Martin Griffiths, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, highlighted the worsening humanitarian crisis, noting that 16.7 million people now require humanitarian assistance, the highest number since the conflict began 13 years ago.  

He stressed that the situation is deteriorating year by year, with a particular emphasis on the ongoing protection crisis as children continue to be killed and women and girls face increasing levels of sexual and gender-based violence.

In addition, an unstable economic situation is compounding suffering and perpetuating instability. According to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the cost of living has more than doubled over the past year, and there are no signs of improvement in the near future.

“More than seven million people remain displaced within Syria, with millions more living as refugees in neighbouring countries,” Mr. Griffiths said.

He underscored the need for sustained humanitarian access through both cross-border and crossline operations.

Welcoming the recent extension granted by the Syrian Government for use of the Bab al-Salam border crossing, the UN relief chief highlighted the need for more long-term commitments based on needs rather than set time periods

Security concerns

Geir O. Pedersen, the UN Special Envoy for Syria, described the political impasse as deeply entrenched, with no clear political path to implement UN Security Council resolution 2254, which outlined a roadmap for Syria’s political transition.  

He warned of the risks of prolonged division and despair, which threaten not only Syrians but the broader international community.

“A dizzying array of local and international actors and listed terrorist groups remain engaged in conflict, inside and over Syrian territory, across multiple theatres,” Mr. Pedersen said.

He detailed ongoing clashes across the north of the country and security tensions within areas of control, complicated by the fallout of the war in Gaza, including Israeli airstrikes inside Syria and rocket and drone attacks from Syrian territory towards the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan and Israel.

“If these dynamics simply continue, we will inevitably see even more civilian suffering. And we could also see major escalations and further instability radiating across the region,” he warned, also reiterating the need for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“Regional de-escalation efforts starting with a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza is absolutely essential,” he stressed.

Piecemeal approach will not work

Mr. Pedersen further emphasised the need for a comprehensive political solution involving the Syrian Government, opposition, civil society and key international actors such as Iran, Russia, Türkiye, the United States, Arab and European nations and the Security Council.

“No actor on its own can solve the crisis, and none of the existing diplomatic groupings can either. Constructive international diplomacy with the contribution of all is the only way forwards,” he stressed.

At the same time, Constitutional Committee meetings must be resumed and concrete confidence-building measures undertaken to stabilise the situation.

“Many understand that the situation in Syria is dangerous, that the current piecemeal approach will not suffice to stem the tide and that a strategy of containment and alleviation will not stabilise the dangerous and unpredictable situation in Syria, just as it hasn’t elsewhere in the region,” he said.

The World Food Programme (WFP) distributed more than 74,000 hot meals to over 15,000 displaced people in the besieged capital, Port-au-Prince, Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, told journalists at UN Headquarters on Thursday, providing an update on the gang-ravaged Caribbean nation.

In addition, about 2,400 children received mental health and psychosocial support from child protection experts, he said.

At the same time, humanitarian agencies provided information sessions to more than 4,000 people sheltering in displacement sites on such critical issues as gender-based violence, protection and sexual abuse.

Nearly 1.6 million people are facing acute food insecurity levels in Haiti, according to UN agencies.

The UN Spokesperson also reported that civilians in displacement sites in Port-au-Prince had received about 13 million litres of water from UN agencies, partners and Haiti’s civil protection department since the beginning of March.

In the Artibonite region, Mr. Dujarric said WFP has provided cash assistance to over 13,000 people as part of its emergency activities and another 6,000 people in this region received food.

Following the recent tornado in the Bassin Bleu commune, which damaged more than 300 houses, WFP will also provide food for nearly 3,800 residents, he said.

Violence and blocked borders impede aid access in Gaza

In Gaza, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Thursday that increased violence and blocked borders continued to restrict aid access in the enclave where hundreds of thousands of people are in need.

Humanitarians are experiencing “movement restrictions” to border areas which are causing delays in planned missions to collect resources from the Kerem Shalom crossing, the UN Spokesperson said.

“We need Israeli authorities to swiftly facilitate access to the crossing so that aid workers can safely reach the crossing to pick up supplies,” he said. “We also need safe and unimpeded passage to distribute that assistance to scale to people in need, wherever they may need it in Gaza.”

‘Catastrophic levels of hunger’

The UN and its humanitarian partners are doing all they can to aid civilians in Gaza, he said, adding that WFP is calling for blocked borders in Gaza to be opened since this impacts their ability to reach people in need.

“Constrained access to southern parts of Gaza risks causing the same catastrophic levels of hunger that has been seen in the north, and in central and southern Gaza, hunger levels are deteriorating fast,” Mr. Dujarric said.

He said WFP reported that some commercial supplies have reached the enclave, but the high cost means many civilians cannot afford the goods.

‘Israel must stop its campaign against UNRWA’

The UN relief agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, which serves more than 5.9 million Palestinians in the region, said conditions are dire, and in the last two days alone, more than 32,000 people have fled the escalating fighting in Rafah.

In a guest essay published on Thursday in The New York Times, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini referred to unproven allegations Israel had made earlier this year against the UN agency and efforts to restrict its work in war-torn Gaza.

“As I write this, our agency has verified that at least 192 UNRWA employees have been killed in Gaza,” he said in the essay. “More than 170 UNRWA premises have been damaged or destroyed. UNRWA-run schools have been demolished; some 450 displaced people have been killed while sheltered inside UNRWA schools and other structures.”

He also said that since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October, Israeli security forces have “rounded up UNRWA personnel in Gaza, who have alleged torture and mistreatment while in detention” in the Strip and in Israel.

“Israeli officials are not only threatening the work of our staff and mission, they are also delegitimising UNRWA,” he wrote. “Israel must stop its campaign against UNRWA.”

First ever International Day of Potato

It’s the world’s first ever International Day of Potato, and the theme is Harvesting diversity, feeding hope, with a focus on the ancient vegetable’s contribution to the lives of producers and consumers as well as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The General Assembly designated 30 May to pay tribute to the potato, an 8,000-year-old crop originating in the Andes mountains in South America that is now a staple food consumed by about two thirds of the world’s population.

Climate-friendly and resistant to drought, cold and barren land with wide adaptability, the potato contributes to the food security, nutrition, livelihoods and employment of people in rural and urban areas the world over.

Key crop around the world

Indeed, 159 countries cultivate potatoes, and there are 5,000 varieties worldwide. Nearly 50 per cent of current crops produced are used as the household staple food or vegetable.

Potatoes are a key crop across diverse farming systems globally, ranging from smallholders producing diverse heirloom varieties by hand in the Andes to vast commercial, mechanised farms in different continents.

Building on the International Year of the Potato, marked in 2008, today’s observance also recognises the roles of small-scale family farmers, a significant proportion of whom are women, in safeguarding the wide spectrum of the crop’s diversity, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

By 2030, the total production of potatoes is expected to rise by 112 per cent of current harvests, reaching 750 million tonnes, of which more than half is predicted to be produced in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

As communities around the world mark the day, both the cultural and culinary dimensions of the crop’s cultivation and consumption are also being celebrated, from pierogis to dum aloo.

In a bleak assessment of the dire situation in Sudan where conflict is in its second year, the heads of 19 global humanitarian organizations issued an alert that further obstacles to providing aid “rapidly and at scale” will mean that “more people will die”.  

UN aid coordination office OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva that famine is “likely to take hold in large parts of the country, more people will flee to neighbouring countries, children will succumb to disease and malnutrition and women and girls will face even greater suffering and dangers”.

Staggering scale of hunger

Some 18 million people in the country are already acutely hungry and 3.6 million children are acutely malnourished, the OCHA spokesperson said.

These children are in grave danger, Mr. Laerke insisted, as “they are 10 to 11 times more likely to die” than youngsters who have enough to eat.

Despite soaring needs, aid workers continue to face “systematic obstructions and deliberate denials of access by parties to the conflict”, according to the humanitarian agencies’ joint statement.

Too dangerous to access

Mr. Laerke highlighted that “movements across conflict lines to parts of Khartoum, Darfur, Aj Jazirah and Kordofan have been cut off since mid-December” and that in March and April of this year, nearly 860,000 people were denied humanitarian aid in these areas.

Conditions for aid delivery are “very poor and dangerous,” he added, underscoring that aid workers are being killed, injured and harassed, while humanitarian supplies have been looted. 

In addition, the closure in February of the Adré border crossing from Chad to western Darfur has reduced aid delivery in Darfur to a “trickle”.

Darfur success

In a more positive development last week, UN World Food Programme (WFP) trucks managed to enter Sudan from Chad through the Tine border crossing. The agency reported that 1,200 metric tonnes of food supplies for some 116,000 people are being transported across the Darfur region. 

On Friday WFP Sudan’s Leni Kinzli confirmed that the convoys destined for Central Darfur (Umshalaya and Rongatas) have reached their final destinations, while the convoy headed to 12 destinations in South Darfur, including displacement camps in Nyala, is still in transit. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Laerke warned that in North Darfur’s capital El Fasher, where fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) recently intensified, some 800,000 civilians are bracing for an “imminent, large-scale attack”.

Attacked from all sides

On Thursday, the UN’s top aid official in the country Clementine Nkweta-Salami warned that civilians are “under attack from all sides”.

She said that medical facilities, displacement camps and critical civilian infrastructure in El Fasher; North Darfur state,  have been targeted by parties to the conflict, while parts of the city have been left without electricity and water. 

In their joint statement the heads of humanitarian agencies called on the warring parties to protect civilians, facilitate humanitarian access and adopt a nationwide ceasefire. 

Referring to Sudan’s two main warring parties, the SAF and RSF, Mr. Laerke said: “We want these generals to find a way to solve their differences not by violence that kills, maims, rapes hundreds of thousands of people in Sudan, but do it in another way”.

Concerned about low levels of funding for the crisis, humanitarians also called on donors to urgently disburse pledges made at the International Humanitarian Conference for Sudan and its Neighbours in Paris on 15 April. 

Nearly five months into the year, the humanitarian appeal for Sudan for a total of $2.7 billion remains only 16 per cent funded.