UN News Today 13 October 2025 |

Gaza: Hostages released, aid is beginning to flow, say aid agencies

UN Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the release of all living hostages from Gaza on Monday, as aid agencies said that lifesaving relief supplies are now flowing at scale into the shattered enclave.

Mr. Guterres expressed his “profound relief” that the hostages had been freed, two years since they were among some 250 taken during Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023.

The UN Secretary-General’s comments came as he headed to Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh along with world leaders for the Gaza peace summit.

The international gathering was convened after Israeli forces pulled back from parts of Gaza, in line with a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, brokered in Egypt by US mediators and representatives from Qatar and Turkïye.  

From inside Gaza, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, reported that staff now have better access across the enclave. They are able to take medical and emergency supplies “to where they are needed most” – but life remains hard for many, said OCHA’s Olga Cherevko. 

“Even if the difficulties of life are still here. I spoke to a family earlier who is living just on the side of the road in a tent, in a very worn-out tent in Gaza City, and they invited me for a lunch with them of some stewed tomatoes. And they said that this is the first time that they have been one able to find something fresh to eat and to cook it themselves.”

South Sudan’s ‘rampant corruption’ is driving violence, warns UN rights panel

To South Sudan, where the escalating political crisis is driving renewed armed violence and making the country’s already dire humanitarian emergency worse.

That’s the worrying alert on Monday from independent investigators appointed by the Human Rights Council, who said that armed clashes are happening “on a scale not seen since a cessation of hostilities was signed in 2017”.

Civilians have borne the brunt of human rights violations and displacements caused by the violence, the rights investigators stressed.

They also maintained that South Sudan’s leaders had “deliberately stalled progress” towards peace – despite one decade of efforts by the African Union and regional actors to end the fighting.

Member of UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, Barney Afako, said that the ongoing political crisis, the increasing fighting and “unchecked, systemic corruption” reflected a failure of leadership.

Mr. Afako added that without immediate action from South Sudan’s neighbours, the country “risks sliding back into full-scale conflict with unimaginable human rights consequences for its people and the wider region”.

The people of South Sudan “are looking to the African Union and the region to rescue them from a preventable fate”, he noted.

Maldives is first country to stop mother-to-child transmission of HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B

To the Maldives, which has become the first country to stop mother-to-child transmission of HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B.

Announcing the good news, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said that it was a landmark public health achievement.

The Indian Ocean nation of islands has already eliminated transmission of HIV and syphilis from mother to baby, WHO noted, adding that the HIV milestone was proof of the Maldives’ commitment to providing healthcare for all.

Mother-to-child transmission leads to infections that affect millions worldwide.

In the southeast Asia alone, more than 8,000 infants were born with congenital syphilis in 2024, WHO said.

About 25,000 HIV-positive pregnant women required treatment to prevent transmission to their babies, while hepatitis B continues to affect more than 42 million people across the southeast Asia region.

Daniel Johnson, UN News