humanitarian fallout of gang violence in Latin America, read our series “Gangs out of control”.

HAITI: A record of nearly 1.3 million people – one in nine of the population – are now displaced in Haiti, according to a new report by the UN’s migration agency, IOM. The figure represents a 24% increase since last December, largely due to the spread of gang violence to the Centre and Artibonite departments. For more on conditions in Haiti, read this account and this first person piece.

INDIA: India has announced that it intends to eliminate tuberculosis by the end of 2025, five years ahead of an initial target. It’s an ambitious goal for a country that is home to 27% of all global TB cases, or two million cases per year. One of the largest challenges is socio-economic. Some 300 million Indians live in poverty and, like other infectious diseases, tuberculosis rates are closely tied to lack of healthcare access and education.

IRAN/ISRAEL: Israel launched a series of overnight strikes against Iran on 13 June, described by Israeli officials as “pre-emptive” and “in response” to Iranian aggression. There were no indications Iran was planning an attack. A day earlier, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, found Iran to be in breach of its agreements under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by stockpiling undeclared nuclear material. Israel’s strikes hit over 100 targets, including at least one major nuclear enrichment site. They also killed Iran’s top military commander, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and at least two leading scientists involved in nuclear development. Hours later, Iran launched more than 100 drones towards Israel – many intercepted by Israeli and Jordanian forces. Israel has not signed the NPT and is believed to have possessed nuclear weapons since the 1960s.

ISRAEL/YEMEN: Israel once again bombed Yemen’s northern Hodeidah port this week, threatening Houthi rebels – who control the port and most of northern Yemen – with an air and naval blockade if they continue to attack Israel.

NETHERLANDS: On 7 June, vigilantes in the village of Ter Apel stopped and searched cars – questioning passengers and checking their documents – to try to stop asylum seekers entering from Germany. Dutch police did little to intervene but prevented vigilantes from stopping traffic and questioning people the following night. The vigilante action came shortly after the Dutch government collapsed, with far-right politician Geert Wilders pulling out of the coalition over what he said was the slow pace of introducing the “strictest-ever” immigration policy.

Weekend read

Khartoum is free of the RSF, but survival is still a struggle

“It will take a very long time before life can return to normal.”

Journalist Mohammed Amin returns to the Sudanese capital to document the human cost of the two-year war.

And finally…

Don’t use this “seditious” app, Hong Kong gamers told

Authorities in Hong Kong have banned a Taiwanese-made mobile game app for being “seditious” and promoting “armed revolution”. In the game, Reversed Front: Bonfire, players “pledge allegiance… to overthrow the Communist regime” as characters from Taiwan, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet – all areas seen as hostile to or controversial for China’s ruling Communist Party. Police warned players in Hong Kong – a city where Beijing has been tightening its grip since 2019 pro-democracy protests – that downloading the app could amount to being “in possession of a publication that has a seditious intention”. A police statement warned the public not to download “the application” or provide any funding to the developer. “Those who have downloaded the application should uninstall it immediately and must not attempt to defy the law,” it added.

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