UN News Today 16 July 2026 |

At least 500 people feared dead in double Myanmar shipwreck tragedy

There is growing concern for more than 500 people believed to have been aboard two boats that reportedly capsized off Myanmar’s coast in recent days.

In a joint alert on Thursday, the UN migration agency, IOM, and UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said that both vessels had departed from Myanmar’s Rakhine state in late June.

Contact was lost with one boat carrying around 250 people shortly after it departed. 

A second boat, with 280 people on board, is believed to have sunk off Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady coast on 8 July.

The passengers were mostly ethnic Rohingya people from Myanmar’s Rakhine state; they’ve faced decades of persecution by the authorities. 

With more, here’s UNHCR spokesperson, Matthew Saltmarsh:

“This is part of a worrying trend that’s been going on for some time now. Many people, hundreds of people have already reported to have lost their lives in that same region, in those same seas this year.”

The boats used in such journeys are often ill-suited to the high seas and crammed well over capacity.

Some of those on board had also travelled from Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in neighbouring Bangladesh, which is home to around one million Rohingya, who fled State-led violence against them in 2017. 

South Sudan’s children picked up off street and send to fight

To South Sudan, where vulnerable children as young as 12 are being recruited to fight and subjected to terrible abuse.

In an alert, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, stressed that all parties to the country’s long-running conflict have pressganged boys and girls into service.

Here’s UNICEF’s Brendan Ross, speaking to UN News from Juba:

“One boy I spoke to two weeks ago, he said to me, he got his weapon off a dead soldier that he found on the ground. And he still has that weapon. And when I said to him, who was fighting and why were you fighting? He said, ‘We had no choice, you know, our community was attacked, me and my entire class, we all fought, our teacher fought, we picked up guns where we could find them, off dead bodies.’ And they were involved, and they were no doubt involved in killing, and no doubt had many of their friends killed as well.”

UNICEF and the UN mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) work with partners including the South Sudanese authorities to secure the release and reintegration of underage combatants.

Mr. Ross explained that caseworkers from the community who speak the same language as the former child soldiers play a key role in their rehabilitation.

The programme includes addressing the mental health scars that these youngsters may have, by offering referral services for clinical care. 

“It provides an environment where the children can have some fun and start to learn again” and work, Mr. Ross explained, although he highlighted how work opportunities “don’t exist when there’s conflict and war” as there is in South Sudan.

UN supports for Gaza farmers struggling to rebuild livelihoods

To Gaza, where the UN is supporting farmers who are struggling to rebuild their smallholdings in areas devastated by the Hamas-Israel war.

These growers include Taysir Dahdouh, whose farm in Zeytun neighborhood, east of Gaza City, is a little smaller than a football pitch. 

His land was once covered with greenhouses but they’ve been destroyed or lost during the conflict between Hamas and Israel, that erupted on 7 October 2023.

Today, he needs tools, seeds, fertilizer and water to grow the cucumbers and tomatoes that he used to. 

Alessandro Mrakic is Head of the Gaza Office for the UN Development Programme. Here he is now, speaking from Zeytun:

“Behind me and around me you see destruction. All the buildings have been destroyed here. Families who were living here had been moving around several times. Recently, with the ceasefire, they came back, and that’s where UNDP came in with all the partners. We have provided 200 relief housing units to provide shelter to the families who came back and started, as you see behind me, agriculture – started producing eggplants, tomatoes, molokhia, among others.”

Fifteen hundred farmers also receive cash assistance from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, to cultivate small plots of land.

This should ensure enough fresh vegetables to meet the recommended annual intake for 100,000 people.

But the agency warned that farmers “are squeezed into rapidly shrinking space” amid ongoing Israeli military activity. Gazans’ recovery is also being held back by ongoing Israeli restrictions on agricultural items being allowed into the enclave, FAO insisted.

It is calling for farmers to be given access to their “land, (the) sea and a variety of production inputs, such as seeds, fertilizers, irrigation equipment, animal feed, veterinary supplies, fertilized eggs to restart commercial poultry farms, boats and fishing gear”.

Daniel Johnson, UN News