Crises are intensifying in multiple countries, driving rising humanitarian needs by United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs   June 2026   In the first five months of 2026, crises grew and intensified in multiple countries, driving rising humanitarian needs. By the end of May 2026, over 252 million people were in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and protection.   Situations of violence, including conflict—which remains the main driver of humanitarian need globally—escalated, with civilians and civilian infrastructure under direct attack, international humanitarian law repeatedly defied and people forcibly displaced from their homes.   Despite humanitarians’ best efforts, underfunding in 2026 will leave millions of people without essential assistance, while attacks harming aid workers and assets prevent civilians from accessing the assistance and protection they need to survive. These cuts and attacks are not isolated disruptions; they represent the rupturing of a lifeline for people in crisis.   For women and girls, the cost of inaction is particularly acute. It means giving birth without skilled care, surviving violence without access to support services, withdrawing daughters from school, losing access to reproductive healthcare, and facing heightened risks of exploitation, abuse and child marriage.   It also means the erosion of community-based networks and women-led organizations that often provide the last remaining lifeline when formal systems falter.   Funding cuts have forced humanitarians to make excruciating decisions regarding prioritization, cutting a lifeline for tens of millions of people in need. Based on collective needs analysis and intense discussions by country teams, assistance in 2026 is focused on those facing the most severe needs.   However, while necessary, this leaves tens of millions of people without any hope of support.   In Somalia, for example, alarming food insecurity has been compounded by declining humanitarian assistance: only 17 percent of people in need received humanitarian food security support in January 2026 while 125 treatment sites for severe acute malnutrition and 360 sites offering treatment for moderate acute malnutrition have been closed due to under-funding.   The consequences are already visible across crises, in lives lost, services reduced, and protection weakened:   Resourcing constraints have weakened healthcare systems that detect dangerous pathogens, prepare countries for and prevent outbreaks, and guide vaccine decisions. In South Sudan, more than 1.35 million people in Jonglei State lost access to health services due to service disruptions.   Unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene services (WASH) are causing disease and despair in multiple countries. In Gaza, Occupied Palestinian Territory, collapsed sanitation systems, overflowing sewage, extreme overcrowding, and widespread rodent and insect infestations are exposing civilians to disease, suffering and untenable living conditions amid soaring temperatures.   Funding gaps are forcing millions of people to survive in unsafe, degrading, and increasingly dangerous living conditions. In the Horn of Africa the upcoming rainy season is increasing concerns about aging, temporary shelters located in areas exposed to strong winds, flooding, and poor site conditions. Chad, hosting over 927,000 Sudanese refugees, is struggling to relocate families into sites where services are already severely overstretched.   Protection and education systems are collapsing in multiple contexts due to lack of resources. In Somalia, 86 per cent of Gender-based violence support facilities have shut down. In Chad, severe funding shortfalls are forcing the closure of Women and Girls Safe Spaces, leaving survivors of gender-based violence without clinical care or safe entry points.   In Colombia, local organisations have been forced to scale back drastically. Between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of Education in Emergencies programmes have been reduced or completely suspended, directly impacting the provision of essential elements of education responses in crisis-hit regions.   At the same time, an erosion of protection, including flagrant violations of international humanitarian law, are exposing humanitarian and healthcare workers to greater danger and severely hampering efforts to provide assistance and care.   There has been a collapse of protection for aid workers. In 2025, at least 326 humanitarians were recorded as killed across 21 countries (an average of almost one each day), bringing the total number of humanitarians killed in three years to over 1,010.   Of those over 1,000 deaths, many were in Gaza and the West Bank, 130 in Sudan, 60 in South Sudan, 25 in Ukraine and 25 in the DRC. Member States’ efforts to investigate and bring perpetrators to justice when death and injury result from apparent violations remain grossly inadequate. This pervasive impunity undermines the protection of aid workers across crises.   Access constraints severely hampered humanitarian response in multiple countries. In the Occupied Palestinian Territory, aid delivery remained limited by crossing restrictions, denied or delayed movement approvals, fuel shortages, and disruptions to supply chains.   In Somalia, fighting was the primary cause of access restrictions in the first quarter, including hostilities, inter-clan clashes, political and election-related tensions that hindered humanitarian delivery by restricting the movement of personnel and supplies amid prepositioning for the drought response.   Attacks harming healthcare personnel and facilities have become a defining feature of conflicts, despite clear obligations under international humanitarian law and the 10th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 2286, which was adopted in May 2016 to advance the protection of medical care in armed conflict.   From 28 February to 4 May, an average of 5 attacks per day on health care were reported in 2026. In Ukraine, more than 3,000 attacks were recorded on the health-care system in 1,534 days of war, from primary health care centres to maternity hospitals, and from ambulance teams to pharmaceutical warehouses.   In Sudan, attacks against hospitals, clinics, ambulances, patients and health workers since April 2023 have killed more than 2,000 civilians. In Lebanon, almost 190 attacks on healthcare were verified, killing 128 healthcare workers and injured 332 others, were recorded in just three months in 2026. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, attacks on healthcare facilities have deprived more than 55,000 people of medical care, displacing thousands and interrupting ongoing response efforts.   For millions of people, the consequences of global inaction are neither abstract nor in the future; they are already here, and they are immediate and they are life-threatening.   Conflict between States is at its highest level since World War II.   In the Middle East, over 7,000 people have been killed, including 3,637 in Lebanon, 3,375 in Iran and 29 in Israel, while civilian infrastructure has come under attack by all parties to armed conflict across the region. In Lebanon, an estimated 1.4 million people require urgent life‑saving assistance and protection, as displacement becomes increasingly prolonged and pressures on host communities and essential services intensify.   In Sudan, at least 160 children were killed and 85 maimed in the first three months of 2026, while people continued to flee the horrifying war internally, and across borders as refugees.   In Haiti, escalating violence has forced record levels of people from their homes, with 1.5 million people internally displaced by June, including over 300,000 in the capital, Port-au-Prince.   In the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 70 children have been killed between January 2025 and mid-May 2026 in the West Bank, while in Gaza, more than 250 children were killed and 260 injured from the announcement of the ceasefire in October 2025 to May 2026.   In Ukraine, May 2026 marked the highest monthly civilian casualty toll - at least 274 civilians were killed and 1,763 injured - since July 2025, while attacks with long-range weapons struck cities and towns far from the frontline.   And when fighting re-erupted between Afghanistan and Pakistan in late-February 2026, it displaced over 100,000 people in Afghanistan, at a time when communities across the country were already struggling to cope with cross-border returns and rising hunger, which has hit women hardest and forced families to take desperate decisions, including selling their daughters into early marriage.   Across several crises, refugees and internally displaced people began to return home, including in Afghanistan, Syria and Sudan. However, they often arrived to lack of functioning basic services, damaged houses and many other challenges.   The human toll of drone warfare, which increased exponentially between 2020 and 2024, was one of the defining trends in armed conflict in early 2026. The expansion in drone use is fundamentally reshaping the way wars are waged, with catastrophic consequences for civilians.   In Sudan, armed drones caused 80 per cent of civilian deaths between January and April 2026, with at least 28 drone attacks harming markets and 12 drone attacks harming health facilities in that four-month period alone.   In Ukraine, short-range drones killed 80 civilians and injured 481 in April 2026, the highest monthly civilian toll from this type of weapon since the start of the invasion. In the Russian Federation, infrastructure and civilian objects have been hit and civilians have died including as a result of drone attacks.   In Colombia, there was a 445 per cent increase in attacks using weaponized drones between 2024 and 2025, with significant humanitarian consequences.   Humanitarians are increasingly in the line of drone fire. In a single week in May, four humanitarian convoys were hit while carrying life-saving assistance to civilians in need in Ukraine. In March, an aid worker was killed in a drone strike on a residential building in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.   Olena, surviving on the frontlines of war in Ukraine:   “This cannot be called life,” said 80-year-old Olena, as she reflected on the past four years of the ongoing war in Ukraine. “It is not life when every day, every moment, there is shooting and you are frightened. It feels like there is a ‘hunt for people’ with drones, a human safari,” - she said. “Is that life? No.”   And yet, Olena wakes up to meet every morning. She makes breakfast for herself and her daughter. She waits for news from her family. It is her daily ritual which she helps her hold on. For families in Kherson and other front-line communities, survival has become an act of quiet endurance.   Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Olena and her husband had built a quiet, steady life in a close-knit neighbourhood in Kherson. But all of that changed, when parts of Kherson were occupied, including their neighbourhood. Electricity, water, mobile communication — everything stopped.   Checkpoints appeared. Armed men patrolled the streets. People stayed indoors, speaking in whispers, measuring each movement against fear. Even after Russian forces left, Kherson never truly left the front line: artillery and drones can reach within minutes. And in early-2023, Olena’s home was damaged by shelling.   Today, Olena lives in a rented apartment in Kherson with her daughter. Their pension barely covers expenses. For families living within range of artillery and drones, war is measured in sleepless nights and shattered homes.   “I don’t mourn the loss of property,” Olena’s daughter said. “I mourn the people the war has taken. Everything else can be rebuilt. But lives cannot be returned.”   Conflict-related sexual violence, marked by extreme brutality, has continued to surge, overwhelmingly targeted against women and girls. In 2025 cases of conflict-related sexual violence were more than double the previous year’s figure.   In Haiti, armed groups use sexual violence to spread fear, subjugate, and punish the population. In Myanmar, rape, gang rape and other forms of sexual violence are used as a tactic of war, including during village raids, at check points, in fields, homes and detention settings and online.   In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), sexual violence against children has become entrenched, systemic and increasingly widespread. In Sudan, sexual violence continues to surge, with the number of women and girls requiring support after experiencing gender-based violence nearly doubling in two years and quadrupling since the start of the war three years ago.   Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan: Shadia, escaping the siege of El Fasher   Shadia, a displaced mother from El Fasher, relates surviving detention and assault before fleeing to Tawila. Her story reflects widespread abuses reported during the RSF takeover that forced mass displacement across North Darfur.   For many people, siege is an ancient word – something from history books. But for Shadia, it is painfully real. She lived through the 500-day siege of El Fasher, trapped with thousands of others in a city cut off by war, with dwindling food and medicines, with troops surrounding them.   The farms around the city were emptied through fear and violence. Those who tried to leave in search of food or to bring supplies back risked being killed, detained, or raped.   Shadia remained in El Fasher as the city starved and collapsed around her, until one desperate attempt to find vegetables outside the city ended in rape.   After her assault, she escaped to Tawila by foot, more than 50km away. Her husband did not escape. When El Fasher fell in October 2025, she was finally reunited with her children. Today, she lives with them in a small, crowded tent in a displacement camp.   Across Sudan, over 12 million people, mostly women and girls, are at risk of gender-based violence – an 80 per cent increase since 2024.   The escalation of conflict in Iran and across the Middle East has far-reaching effects, causing global supply disruptions and rising humanitarian costs. The war has severely restricted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint that carries about one fifth of global oil and gas and a significant share of fertilizer trade.   The disruption has sharply increased fuel, transport and insurance costs, raising humanitarian operating expenses and constraining fertilizer supplies and represents the beginning of a systemic agrifood shock that could trigger a severe global food price crisis within six to 12 months.   At the same time, the disruptions are significantly increasing the cost and complexity of humanitarian operations at a time when global humanitarian action is desperately under-funded, with longer shipping times, higher fuel and logistics costs, and growing constraints on supply chains reducing the efficiency and reach of response efforts.   Evidence from partners, including WFP, IRC, IFRC, CARE, and other organizations indicate that rising fuel, transport and logistics costs are already increasing the cost of delivering assistance, which may translate into fewer people reached, smaller rations and reduced service packages.   These new pressures come when acute food insecurity and malnutrition are already alarmingly high. Hunger has doubled over the past decade, with 266 million people across 47 countries facing crisis-level conditions in 2025, while an estimated 35.5 million children and about 9.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women were acutely malnourished across 23 countries/territories, including 10 million children facing life-threatening severe acute malnutrition.   Hunger is also highly concentrated: ten countries—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, and Yemen—accounting for some two thirds of the global total.   Across crises, women and girls are often the last to eat and the least likely to access scarce resources.   Following the unprecedented declaration of two simultaneous famines in 2024—in parts of Sudan and in Gaza in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—people are projected to face Catastrophe (IPC/CH Phase 5) levels of food insecurity in 2026 in Sudan, Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria and the Gaza Strip, while the Burhakaba district of Somalia was declared to be at risk of famine in May 2026.   If hostilities in the Middle East persist, around 45 million more people may fall into acute hunger, with the largest projected increases in Africa and Asia.   Meanwhile, climate shocks continued to wreak havoc on people’s lives in the first half of 2026. In December 2025, severe and prolonged flooding affected large parts of southern and central Mozambique, affecting around 724,000 people and driving humanitarian needs requiring a response in 2026. Rivers burst their banks, displacing communities and damaging or destroying homes, health facilities, water systems and other critical infrastructure.   Then, in early 2026, Madagascar was hit in rapid succession by Cyclone Fytia on 31 January and Intense Tropical Cyclone Gezani on 10 February, causing widespread devastation across the northern, western, and eastern regions of the country. The disaster significantly worsened an already fragile humanitarian situation, with more than 681,000 people affected and 632,000 now requiring urgent assistance.   In Cuba, severe fuel shortages due to external measures compounded the needs triggered by Hurricane Melissa (October 2025), affecting access to water, health care, sanitation, education and food, while also limiting partners’ ability to distribute assistance already in‑country.   In Somalia, a severe and prolonged drought—combined with insecurity, cuts to humanitarian assistance and the ripple effects of war in the Middle East—has caused a rapidly intensifying emergency.   Against a backdrop of sustained warming and increasing climate extremes, El Nino conditions, predicted to start in June 2026, are set to increase the risk of extreme weather over the coming months. Although no two events are the same, the 2026 El Nino could well increase the risk of heat waves, severe droughts and torrential rains in multiple parts of the world.   On top of conflict and climate crises, a new Ebola outbreak was declared in May 2026 in both the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda. The resurgence of the virus in DRC is unfolding amid overlapping crises that heighten transmission risks, including conflict, mass displacement, and limited access to healthcare.   Women are disproportionately exposed to infection through their caregiving and frontline health roles. Clashes are driving mass displacement, pushing exposed contacts into overcrowded camps, and cutting off critical epidemiological corridors. Attacks on health facilities and threats to frontline workers are making case detection, contact tracing and safe burials highly complex.   This is the 17th Ebola outbreak in the DRC, emerging only a few months after the end of the last epidemic in December 2025. The epidemic was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 17 May 2026, underscoring the urgency of the situation. There is currently no vaccine and no approved treatment for this strain of the Ebola virus, the Bundibugyo virus.   Humanitarians are asking the global community, including Member States, individuals, organizations, companies and parties to conflict:   * Protect civilians in armed conflict, including the aid workers striving to assist them and the medical mission. Uphold international humanitarian law consistently, not only with words, but with concrete actions.   * Fully fund the hyper-prioritized Global Humanitarian Overview immediately, while striving to fund the entire GHO by the end of 2026.   http://humanitarianaction.info/document/mid-year-review-global-humanitarian-overview-delivering-people-crisis-against-odds http://humanitarianaction.info/document/global-humanitarian-overview-2026 http://reliefweb.int/report/world/global-humanitarian-assistance-report-2026-enar
	Survivors of Torture Rewrite the Rules by Alice Edwards UN special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment   May 2026   There is no shortage of cases of torture in the headlines. The details are grim, as always: Abuse behind closed doors, lives irrevocably altered, justice pursued years — sometimes decades — too late. Across today’s crises, from Ukraine to Sudan, Myanmar to Gaza, allegations of torture and ill treatment are especially graphic.   But once a legal case closes or the news cycle moves on, another story begins. It is quieter and less visible: What happens to those who survive torture.   As the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, I have met survivors from all walks of life and from across the world — in rehabilitation centers, refugee communities and legal clinics — who carry its effects long after the physical wounds have healed.   What they have told me is that after they survive torture, they must confront a second struggle: To be believed, to gain access to care, to navigate complex institutions and to obtain legal recognition. Survivors spoke about the stigma, economic struggles and the breakdown of relationships.   International law is rightly proud of the absolute prohibition of torture. It is one of the clearest, most universally accepted norms we have: there are no justifications, no exceptions, no circumstances under which it is permitted. The right to rehabilitation and reparation is also well established in international human rights law.   Yet while the world has banned torture, survivors are often neglected or sidelined. A new charter written by people who have experienced this most violent of crimes sets out their demands to the world to help them recover.   Countries are obliged not only to prevent torture, but also to ensure that victims receive redress, including the means for as full a recovery as possible. Yet there is a profound gap between the prohibition against torture and being truly free from its torment.   Too often, torture is treated as an event — something that happens in a prison cell, an interrogation room or a conflict zone — and ends when the abuse stops. That is far from survivors’ realities.   People tortured as children may still bear the shame as adults. Individuals with permanent disabilities caused by torture must navigate this constant reminder and double burden.   Shireen Khudeeda, a Yazidi child survivor of sexual enslavement by the terrorist group Daesh and a human rights defender, spoke to me about how her suffering continues while members of her community taken by the terrorists remain unaccounted for. Ten years later, around 2,600 Yazidi and other victims have not been found.   A former Bahraini politician, Jawad Fairooz, described how after enduring 45 days of beatings, torture and solitary confinement, he was stripped of his nationality while visiting Britain, a secondary punishment that has long-lasting effects on his life to this day.   Another survivor, Donatien Ndabigeze, narrowly escaped an execution attempt that killed his wife and cousin and that was perpetrated by Burundian soldiers at his home in Bujumbura. He told me that waiting for justice can be “unbearable.”   Which seems to be the goal of some governments, hoping that through delays and unreasonable procedural formalities, survivors and their legal claims will go away.   Similar stories of the profound impact of torture have been shared with me, and I have met hundreds of survivors during my mandate. Over the past three years, I convened regional hearings — in Bogota, Nairobi and Kathmandu — which brought together 42 survivors from 36 different nationalities. A further 120 survivor-led organizations as well as individuals wrote to my mandate about how survivor care and consultation could be improved.   From these conversations, the first global Charter of Rights for Victims and Survivors of Torture and other cruelty was born, which I presented to the 61st session of the Human Rights Council in March.   The Charter sets out a practical framework, a kind of bill of rights, for what justice and recovery should look like from survivors’ perspectives. The Charter insists on access to specialized healthcare; long-term psychological support; legal recognition; financial stability; human-centered justice; truth-telling and reconciliation. Above all, they are demanding to participate in decisions that affect their lives.   At the heart of the Charter is a clear, consistent position: Survivors are calling for meaningful involvement in designing laws, policies, humanitarian programs and rehabilitation services not as an afterthought but as equal partners.   Involvement would include formalizing their role in national and international efforts, ensuring diverse voices are represented, including women and other marginalized survivors, and providing direct funding to survivor-led organizations, so they can engage effectively.   The UN has built a powerful legal and moral consensus against torture. The Survivors’ Charter is the missing piece in the global campaign to end torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It represents an historic shift, from law written about survivors, to norms shaped by them.   Resounding support was expressed for the Charter by countries speaking at the Human Rights Council in March, alongside supportive statements from the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and civil society organizations.   My ambition is that this document will become an internationally endorsed standard, complementary to the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on right to a remedy and reparation for atrocity crimes.   For survivors, this step is not abstract. It is about whether they can sleep at night. Whether they can work. Whether their societies can heal. And whether they can regain the lives they had hoped to lead.   The question now is which countries and international organizations are prepared not only to condemn torture but also to stand with — and learn from — those who have survived it.   * Alice Edwards is grateful to the International Rehabilitation Council for Victims of Torture and the World Organization Against Torture, as well as local organizations that hosted survivor hearings: the Corporación Centro de Atención Psicosocial (Psychosocial Care Center) of Colombia, the Independent Medico-Legal Unit and the Mwatikho Torture Survivors Foundation of Kenya and the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization Nepal (TPO Nepal).   http://passblue.com/2026/05/05/survivors-of-torture-rewrite-the-rules-banning-it/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/03/new-survivors-charter-sets-out-global-blueprint-justice-after-torture http://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/torture/sr/charter-victims-survivors-en.pdf http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc6142-torture-and-other-cruel-inhuman-or-degrading-treatment-or http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/06/new-questions-and-answers-paper-sets-out-path-towards-torture-free-trade http://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-torture
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