A tentative Iran deal, Israel’s escalation in Lebanon, and mercenaries in El Fasher: The Cheat Sheet

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

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GENEVA

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

On our radar

US and Iran edge closer to deal

The US and Iran reportedly reached a tentative ceasefire agreement on 28 May, with a draft deal extending their truce for 60 days and re-opening unrestricted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. But US Vice President JD Vance later said that negotiators were still working through sticking points, and there was no deal as the Cheat Sheet went to press. The reported working agreement, which Iran has downplayed, would require the US to lift its blockade of Iranian ports and ease some sanctions on Iranian oil sales, leaving the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme for future negotiations. The talks come after renewed hostilities: US forces said they shot down five Iranian drones and struck a control station in Iran’s southern port city of Bandar Abbas on 25 May, while Kuwait intercepted Iranian missiles and drones fired toward its territory. Meanwhile, the US imposed new sanctions on Iran’s military oil trade, and it is ultimately down to President Donald Trump on whether or not to sign off on a final deal.

Israel pounds Lebanon despite ceasefire

While officials from Israel and Lebanon readied to meet at the Pentagon on 29 May, Israel stepped up its deadly bombing campaign and issued new mass evacuation orders across south Lebanon. Orders for people to leave the southern city of Tyre and its surroundings came only two hours before a statement from the Israeli army that it was attacking a Hezbollah headquarters in the area. The ramping up of displacement and hostilities from both sides is hitting Lebanese civilians hard: the number of people displaced is officially at over one million, a number that rises with each new order. Thirty-one people were reportedly killed in Lebanon on 26 May alone, including 14 people in one Israeli airstrike near Tyre. The UN recorded eight incidents that targeted healthcare between 21 and 25 May; Israeli attacks reportedly killed six paramedics in the span of 24 hours. All of this is during a supposed ceasefire, which officials agreed to extend on 15 May. With attention focused on the US and Iran, people in Lebanon are left wondering what happened to their truce, and if it will ever play out on the ground.

An appeal for peace to to fight Ebola

The head of the World Health Organization has appealed for a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri province, where Ebola is rapidly spreading. Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ 28 May statement said even a temporary truce would allow health workers through and save lives. “I urge you, I implore you: give us the space to help the people who need it most,” he said. Out of nearly a thousand suspected Ebola cases in the DRC and Uganda, over 220 people may have died, with the WHO warning that the outbreak could potentially be much larger. Meanwhile, a court in Nairobi has temporarily blocked the Kenyan government from allowing the US to set up a quarantine facility in the country for Americans suspected of exposure to the virus. The US is among a number of countries that have imposed Ebola-related travel restrictions and border closures, despite WHO advice to the contrary. For more on the Ebola outbreak, watch this useful video explainer from TNH Africa Correspondent and Editor Philip Kleinfeld.

Curb your enthusiasm: a UN80 progress report

The UN is nearing a pivot point for Secretary-General António Guterres’s self-reform agenda, known as UN80. A slightly opaque process had a more public airing on 28 May as the outgoing UN chief – Guterres finishes his term at year’s end – updated member states. Progress? It’s tough to boil down a 29-page report and 2.5-hour meeting in a paragraph, but this is a telling line: “Excessive optimism can only be self-defeating if the true objective is to strengthen the UN system rather than just to appear to be doing so.” Humanitarians will find familiar lines on “hyper-prioritisation” and UN relief chief Tom Fletcher’s reset. Here, the reset is repackaged as part of “The New Humanitarian Compact”, which touts a move toward integrating supply chains and data. Data responsibility aficionados might fixate on this point: the integration of ID systems for 80 million “beneficiaries”. Ultimately, deeper structural change is up to countries themselves – and so far, zero member states have offered up suggestions on things like agency mergers, Guterres notes.

Israeli leaders reaffirm plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 28 May that he had ordered the Israeli military to take over 70% of the territory of the Gaza Strip. “Let’s start with that,” he added. A day earlier, Israeli Minister of Defence Israel Katz said the government is planning for large numbers of Palestinians to leave the enclave “at the right time and in the right manner,” which rights groups say amounts to ethnic cleansing. Israeli leaders have repeatedly voiced their intent to remove the vast majority of the Palestinian population from Gaza. Last October’s ceasefire agreement left Israel directly in control of 53% of the enclave’s territory and called for the creation of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) to pave the way for the withdrawal of Israeli forces. But implementation of all aspects of the agreement has stalled. As global attention has shifted elsewhere, Israel has created its own facts on the ground by progressively inching forward the so-called yellow line demarcating its area of control. More than 60% of Gaza’s territory currently falls within this line, and the Israeli military regularly kills and injures Palestinians in the vicinity of the shifting boundary.

Colombian mercenaries accused of atrocities in Sudan

Since 2024, the Abu Dhabi-based Global Security Services Group (GSSC) has hired hundreds of Colombian mercenaries, trained them in Emirati military facilities, and sent them to support Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, according to a 25 May report by Human Rights Watch. The rights watchdog said the mercenaries were in El Fasher in late 2025, when the RSF committed mass killings, rape, abductions, and looting. UN investigators have said the operation bore signs of genocide. The UAE and GSSC did not respond to HRW’s findings; the UAE has previously said its activities in Sudan are humanitarian. GSSC was founded in 2016 by a senior Emirati official with ties to Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, though it was sold to a new owner the following year. Sudan’s three-year civil war has left a severe humanitarian crisis, with millions displaced, hunger spreading, and aid access severely constrained. Both the RSF and Sudanese Armed Forces have been accused of war crimes.

In case you missed it

AFGHANISTAN: UN human rights chief Volker Türk has called on states to stop forcibly returning Afghan refugees and asylum seekers to Afghanistan, where many face the risk of detention, torture, and ill-treatment. Nearly 270,000 Afghans have been deported to the country since the beginning of 2026, mainly from Iran and Pakistan.

AUSTRALIA/SYRIA: Australia has charged a woman who returned from Syria last year for membership in a terror organisation, the so-called Islamic State (IS). The charges were announced shortly after a group of women and children flew back to Australia on 26 May after years in a northeast Syria camp. Some are likely to face criminal charges.

BANGLADESH: More than 500 children have died from confirmed or suspected cases of measles in Bangladesh since mid-March, according to health officials. The total number of infections is believed to have topped 60,000. Bangladesh was previously seen as a success story when it came to measles reduction, but a failure to order vaccines by the interim government that took over after the ouster of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has led to the current crisis, according to UN officials.

BOLIVIA: Congress allowed the deployment of troops to quell protests, after demonstrators demanding higher wages, labour reforms, and President Rodrigo Paz’s resignation detonated explosives near the presidential palace. Protests are expanding across the country as Bolivia faces its worst economic crisis in 40 years, with inflation reaching 14% in April. The social turmoil started a month ago with road blockades and strikes that have caused widespread shortages of essential supplies.

CHILE: Ultraconservative President José Antonio Kast presented a bill that would force public and private health centres, educational institutions, and pension agencies to report irregular migrants to authorities. The recently elected leader has promised to expel 300,000 migrants from Chile and started building trenches and a Trump-inspired wall at the northern border. He also joined the US Shield of the Americas alliance, through which a dozen Latin American countries agreed to cooperate with the US on security and border control.

COLOMBIA: More than 50 people have been killed in clashes between two dissident factions of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fighting for control over strategic drug trafficking routes in the southern region of Guaviare. The government said that casualties include minors who are being increasingly recruited by armed groups. Colombia is holding presidential elections on 31 May following an extremely polarised race. For more on the surge of violence in Colombia and its humanitarian consequences, read this analysis and this story.

KENYA: Eight students have been arrested on suspicion ⁠of arson over a fire at a girls' boarding school in the Kenyan town of Nakuru that killed ⁠16 students and injured 79. The country has a long and disturbing history of such incidents with over 750 schools targeted between 2008 and 2018, chiefly by their own students, amid repeated failures by authorities to address the issue.

SOMALIA: A third of Somalia’s population – least six million people – will experience high levels of acute food insecurity between April and June 2026, according to analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, with potential risk of famine in Burhakaba District, home to 200,000 people, should the current Gu rains, which have already caused localised flooding and killed at least 2 people across the country, fail to reverse the ongoing drought.

UNITED STATES: Since President Trump returned office, the US has deported over 13,000 people from other countries to Mexico, where many struggle to find shelter, food, and basic support while also being exposed to high levels of violence, according to a new Human Rights Watch report. Cubans are the largest cohort of third country nationals that have been deported to Mexico, at over 4,300. Many of those deported had lived in the US for decades and were held for varying lengths of time in inhumane conditions in detention centres in the US before being expelled, the report found.

Weekend read

Death, distrust, and desperation: The unending saga of Sudanese refugees trapped in northern Niger

The contested story of who killed a 27-year-old refugee lays bare the cruel failures of the global system supposed to protect people fleeing war.

And finally…

What the pope said about humanitarian crises and data

The headline news from the Vatican was Pope Leo XIV’s message to “disarm” artificial intelligence to safeguard humanity. There’s plenty of analysis on what the Pope hit and what he missed. But his nearly 38,000 word AI encyclical (essentially, a letter outlining the church’s perspective on a subject) also covered a lot more territory than what grabbed the main headlines. Warnings against autonomous weapons systems and his call for human accountability are core humanitarian issues. But the Pope also weighed in on his concerns about everything from peacebuilding (“relegated to a secondary role”), humanitarian law (“compromised”), protracted conflict (prevention is “tragically marginal”), and the crisis of multilateralism. There’s also a paragraph that frames data extraction – including in aid responses – as a new form of coercive control of populations: “Those who control the health data of entire peoples – often collected under the pretext of aid, research, or innovation – possess a structural leverage over the future, for they can shape needs and markets… They can also decide, before others, to whom medicines, investments, and protections will be allocated,” the Pope wrote.