UN News Today 11 December 2025 |

UN aid teams have been responding to torrential rains and cold in Gaza by focusing on helping the most vulnerable people in the wartorn enclave. 

Newborns and people living in areas prone to flooding are most at risk but efforts are underway to boost the number of winter clothing kits for children. 

Speaking from Al Mawasi in Gaza, Jonathan Cricx from the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, described how overnight downpours had soaked the clothes and mattresses of many living in makeshift tents:  

“Those children, they’re really suffering not only from the rain, but as well from the cold temperature. It’s 6°C or 7°C in the Gaza Strip…What we are doing with UNICEF is we’re trying to bring a lot of winter clothes…We also brought shoes. We brought 8,000 tents. We brought 600,000 blankets. But all this is far from being enough because we have more than 1.5 million people here who are in dire need for humanitarian aid.” 

Residents have been given empty flour sacks to fill with sand to keep rising waters at bay, while it’s estimated that more than 760 displacement sites hosting about 850,000 people face the highest risk of flooding. 

Around 200 families living on the Gaza shoreline in high-risk areas were also being helped on Thursday to relocate to “what remains of Hamad city in eastern Khan Younis”, according to the UN aid coordination office, OCHA. 

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis continues, however, as humanitarians report that a key water pipeline is now damaged and out of service. 

Until last week, Bani Suhaila Mekorot channel supplied around 16,000 cubic metres of drinking water per day to Khan Younis. 

Renewed heavy fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has killed scores of civilians and uprooted communities who’ve fled in fear. 

UN aid coordinators OCHA has warned of “intense” clashes multiple territories, including Uvira, Walungu, Mwenga and Kalehe.  

So far, more than 200,000 people have been displaced across South Kivu; most are sheltering in unsafe and overcrowded sites where the risk of disease is high. 

With more details, here’s Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Farhan Haq, speaking in New York on Wednesday: 

“The humanitarian impact of the crisis is now spilling across borders. Between December 5th and 8th, nearly 25,000 people crossed into Burundi, including Congolese nationals, Burundian returnees and third-country migrants – with additional arrivals also reported in Rwanda.”  

The violence has disrupted aid assistance severely and forced the UN World Food Programme to suspend its activities across South Kivu. 

This has left 25,000 people without lifesaving food assistance, while host families share the last of their own reserves with displaced families, the agency said.  

The UN’s presence in DR Congo is limited; MONUSCO – the peacekeeping mission – is no longer deployed in South Kivu, while a Human Rights Council inquiry into serious abuses in the country has been left unstaffed because of dire funding shortfalls. 

To Venezuela, where investigators appointed by the Human Rights Council alleged on Thursday that the country’s Bolivarian National Guard carried out a decade of systematic and serious violations, including crimes against humanity. 

According to the independent investigators, the national guard’s actions appear to have been steered by a centralised command structure under President Nicolas Maduro. 

They also maintain that during numerous protests dating back to 2014, National Guard officers fired live ammunition at demonstrators and modified projectiles to inflict more harm.  

The independent probe, which is made up of non-UN staff, also documented arbitrary detentions, torture, along with sexual and gender-based violence inside detention facilities run by the national guard. 

Senior military and political figures may bear criminal responsibility under the Rome Statute, the fact-finding mission said, urging stronger national and international responses to persistent abuses, which the Venezuelan Government has consistently denied. 

Daniel Johnson, UN News.