Share & more
Our editors’ weekly take on humanitarian news, trends, and developments from around the globe.
On our radar
Israel’s deadly Gaza aid debacle
Following weeks of warnings from the UN and international NGOs that the new US- and Israeli-backed aid mechanism in Gaza violates virtually every principle of safe, dignified, and impartial humanitarian action, the first distribution hubs run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operating on 27 May. The result has been deadly chaos. Desperate crowds, starving from nearly 90 days of total Israeli siege, flocked to the first site to begin operating in Rafah in southern Gaza, overwhelming the American security contractors running the facility. Israeli soldiers stationed nearby opened fire on the crowds, reportedly killing at least three and injuring dozens. In the days since, the chaos and violence has continued around the distribution sites, and at least 10 Palestinians have reportedly been killed trying to get aid. The UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, said Gaza is “the hungriest place on Earth”. Meanwhile, there has been renewed talk of a potential ceasefire, but, based on what has been publicly reported, the US proposal being considered falls short of bringing an end to the war, allowing Palestinians to return to their homes, or providing for the free movement of aid into Gaza. For a view from Gaza on all of this, read: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a grotesque theatre of cruelty.
What’s being cut (and what’s missing) in UN80 reforms?
Severe cutbacks to staff and services risk dominating and overshadowing the UN’s big reform agenda, marking the beleaguered institution’s 80th birthday in October. A fifth of jobs in the 35,000-strong UN Secretariat are set to go after a 27 May memo revealed plans to impose 20% staff cutbacks, and a similar level of budget cuts. The message instructed the leaders of the UN’s agencies and bodies – many dedicated to addressing humanitarian crises – to start making cuts in their departments by 13 June (less than three weeks after it was sent), and to complete the layoffs by 1 January 2026. The UN80 plans, headed by Secretary-General António Guterres, have been criticised by former top UN humanitarian official Martin Griffiths, who told Devex they were just “about cuts. That’s not about reform. I think that’s wrong.” Instead, Griffiths said “the new reset, the new vision, should be all about localisation”. His successor as the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator (ERC), Tom Fletcher, told an event on 28 May that “hyper-prioritisation” meant OCHA would reduce the number of crises it focuses on from 28 to 20, “to preserve those areas of greatest crisis”.
Alleged torture of rights defenders puts Tanzanian repression in the spotlight
Fleeting international attention on the growing political repression in Tanzania has been turbocharged by the arrest, detention, and torture of two well-known human rights defenders. Uganda’s Agather Atuhaire and Kenya’s Boniface Mwangi were “subjected to unimaginable cruelty” between 19 May and 23 May by the security forces, and then dumped at the border, according to Amnesty International. For Atuhaire, the alleged torture included rape. The Kenyan government – and Kenyan society in general – protested: Uganda, led by Yoweri Museveni for almost four decades, has been less vocal. Atuhaire and Mwangi arrived in Tanzania as part of a delegation to observe the trial of jailed opposition politician Tundu Lissu. His case is one more example of the increasingly draconian political climate in Tanzania, which has seen a spate of abductions, assaults, arrests, and murders in the run-up to October elections. President Samia Suluhu Hassan, once praised for her (limited) democratic reforms, has taken a sharp authoritarian turn. In a presumed reference to Atuhaire and Mwangi, she warned that foreign activists were trying to “meddle in our business” – and should stay away. For more, watch this short explainer.
No respite for Lebanese, six months after ceasefire
Six months after the start of an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, Israel’s 29 May airstrikes in south Lebanon serve as a reminder – not that people in the area need one – that Israeli troops still occupy some Lebanese territory and that Israel is continuing to bomb Lebanon on a regular basis. The hostilities may not be as severe as they once were – when some one million people in Lebanon were forced to flee their homes – but around 90,000 people are still displaced and severe hunger persists. Many Lebanese are also dealing with the emotional fallout of the war (not to mention previous wars and years of worsening economic and political crises) and, as our recently published Lebanon Displacement Diaries highlight, even going home is not in itself a return to normalcy. In neighbouring Syria, newly appointed US envoy Thomas Barrack this week made the first official state visit to Syria in years: The United States closed its embassy in 2012 and heavily sanctioned the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad. While in Damascus, Barrack said the US was removing Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, and urged the new Syrian government to normalise diplomatic relations with Israel.
Haiti hires Blackwater’s Prince as it deploys drones against gangs
The New York Times is reporting that Haiti’s transitional government has recruited private US military contractor Erik Prince in its latest bid to quell raging gang violence. Prince, an ally of US President Donald Trump, is a highly controversial figure. His company, Blackwater, achieved notoriety over the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, in which a group of its employees opened fire on civilians, killing 17 and wounding 20. Interim Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé has reportedly charged Prince to work with a task force that is already deploying small drones loaded with explosives to attack gang-controlled areas. Prince is expected to send 150 mercenaries to Haiti over the next few months. In addition to drone attacks, his plan reportedly includes the use of heavier weapons and helicopters. News of Prince’s contract – the full terms of which are unknown – has sparked concern among human rights groups and security experts, who fear the lack of oversight could lead to abuses, civilian casualties, and a further escalation of violence. Most of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, is under gang control as well as key parts of neighbouring districts. The growing insecurity has worsened Haiti’s pre-existing humanitarian crisis, leaving around six million people – half the population – requiring assistance. A Kenyan-led stabilisation mission, involving the deployment of around 1,000 police officers and soldiers, has so far failed to rein in the violence. For more, read our coverage here.
Preventing disasters is cheaper than responding to them
Emergencies are spiralling, the multilateral system is in crisis, and humanitarian agencies are scouring the sofa for loose change. Sounds like a good time to shrink the risk of costly disasters from flaring in the first place, right? That’s part of the message behind the 2-6 June Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, where risk reduction experts, governments, aid groups, civil society, and others will meet to plot how to speed up progress on reducing disaster losses. DRR can include everything from boosting early warning systems and better anticipating shocks before and after disasters, to improving national laws and regional governance on displacement issues, to simply building infrastructure in safer places. On the eve of the forum, a new report warns that the economic costs of disasters have reached at least $200 billion a year.
Weekend read
Rohingya women coerced to use contraception in Bangladesh refugee camps
“I completely disagreed, but I was forced to receive the implant by the doctor.”
Many in the overcrowded camps are open to family planning, but coercion and racist treatment by healthcare workers risks squandering that demand.
And finally…
The problem with Germany’s genocide maths
This week, Namibia held its first-ever Genocide Remembrance Day, marking the systematic killing of more than 100,000 people, primarily from the Ovaherero and Nama communities, but also including other African peoples, by German colonial forces between 1904 and 1908. After more than a century, the German government finally officially acknowledged in 2021 that a genocide had indeed taken place, and three years later concluded a Joint Declaration with the Namibian government that included an apology, acceptance of “moral responsibility”, and payment of 1.1 billion euros over 30 years “to assist the development of descendants of the particularly affected communities”. However, many of these descendants have rejected the deal, pointing out they were not adequately involved in the negotiations. The Joint Declaration also eschews any reference to reparations, stating that the payments “settle all financial aspects of the issues relating to the past”. It is noteworthy that in the case of the Holocaust, Germany continues to annually pay – in restitution and compensation to its European victims (including monthly pensions for survivors) – more than the entire sum it has belatedly offered Namibians in a 3-decade development grant. Not a good look.
