UN News Today 26 June 2025 |

Occupied West Bank: Latest killing of Palestinians underscores spike in settler violence, UN human rights office warns

In the Occupied West Bank, there’s been more deadly violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers, the UN human rights office – OHCHR – said on Thursday, with “coordinated attacks on several villages” in Ramallah and Nablus.

According to OHCHR, three Palestinian men were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in Kafr Malik on Wednesday evening. At least six others were injured by live ammunition.

Since war erupted in Gaza on 7 October 2023, settlers have killed “at least 14 Palestinians, including two children in the occupied West Bank, said OHCHR’s Ajith Sunghay.

Mr. Sunghay, who’s head of the OHCHR Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told UN News that seven Palestinians including one child were also killed either by an Israeli soldier – or by settlers – as they fired towards Palestinians:

“After 7 October 2023, thousands of settlers have been drafted in the army. There are soldiers during the day and settlers by the night. We are at a point where it’s becoming extremely difficult to separate State and settler violence. I have to say also with very strong political backing, settlers are exploiting what’s happening in Gaza and the attention that the world gives to it and the Israeli Governments.”

Of course unless he said the ‘s’…

In a related development, the UN human rights office warned that increasing numbers of Palestinians are being forced to leave their land after being told that it has been declared a military firing zone.

More than two billion people lack access to safe drinking water

More than two billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 3.4 billion people around the world don’t have adequate sanitation.

It’s “quite simply, a matter of life or death,” said UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif.

She was speaking at the Human Rights Council in Geneva where she expressed concern that death rates owing to the lack of clean water and sanitation are sometimes almost 500 times higher in lower income countries than in developed ones.

“This is a massive public health crisis, and one that does not get the attention or resources it requires,” she told Member States.

Ms. Al-Nashif said that around 1.4 million people die each year from infectious diseases caused by unsafe drinking water and sanitation.

Diseases linked to these deaths include cholera, diarrhoea and typhoid.

In conflicts zones around the world the top UN official noted that the warring parties “are bombing water and sanitation infrastructure and blocking the delivery of clean water – turning water into a weapon of war”.

Investment in AI is triple what is spent on climate adaptation, say top UN economists

In technology news, UN economists on Thursday highlighted the benefits of the rapidly expanding digital economy, while also noting that Artificial Intelligence is driving up carbon emissions.

Torbjorn Fredriksson, from the UN trade and development agency, UNCTAD, said that more than five billion people use the internet today, five times the number around 20 years ago.

The amount of information shared virtually on connected – or ICT – devices, is also expected to more than double between now and 2030.

This is already having a huge environmental impact, Mr. Fredriksson told journalists in Geneva:

“We have seen now that greenhouse gas emissions from the ICT sector are comparable to the global aviation industry or the global shipping industry and they are growing fast, very much linked to artificial intelligence uptake…It is estimated that electricity use by world’s largest data centres tripled between 2018 and 2023 and that global electricity used by data centres will double between now and 2030.”

To discuss the consequences of the world’s growing digital economy and how to regulate it so that developing countries aren’t left behind, UN Member States will be gathering in Geneva at the AI For Good Summit beginning on 8 July.

Daniel Johnson, UN News

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