UN News Today 02 December 2025 |

Mozambique: close to 100,000 flee violence and attacks in the past fortnight alone, warns UNHCR

UN aid teams on the ground in northern Mozambique issued an alert on Tuesday amid a massive and ongoing displacement crisis caused by intensifying attacks on communities in previously safe districts.

Close to 100,000 people have fled violence in the past fortnight alone after non-State armed groups stormed villages, often at night.

Speaking from Nampula province, Xavier Creach from the UN refugee agency – UNHCR – in Mozambique, described how people fled in fear of their lives:

“Civilians were killed, some were even beheaded…a very high number of children among the newly displaced… They fled at night, they fled without their documents, were often destroyed. They walked for days, five, six days. Some had to hide in the bush, in the meantime to avoid other attacks by the same armed group while they were fleeing.”

Needs are rising at unprecedented speed beyond the capacity of humanitarian and government actors, Mr. Creach said.

The violence in northern Mozambique began in Cabo Delgado in 2017 and has displaced over 1.3 million people to date.

The UN agency is deeply concerned that attacks are now happening simultaneously and spreading beyond Cabo Delgado into Nampula Province, threatening communities that had previously hosted displaced families.

Asia: Lives upended by cyclones, ‘extreme’ rainfall on the rise

Across Southeast Asia, record-breaking rains and flooding caused by back-to-back tropical storms have claimed hundreds of lives and devastated entire communities, UN agencies said on Tuesday.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) spokesperson Clare Nullis said that Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Viet Nam were among the countries worst affected:

“Tropical cyclone Senyar brought torrential rainfall and widespread flooding and landslides across northern Sumatra in Indonesia, peninsular Malaysia and southern Thailand. Tropical cyclones are rare so close to the Equator, so it’s not something that we, that we see very often and it means the impacts are magnified because local communities, you know, have got no experience in this.”

According to the Indonesian authorities, 1.5 million people have been affected by the double cyclone disaster and more than 570,000 have been displaced. At least 600 people have been killed and more than 460 are missing.

In Sri Lanka, meanwhile, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), warned of a “fast-moving humanitarian emergency” after Cyclone Ditwah made landfall on the country’s east coast last week, affecting some 1.4 million people.

Homes “have been swept away” and entire communities remain isolated, the UN agency said.

Millions of jobs at risk in Asia-Pacific as AI surges in wealthy nations

Millions of jobs across Asia could be at risk as the AI industry booms at the expense of poorer nations still struggling to provide basic digital access and literacy, UN economists said on Tuesday.     

Just as industrialisation in the 19^th century “split the world into a wealthy few and the impoverished”, the AI revolution could do the same, according to the UN Development Programme, UNDP.

Philip Schellekens, Chief Economist for the UNDP in Asia and the Pacific, maintained that countries that invest in skills, computing power and strong AI governance will benefit, but others risk being left far behind:

“Just to make the point, we’re not starting from a level playing field in this region. In Asia Pacific, the income gap between the richest and poorest country is 200-fold; that is between Singapore and Afghanistan. So, this is the most unequal region in the whole world according to this metric. And this is the fractured foundation upon which AI is landing.”

AI is expected to inject nearly $1 trillion in economic gains over the next decade across Asia alone.

UNDP maintained that for countries including Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and Viet Nam, the priority isn’t so much developing AI, as making use of existing voice-based tools that frontline health workers and farmers can use, even when the internet is down.

Daniel Johnson, UN News