Our editors’ weekly take on humanitarian news, trends, and developments from around the globe.
On our radar
Trump threatens to join Israel’s war with Iran
President Donald Trump said on 19 June that he would decide “within the next two weeks” if the United States will join Israel’s war with Iran. Since Israel launched its campaign on 12 June – based on the claim that Tehran already has the capability to build nine nuclear bombs – at least 263 Iranian civilians have been killed by Israeli bombardments, according to a Washington-based rights group with networks in Iran. Israel says Iran’s retaliatory strikes have killed at least 24 Israelis. Both sides are accused of hitting civilian targets. The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was “appalled” by Israel’s bombing of the headquarters of an Iranian state media corporation during a live broadcast, which killed two people. Iran, meanwhile, said it was targeting a military site in Beersheba when one of its missiles landed on a hospital. Israel’s deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel called the hospital strike “deliberate” and “criminal”. Israel’s critics were quick to point out the hypocrisy, noting Israel’s consistent targeting of medical facilities in Gaza over the last 20 months. Trump is being urged by some to enter the fray, specifically to take out a key underground uranium enrichment facility with a large bomb that only the US possesses. But some of the president’s key allies are warning against US involvement, questioning how it will advance his “America First” agenda or be in keeping with his vow to end foreign wars. European officials were holding talks on 20 June with the Iranian foreign minister in Geneva, ostensibly to seek a diplomatic solution centred on a new US proposal to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. Israel is believed to have possessed nuclear weapons since the 1960s.
Israeli aid massacres mount in Gaza, hidden by Iran war
When Israel launched its war with Iran, it also pushed global focus away from the Gaza Strip just as international outrage had been growing over the violence and chaos unleashed by Israel’s attempt to launch a parallel aid system – under its control and serving its political and military interests – in the territory. Dozens of people continue to be killed and injured each day as they try to reach and collect desperately needed assistance from distribution sites run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). On 17 June, the number killed was at least 70, according to Gaza health officials. On 18 June, it was at least 29. And on 19 June, it was at least 16. Since the first GHF site began operating at the end of May, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israel and thousands more wounded attempting to get aid. This comes amid a “growing likelihood of famine”, according to the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA. Israel has only allowed very limited amounts of humanitarian supplies into Gaza through the UN-led system since 19 May, following a nearly three-month-long total siege. Looting by armed gangs – some of them given weapons by Israel – and desperate civilians has meant that few of those supplies have reached their intended destinations. Israeli-imposed restrictions – including strict limits on the types of aid permitted and the number of organisations authorised to bring it in – have also made it difficult for the UN to procure, transport, and distribute supplies.
Fierce fighting and famine risks in South Sudan
The humanitarian fallout from fighting in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state is getting worse. This week, Médecins Sans Frontières shut one of its hospitals in the area, while UN data shows nearly 70,000 people have crossed into Sudan – both South Sudanese and Sudanese who had sought refuge outside their country. That’s on top of the tens of thousands who have already escaped to Ethiopia and the many more displaced internally. The IPC, the globally recognised authority on food insecurity, said last week that there is a risk of famine in the two areas most impacted by the conflict. Government forces launched a ground offensive in opposition-supporting parts of Upper Nile earlier this year and have been barrel bombing civilian areas, allegedly with incendiary weapons. The operations began after a local militia overran a military base out of fear that government-aligned troops were gearing up for an attack. In recent weeks, the government has been dropping food aid into areas it bombed, using a Ugandan company that allegedly supported its military efforts and a US for-profit humanitarian logistics firm called Fogbow. Civilians and opposition politicians believe the food aid is being used to sanitise the government’s image and lure people back into areas it just bombed and now controls. Read our investigation on the drops – exploring the role of Fogbow and private companies in a faltering aid system – for more.
Counting the civilian toll of US bombing in Yemen
A late May ceasefire between Yemen’s Houthi rebels and the US appears to be holding, although Israel and the Houthis are still in conflict, with the latter saying this week that they have joined Iran’s war effort. A new report from casualty monitor Airwars looks at the civilian death toll during the 53 days of “Operation Rough Rider”, when Trump escalated a long-running US bombing campaign in Yemen. The monitor says at least 224 civilians were killed between the operation’s start in mid-March until the May truce, marking a massive escalation from previous US campaigns. If you also count the 258 civilians allegedly killed in the previous 23 years of US operations against the Houthis, al-Qaeda, and other groups, it takes the overall civilian toll from US bombing in Yemen to almost 500. The ongoing conflict, which includes internal fighting, is one of the key reasons – along with climate shocks, economic collapse, and decreased aid – for new warnings about rising food security in government-controlled parts of the country. The IPC estimates that around 4.95 million people (or 49%) of people in the region are facing high levels of acute food insecurity, a number that is predicted to rise to 5.38 million starting in September. That’s a worrying increase from the same time last year, and there’s concern some pockets of the population could slide from the “emergency” to “catastrophe” rating, also known as famine.
Humanitarianism’s reset locks in a sequel
The next phase of the so-called humanitarian reset is lurching forward. Who’s on board? Leaders of UN agencies and other NGOs and international organisations met 17 June in Geneva to chart the next steps in what UN relief chief Tom Fletcher has dubbed “the reset”. Reading between the lines of a post-meeting summary underscores the dynamics of wrangling often-competing mandates together: Divisions about how pooled funds should be used, or how much power in-country UN coordinators should have, for example. There’s more agreement on slimming down the bureaucracy behind the system and sharing resources. There’s heavy underlining of broad principles already codified in multiple policies, though often missing in practice: local leadership, consulting communities, a focus on women and girls. The reset is intended in part as a collective reply from a system under attack. But it also shows the vast gap in expectations between those who have the most say, and those who have the least – and between those looking to retool, and those looking to reimagine. The many humanitarians searching for deeper systemic transformation may have to continue looking elsewhere.
The world’s 14 hunger hotspots
A joint UN agency report has rung the alarm that people are at risk of starvation in five extreme “hunger hotspots” – Sudan, Palestine, South Sudan, Haiti, and Mali – without an “urgent full-scale aid response” over the coming months. Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, and Nigeria are also classified as areas of “very high concern”, while conditions in Burkina Faso, Chad, Somalia, and Syria are pinned as worrisome. The report warns that the ongoing conflict in Sudan has pushed 637,000 people into “catastrophic” levels of hunger in western Kordofan and Darfur. In Gaza, where the Israeli military throttles aid and everyone is classified as hungry, 470,000 people are at risk of famine over the next five months. In South Sudan, 63,000 people are similarly threatened in a country where more than half of the population is already food insecure. In Haiti, gang violence-driven displacement and food inflation is causing record levels of need, while in Mali, 2,600 people in its conflict zones may starve if food aid doesn’t arrive soon.
Weekend read
Investigation | Fogbow operations in South Sudan and beyond raise red flags for faltering aid system
“You’ve got to put the emergence of these actors in the context of a massively changing industry.”
The for-profit US firm is coordinating air drops that critics say transgress humanitarian principles.
And finally…
Red flags over BBC’s Gaza coverage
An analysis of more than 35,000 articles and broadcast segments published by the BBC during the first year of Israel’s assault on Gaza found the broadcaster to have systematically devalued Palestinian lives. The study, released by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) on 16 June, showed that the BBC gave Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian deaths, despite Gaza suffering 34 times more casualties than Israel. The BBC used emotive terms like “brutal”, “atrocities”, “slaughter”, “barbaric”, and “deadly” four times more, “massacre” 18 times more, and “murder” more than 200 times more for Israeli victims than for Palestinian victims. BBC presenters shut down genocide allegations more than 100 times, while its online articles made zero mention of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s invocation of the biblical command to wipe out the nation of “Amalek”. The study found the BBC’s coverage to be inconsistent with the obligation, set out in its Royal Charter, to “provide impartial news”. BBC chief Richard Burgess appeared at the launch of the CfMM report in the UK Parliament, where his response to a summary of the findings was: “My role is to direct the journalists, and I’m not a Middle East expert.”
