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El Fasher: One year after the massacres
Next week marks one year since the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of El Fasher, carrying out one of the worst atrocities of Sudan’s war and among the most horrific mass atrocities anywhere in decades. After 500 days besieging the last major city in Darfur where the Sudanese army and allied forces remained present, the RSF swept in on 26 October 2025, killing thousands in what UN investigators say were acts of genocide. The group systematically kidnapped people trying to flee, holding them for ransom. A year on, tens of thousands remain unaccounted for. Aid groups, meanwhile, estimate that fewer than 70,000 people remain in El Fasher, living under constant RSF surveillance. Amnesty International said some have been forced to work without pay for the RSF, collecting dead bodies or cooking for fighters. Although a small number of aid organisations have resumed operations in the city in recent weeks, Amnesty said their operational freedom is severely restricted. Check back on Monday for a powerful first-person account of the mass killings and their aftermath from one of El Fasher’s leading journalists.
Does the UAE candidate have a path to becoming UN secretary-general?
The late entry of a new candidate to lead the United Nations could push the backroom scramble to choose a secretary-general to a turning point. Lana Nusseibeh, a senior diplomat from the United Arab Emirates, announced her candidacy on 21 October – nearly a year after others joined the race-walk to succeed António Guterres, the departing secretary-general. Nusseibeh faces immediate critique, given the UAE’s widely reported backing of Sudan’s RSF (see above). “Nusseibeh must not be SG if she cannot first admit and condemn the UAE's complicity,” Jeremy Konyndyk, who heads US-based Refugees International, tweeted. The UAE has denied arming the RSF. Nusseibeh could have a viable path to the secretary-general’s seat, and the UAE’s public relations and diplomatic machinery is in gear. So far, six closed-door “straw polls” of existing candidates have produced a logjam at the Security Council: All candidates have received negative votes from some of the so-called P5 countries – veto-wielding China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, or the United States.
Besieged Taiz runs out of supplies as Yemen war escalates
People in the Yemeni city of Taiz say they are running out of drinking water, fuel, and some kinds of food after weeks of siege by the country’s Houthi rebels. The Iran-backed Houthis (officially called Ansar Allah) say forces allied with Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed government are responsible for blocking roads, but either way civilians are suffering. Hospitals are running short of supplies, aid is being blocked, and heavy fighting continues on the city’s outskirts. More than 256,000 people have now been displaced across Yemen since fighting escalated, and casualties of both civilians and fighters are on the rise, with a Houthi attack on a Yemeni army training camp reportedly killing more than 70 people. With a new front opening this week and more countries considering entering (or re-entering) the fray, a diplomatic solution feels more and more remote. The danger of a wider regional war is growing beyond Yemen, too. In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran says it struck seven oil tankers and has threatened to hit oil and AI facilities across the Gulf as the US and Israel reportedly draw up their own plans for a new assault on Iran after the US midterm elections in early November.
WFP cuts and Gaza’s bleak winter outlook
The UN’s World Food Programme is cutting aid to half a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as two thirds of the population continues to face crisis levels of food insecurity and 200,000 are at risk of famine. The agency announced the cuts on 19 October, citing funding shortfalls. The news adds to an already bleak winter outlook for Gaza’s 2.1 million Palestinians. Almost the entire population is living in tents and war-damaged buildings that provide little protection from winter weather. Israel is not allowing prefabricated shelters into the Strip and has designated material for tents as dual-use (meaning they could be used for military purposes). Israel is allowing just 15 trucks per week with items it considers dual-use into Gaza, far from enough to meet needs, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. Israeli restrictions are also causing hospitals and aid organisations to run out of motor oil needed for electricity generators and vehicles, as continued attacks push the death toll since Israel signed a ceasefire agreement with Hamas in October 2025 to over 1,500. See below for recent developments in the West Bank ahead of Israeli elections. For more on Gaza, read: The Board of Peace trap: Gaza’s future must be more than a choice between two bad options.
Nigeria and Kenya report cases as DRC Ebola outbreak spreads
The World Health Organization has said the Ebola outbreak that began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as early as January or February is growing in complexity as Nigeria became the fourth African country to report a case. The patient tested positive for Ebola after 13 days of illness following a holiday in Uganda. While international health authorities suspect local exposure, Uganda maintains it has been Ebola-free since August, leaving the exact site of transmission under active investigation. Kenya is also grappling with its first ever outbreak after an infected man travelled to Nairobi from DRC. There have since been nine confirmed cases there, all of them relatives or healthcare workers who had close contact with the infected man. Since the DRC formally declared the Ebola outbreak in May, the virus has caused more than 9,500 cases and over 4,600 deaths, making it the second-deadliest epidemic on record. Like previous outbreaks in DRC, the response has been weakened by well-grounded mistrust in the government and international aid organisations, and distaste for the national elites and outsiders considered to be profiting from the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on containment.
Myanmar’s gold-fuelled war
Gold is fuelling Myanmar’s civil war, enriching armed groups on both sides of the conflict, according to a 15 October report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Since the 2021 military coup, resistance forces have used gold mining to help finance their operations, while the junta profits by informally taxing mining operations and shipments passing through the territory it controls. The junta’s devaluation of the local currency has driven soaring demand for bullion and a boom in mining. Some of the gold is being smuggled to India, where it sells for a higher price. With traditional livelihoods devastated by war, hundreds of thousands depend on an increasingly unregulated industry that poisons waterways with mercury, destroys farmland, and deepens community divisions. The report warns that gold revenues are strengthening armed actors, entrenching corruption, and creating a war economy that could perpetuate conflict and potentially outlast a future ceasefire.
Are El Niño preparedness warnings (and funding) coming too late?
The UN’s humanitarian chief and its climate and weather expertise arm are again raising alarm bells on El Niño, warning of a “wrecking ball” that could drive up global hunger and worsen emergencies without adequate preparedness. According to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, the phenomenon – where ocean heat in the Pacific raises global temperatures and influences weather patterns – is expected to be one of the strongest since at least 1950, when standardised climate record-keeping began. “This El Niño is a behemoth,” Tom Fletcher, the UN’s relief chief, told reporters, urging global preparedness and funding. He said he has released $50 million from the emergency response fund his agency runs, known as CERF. But El Niño is already underway: The alarm has been ringing for months, and humanitarians working on ground-level responses say their responses have been scraping by with trickles of funding. Fletcher made a similarly worded call back in July (when he promised $100 million in funding).
Weekend read
Inside the leadership crisis at the UN’s peace university
“This feels like a dictatorship.”
UPEACE’s longtime rector has resigned amid student protests.
And finally…
Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres
Massive protests rocked France on 17 October, as at least 550,000 people took to the streets – what began as a student movement against underfunded education expanded to include grievances about high costs of living. Predominantly peaceful marches with real grievances were overshadowed by looting, violence, and dramatic scenes like the burning down of Limoges town hall. France is extending curfews as demonstrators vow to continue, but whatever comes next for the protests in France (not to mention in Italy, Tunisia, Spain, India, and Serbia), Gen Z will not be counted out. Just look at the slogan that quickly made its way from Snapchat to a rallying cry on Parisian streets: “Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres”. Translated literally, the Arabic-French combination means “In the name of god, it’s the darkness”. It’s more or less nonsense that sounds like an imitation of the multilingual way young French people speak, posted on a group for demonstrators with comments like “we are going to break everything” and emojis of Algerian flags. The post and others like it became seen as a clumsy Islamophobic attempt by undercover police to infiltrate the protest movement. However it really began, the phrase has come to represent the generational chasm between the French authorities and the young protesters.
