UN News Today 20 October 2026 |

Yemen war continues to force families from homes amid hunger and disease

More than 250,000 people have now fled renewed fighting in Yemen, the UN said on Tuesday, amid growing concern for those sheltering in the southwestern city of Taiz, where access is “essentially blocked”.

The development follows the resumption last month of clashes between Houthi fighters and the internationally recognized Government based in Aden, which ended the relative calm brought about by the 2022 truce.

The situation in Taiz is particularly worrying because around half of those recently uprooted by the violence have sought shelter there.

Akhil Iyer, United Nations Children’s Fund – UNICEF – Representative in Yemen, said that sanitation services have “come to a halt” in Taiz because of a shortage of diesel fuel caused by supply route blockages that are also affecting lifesaving care:

“We had pre-positioned enough ready-to-use therapeutic food before the escalation of the conflict in Taiz. The problem is that therapeutic food has to be distributed to a large number of health facilities across the governorate and all of the routes are closed.”

UN human rights chief Volker Türk said that Taiz City had been encircled by Houthi fighters, who he urged to allow aid in immediately.

According to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), wheat flour stocks in affected areas of Taiz are nearly exhausted.

The governorate already faces some of Yemen’s highest levels of food insecurity, with 10 out of 16 districts classified as suffering emergency levels of hunger.

Afghanistan: worsening hunger outlook for millions 

To Afghanistan, where nearly a third of the country’s people faces hunger and millions of people can’t afford to buy food, despite better harvests this year.
In an update on Tuesday, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, said that almost 16 million Afghans face food insecurity at crisis level or worse; this includes 3.4 million people whose nutrition status is even worse. 

Reporting from Kabul, agency spokesperson Olga Cherevko said that hunger levels are expected to rise once winter begins next month, to over 19 million people:

“I saw firsthand that this crisis is not simply about food and whether it exists, but whether people they can afford it…And the outlook is deteriorating. During the winter lean season, which from November through April, the number facing acute food insecurity is projected to rise to 19.2 million, of which five million are expected to face emergency levels of hunger. It is one step away from famine.”

Ms. Cherevko called for immediate and sustained action to help the people of Afghanistan “before families have exhausted their options”.

She explained that better rainfall and harvests have helped many, “but one good harvest after several years of drought cannot undo the damage. A farmer cannot make the next planting season happen without affordable seeds, fertilizer and other inputs”.

Eight in 10 killer diseases are preventable: WHO

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) released new data on Tuesday showing that around eight of the top 10 causes of death globally are attributable to non-communicable diseases.

The four major killers are cancer, diseases of the heart and lungs along with diabetes. Key risk factors including tobacco and alcohol use, obesity
and unhealthy diets, insufficient physical activity and air pollution.

Almost 20 million deaths per year were caused by cardiovascular diseases, nine million deaths by cancer and four million by chronic respiratory diseases – all way above the 1.5 million annual toll from AIDS and tuberculosis. 

People’s income, education, gender, age and where they lived may well influence their risk of developing a non-communicable disease, WHO said.

In a new report, it noted that hypertension is equally distributed among men and women, but women were more likely to get it diagnosed and treated. 

Evidence from low and middle-income countries also showed that less educated and poorer populations tended to have higher rates of hypertension and diabetes. 

Daniel Johnson, UN News.