The World Food Programme (WFP) warned March 17 that the escalating hostilities in the Middle East could lead to record levels of food insecurity, and the largest disruption in the global economy and humanitarian efforts since the COVID-19 pandemic.

WFP deputy executive director and chief operating officer Carl Skau said: “If this conflict continues, it will send shockwaves across the globe, and families who already cannot afford their next meal will be hit the hardest.” Skau urged the international community to mount an adequately funded humanitarian response.

Since the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran in late February, the conflict has spread to encompass much of the region, causing thousands of civilian casualties and forcibly displacing over 3 million people. The WFP predicts 45 million people may slide into acute hunger (a level known as IPC Phase 3+) if the conflict continues. Due to the heavy reliance of food and aid distribution on energy, the skyrocketing price of oil has placed heightened strain on already over-stretched aid supply lines. The disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has also increased fertilizer costs, posing a more long-term threat to food security.

In 2025, an estimated 318 million people across 68 countries were already experiencing acute food insecurity, with 41.1 million under “Emergency” conditions or worse (IPC Phase 4+). The number of people facing catastrophic hunger (Phase 5) remained alarmingly high in 2025, exceeding 1 million.

Import-reliant countries, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, face the greatest risk. Humanitarian organizations are already spread thin by tightening budgets, as well as the proliferation and exacerbation of global crises. Global funding for foreign aid has contracted exponentially in recent years, with a sharp decline following President Trump’s signing of Executive Order 14169, which effectively suspended most operations of USAID. Together, these developments place extraordinary pressure on humanitarian organizations, leaving millions at risk of famine. Sudan and Somalia were named as particularly vulnerable.

From JURIST, March 19. Used with permission.

Note: Hunger in the Global South has already been exacerbated by Trump’s trade tariffs regime, while spikes in the price of oil and grain since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022 have contributed to popular privation and unrest worldwide.

Photo: Alex Blokha via Wikimedia Commons

According to the OHCHR, at least 300,000 people originating from 66 countries are currently forced to work in these operations. Hundreds of thousands of individuals have been trafficked into scam operations primarily in Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar and the Philippines.

The report states that the scam industry in the Mekong region alone is worth an estimated $43.8 billion a year, fueled by the rapid expansion of digital and cryptocurrency-based finance. Victims describe being held in “immense” compounds, some over 500 acres, which function as self-contained towns guarded by “uniformed and armed security personnel” and fortified with “barbed wire-topped high walls.”

The OHCHR said the treatment endured by individuals forced to work in scam operations is alarming. Survivors interviewed by the UN described confiscation of passports, confinement in guarded compounds, beatings, threats against family members, sexual abuse, food deprivation, and psychological coercion. One survivor recounted being punished for attempting to assist others, saying: “They put a gun to my head, handcuffed me, and made me hang by one arm in a dark room for a whole day.” Another reported being told that daily scam targets had to reach the equivalent of thousands of US dollars to avoid punishment.

The UN rights office noted that many victims were recruited through fraudulent job advertisements or personal contacts promising legitimate work in customer service, technology, or online marketing. Nearly three-quarters of survivors interviewed said they were unaware that scam compounds existed before being trafficked. The trafficked individuals are often misidentified as perpetrators during law enforcement raids.

The UN linked the rapid expansion of cyber-scam compounds to economic vulnerabilities, unsafe migration pathways, corruption, weak labor protections, and gaps in cross-border law enforcement cooperation. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the growth of these operations, as organized crime groups reportedly shifted toward digital fraud schemes requiring large, controlled workforces.

The OHCHR called on governments in the region and beyond to strengthen victim identification mechanisms, ensure access to remedies and rehabilitation, enhance safe migration channels, and improve international cooperation. The office also urged stronger oversight of digital platforms and financial systems that facilitate online fraud. The report situates the crisis within international legal obligations, including the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, supplementing the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

Criminal syndicates are now deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to scrape social media for vulnerable targets, generate multilingual scripts, and produce deepfakes for impersonation purposes. The UN has stated that these operations often exist under an “umbrella of impunity.” UN investigators have decried the “performative” nature of some recent law enforcement raids, noting that operations often “promptly resume or relocate” shortly after enforcement actions. This impunity is sustained by “state-embedded actors” who are ranked as the most prevalent type of criminal actor globally.

As the international community looks toward the United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention in 2026, the report serves as a “call to action” for states to move beyond “siloed responses” and adopt a unified global strategy against what has become one of the “gravest threats to humanity.”

From JURIST, Feb. 21. Used with permission.

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On Feb. 4, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is due to expire. If it does, it will mark the first time since the early 1970s that there will be no legally binding limits on US and Russian strategic nuclear forces without another agreement being under negotiation. (Chatham House)

Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, setting the hands at seven minutes of midnight. (BAS)

Image: misucell.com

The 300-page report, Uncontacted Indigenous Peoples: at the Edge of Survival, states: “In particular, the rush by extractive industries and agribusiness to seize the resources of uncontacted peoples risks their total annihilation.”

About 95% of uncontacted peoples and groups live in the Amazon—especially in Brazil, home to 124 such groups.

The report offers testimonials of past and current harms. Alex Tinyú, an indigenous Nukakman from Colombia, was a child when his territory was invaded by missionaries, settlers and armed groups in the late 1980s. “My people, the Nukak, lived in peace in our territory—hunting, fishing and gathering as we had done for generations,” the report quotes him as saying. “But everything changed with contact. When the settlers arrived, they brought with them diseases we didn’t know about. Many Nukak got sick and were taken to hospitals.” More than half of his people died from disease and violence.

Shocorua, a Nahua man from Peru, recalls how his once-isolated group was impacted by oil exploration by the Anglo-Dutch transnational company Shell in the 1990s. His words are highlighted in the report: “My uncle and cousins died as they were walking… they started to cough, they got sick and died right there in the forest. Some were small children. They put all the bodies in a big hole and everyone was wailing and crying.” About half the Nahua died within just years.

Another group highlighted in the report as needing immediate protection is the Shompen people inhabiting the rainforest of Great Nicobar Island, India. The Shompen have already suffered catastrophic population loss due to diseases brought by outside settlers and they don’t want further contact. One Shompen woman, with “uncontacted” relatives, said in 2019: “Don’t come into our forests and cut them down. This is where we collect food for our children and ourselves. We don’t want outsiders in our forests.”

But the Indian government has its own plans. It aims to transform the island with a vast infrastructure program, turning Great Nicobar Island into the “Hong Kong of India.” If the Great Nicobar Project goes ahead, huge swaths of the Shompen’s rainforest home will be destroyed and replaced by a mega-port, city, international airport, power plant, military base, industrial park, and a huge surge in population. (Mongabay, AP)

Photo: Brazil’s indigenous agency, FUNAI, makes contact with the Awá people in 2014. Credit: FUNAI via Mongabay

The RSF has been accused of genocide and crimes against humanity since it began fighting the army in 2023. Establishing a government is seen as a strategic move to gain legitimacy, rebrand the group’s image, acquire more advanced weaponry, and strengthen its position in the event of peace negotiations. The announcement was made just ahead of expected talks in Washington with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE—all backing different sides in the war—but those talks have now been postponed, faltering like so many previous mediation efforts.

From The New Humanitarian, Aug. 1. Internal links added.

Note: The RSF-led regime is based at Nyala, capital of South Darfur state, while the army-led government has taken refuge at Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, with the official capital Khartoum only recently retaken from the RSF. The RSF controls much of Darfur region in the southwest, while the SPLM-N controls territory in Kordofan and Blue Nile regions in the southeast. This effectively leaves the RSF-led regime in control of much of the south, the army in control of the north, and the center of the country contested.

Map: PCL

Meanwhile, on the ground in the Gaza Strip, the situation is becoming more dire by the day. UNICEF says vaccines are quickly running out, disease is spreading, and malnutrition is on the rise; more than 9,000 children have been admitted for treatment of acute malnutrition since the start of the year. People are looting food shops, community kitchens and aid warehouses in what Amjad al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO network in Gaza, called “a grave signal of how serious things have become in the Gaza Strip—the spread of hunger, the loss of hope…among residents, as well as the absence of the authority of the law.”

Amnesty International says the past two months of renewed siege constitute a “genocidal act, a blatant form of unlawful collective punishment, and the war crime of using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”

From The New Humanitarian, May 2

See our last reports on the UNRWA ban and genocide accusations against Israel.

Photo: Maan News Agency

Syrian inmates at Roumieh prison, east of Beirut, managed to get a message out to the new transitional government in Damascus earlier this year, appealing for intervention on their behalf. Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa raised the issue of “prisoners of conscience” in Lebanon during negotiations with then Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati in February. But there has been no action since then—despite the fact that over 100 prisoners went on hunger strike to press the issue.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights issued a statement on the situation Feb. 18, declaring: “Syrian detainees, particularly in Roumieh Prison, are enduring inhumane detention conditions, including severe overcrowding, a lack of medical and food supplies, and the spread of infectious diseases, in addition to being denied contact with their families. Many have been subjected to unfair trials before Lebanese military courts or military investigative judges, based on confessions extracted through torture and threats. These coerced confessions led to them being charged with terrorism, resulting in severe prison sentences or indefinite pretrial detention.” (Daraj)

Nearly 80% of Lebanon’s prison population is in pretrial detention, according to the Ministry of Interior. Roumieh prison, Lebanon’s largest, was built to hold 1,200 prisoners, but currently holds over 4,000, according to the head of the Beirut Bar Association. Prisons an detention centers across Lebanon have a total official capacity of 4,760, but currently hold some 8,500 people, only 1,094 of whom have been sentenced. (HRW)

Conditions in these facilities have worsened in recent years. Deaths in Lebanon’s prisons nearly doubled in 2022 compared to 2018, the year before the ongoing acute economic crisis began, Amnesty International noted in 2023. The figure jumped from 18 in 2018 and 34 in 2022. (AI) Riots erupted in Lebanon’s prisons, including Roumieh, in March 2020 over insufficient measures to contain a COVID outbreak in the facilities. (MEM)

Amnesty International’s March 2021 report, “‘I Wish I Would Die’: Syrian Refugees Arbitrarily Held on Terrorism Charges and Tortured in Lebanon,” documented abuses committed primarily by Lebanese Military Intelligence against 26 detainees, including beatings with metal rods, electrical cables, and plastic pipes. Detainees and survivors interviewed by Amnesty also described being suspended upside down. (AI)

Video footage recently released on social media by Syrian inmates from within Roumieh prison indicate that such abuses continue. The inmates point to the influence over the Lebanese government by Hezbollah, ally of the ousted Assad regime, as resposible for their being targeted. Political prisoners within Syria were all freed after the fall of the regime in December.

Up to 125 prisoners participated in the hunger strike, which began just before the start of Ramadan in mid-February. It was suspended after 17 days following a visit to Roumieh by a Syrian embassy official, who told them that embassy staff were working for the prisoners’ release and return to Syria.

Before the fall of the Assad regime, the UN Refugee Agency counted 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

Photo via Facebook

From The New Humanitarian, April 4

Note: Fluctuations in the price of oil and grain since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022 have contributed to popular privation and unrest worldwide.

Photo: Down To Earth

News broke from Port Blair (recently renamed as Sri Vijaya Puram), the capital and largest township of the territory, that a Ukrainian-American national identified as Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov had landed on North Sentinel Island in an attempt to make contact with the isolated Sentinelese people.

Polyakov was arrested for illegally landing on the North Sentinel shore on March 31. According to local police authorities, Polyakov intentionally reached the island in his single-seat boat to contact the isolated inhabitants, although he apparently encountered none. Police say he waited for an hour and blew a whistle to attract the attention of the Sentinelese, in vain. He reportedly left a can of soda as an “offering” before leaving. Local fishermen from Kurma Dera beach on South Andaman Island spotted him using a video camera to capture footage of his visit, presumably to post on social media.

London-based Survival International, which is dedicated to the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples, expressed relief at Polyakov’s arrest. But Survival director Caroline Pearce called the news deeply disturbing. In a media statement released April 2, she said: “It beggars belief that someone could be that reckless and idiotic. This person’s actions not only endangered his own life, they put the lives of the entire Sentinelese tribe at risk. It’s very well known by now that uncontacted peoples have no immunity to common outside diseases like flu or measles, which could completely wipe them out.” She asserted that the Indian authorities have a legal responsibility to ensure that the Sentinelese are safe from missionaries, social media influencers, and people fishing illegally in their waters.

The Sentinelese are classified by India as a “particularly vulnerable tribal group” (PVTG), and their hostility towards outside elements is well decomented. American missionary John Allen Chau was apparently killed by the Sentinelese in 2018 after reaching their remote island with the aim of converting them to Christianity. Chau was presumably buried on the isand and Survival International appealed to the authorities not to attempt to recover his remains, so that the Sentinelese could be protected from any disease transmission.

This is not the first such incident involving Polyakov. In January 2024, he arrived at the archipelgo’s Baratang Island and allegedly filmed members of the indigenous Jarawa tribe. A police complaint has been registered against Polyakov under the Andaman & Nicobar Islands (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Amendment Regulation of 2012. Polyakov is currently under police custody as the probe continues.

“Uncontacted Indigenous peoples around the world are experiencing the invasion of their lands on a shocking scale,” said Pearce. “Countless uncontacted peoples in the Amazon are being invaded by loggers and gold-miners.” She added that the isolated Shompen people of Great Nicobar Island, not far from North Sentinel, could be wiped out if New Delhi goes ahead with its plan to transform their island into the “Hong Kong of India,” with new port facilities and rapid urbanization.

Meanwhile, online journalist Sahadev Dey was found dead after he went missing March 29 in Diglipur area of North Andaman Island. Dey, who ran local news channel Republic Andaman, was reportedly targeted in a personal feud. The police in Post Blair have arrested four individuals in connection with the murder. However, Dey’s family members and civil society groups expressed skepticism over the official account, and are demanding an impartial probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation over the matter.

The Geneva-based global media safety and rights body, Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), is backing up this demand. PEC president Blaise Lempen stated that Dey was vocal against illegal timber smuggling and other criminal activities in his locality. Dey was the third journalist to be killed in India since Jan. 1 (and the 46th media victim across the globe this year to date).

— Nava Thakuria for CounterVortex

See our last report on isolated peoples.

See our feature stories, “The Tsunami’s Hidden Casualties: Indigenous Cultures ‘Wiped Off the Map’ as Governments Exploit the Disaster” and “Journo Murder Surge in India”

Photo: Survival International