UN News Today 22 April 2026 |

Middle East crisis: massive humanitarian crisis looming, warn UN operations chief

The Middle East crisis showed no signs of easing up on Wednesday, amid reports that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard targeted three cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz, while the US blockade of Iranian ports continues.

Those developments came as the top official heading a UN task force seeking to ensure that fertilizers and the raw ingredients needed to make them can transit safely through Hormuz, warned that farmers around the world needed them right now.

Jorge Moreira da Silva, Executive Director of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), told UN News that the task force could be up and running in just seven days, if given the chance:

“The planting season has already started, and in most countries in Africa it will end in May. So, if we don’t get some solution immediately, the crisis will be very significant and severe, particularly for the poorest countries and for the poorest citizens.”

Mr. da Silva explained that the task force’s focus on shipping fertilizers and its ingredients urea, sulphur and ammonia  was to prevent a massive humanitarian crisis. Monitors will also be involved in the operation, he said.

One-third of all fertilizers in the world transit through the Strait of Hormuz; countries that rely on them are already struggling to recover from previous economic shocks or conflict, such as Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique, Kenya and Sri Lanka.

Go to news.un.org to hear the full exclusive interview.

100 million people in more than 60 countries live under shadow of landmines 

Raging conflicts around the world prompted an alert from landmine clearance experts on Wednesday, who highlighted the increasing dangers posed by unexploded ordnance, both today and decades from now.

Every year, many thousands are killed or injured in land contaminated by landmines and explosive remnants of war. Nine in 10 of the victims are civilians – half of them children – according to the UN Mine Action Service, UNMAS.

The agency has convened national demining experts and partners from all over the world to its annual meeting in Geneva, where UNMAS Director Kazumi Ogawa maintained that conflict “has continued or deepened in many regions of the world, exposing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to the risk of mines and explosive ordnance”.

Also at the meeting, the UN’s Global Advocate for Peace, poet Maryam Bukar Hassan, described the impact of landmines on communities in war-torn Borno state in Nigeria:

“I come from Borno State in Nigeria and it’s ranked five globally in civilian casualties. So, this is not distant, nor is it abstract to me, this is the land where I have watched people who have had to relearn how to walk, where the ground is not always something you trust because it remembers what was done to it.”

Ms. Hassan explained that years of insurgency in Borno in northeast Nigeria had left the land heavily contaminated with landmines. 

In 2023 alone, “hundreds of explosions” left “lives and bodies altered” she continued, while in 2024, more than 400 civilians were killed and injured by landmines. 

“This is what [they] do,” she said. “They do not ask who you are. They do not care what side you belong to, they do not recognize ceasefires.”

Singapore: Türk calls for execution moratorium

Human Rights Chief Volker Türk has expressed alarm at a spike in executions for drug-related offences in Singapore, urging an immediate moratorium on the death penalty.

Eight people have been executed for drug offences so far this year. In 2025, 15 out of 17 individuals put to death had drugs-related convictions.

Last week, Omar bin Yacob Bamadhaj was executed for trafficking cannabis after his family received just two weeks’ notice.

“At every level, the taking of this man’s life is both cruel and inhuman,” Mr. Türk said. 

The UN opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and supports its abolition worldwide, citing the risk of executing an innocent person and its incompatibility with human dignity.

More than two thirds of countries have now abolished it in law or practice, according to UN data, reflecting a clear global trend towards abolition.

Daniel Johnson, UN News