The UN and the crisis in the Middle East: What you need to know (Jul-Dec 2025)

What you need to know about the United Nations response to the conflict in the Middle East.

24 July

  • UNRWA Commissioner-General on Gaza: one in every five children is malnourished in Gaza City as cases increase every day (UNRWA)
  • UNFPA warns of catastrophic birth outcomes in Gaza amid starvation, psychological trauma and collapsing healthcare (UNFPA)
  • UN experts call for end to Israeli State and settler violence in the West Bank (OHCHR)

23 July

  • UNRWA Commissioner-General on Gaza: Silencing voices (UNRWA)
  • UNRWA Commissioner-General on Gaza: Where else in the world has this happened? (UNRWA)
  • Syria: Second convoy brings critical aid to Sweida (UN News)
  • UN official reiterates call for Gaza ceasefire as ‘nightmare of historic proportions’ unfolds (UN News)
  • ‘Catastrophic birth outcomes’ in Gaza threaten a whole generation, warns UN agency (UN News)
  • Surge in malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza (UNifeed)

22 July

  • Gaza: UN staff now fainting from hunger, exhaustion; WHO worker detained (UN News)
  • Türk: Israeli attacks on Deir El Balah add more misery to the suffering of Palestinians (OHCHR)
  • Palestinians in Gaza continue to be killed by starvation or by bullets from the Israeli military while trying to access food (OHCHR)

21 July

  • Gaza Convoy Incident Statement (WFP)
  • Statement on UNOPS premises struck in Gaza (UNOPS)
  • Gaza: Guterres condemns killing of people seeking food as humanitarian conditions deteriorate (UN News)
  • People dying from lack of aid every day in Gaza: WFP official (UN News)
  • Syria: Ongoing violence fuelling mass displacement in Sweida (UN News)
  • Dreams amid the rubble: Gaza’s women speak of homes, loss and hungry children (UN News)
  • Terror and chaos for Gaza’s people now entering the ‘death phase’ (UN News)
  • WHO operations compromised following attacks on warehouse and facility sheltering staff and families in Deir al Balah, Gaza (WHO)
  • UNRWA Commissioner-General on Gaza: More than 1,000 starving people reported killed since end of May (UNRWA)

20 July

  • UNRWA Commissioner-General on Gaza: Inaction is complicity and makes us lose our humanity (UNRWA)

18 July

Humanitarians report more deaths, displacement and desperation in Gaza

UNICEF/Mohammed Nateel A young man sits on the rubble of a home in Gaza.
© UNICEF/Mohammed Nateel A young man sits on the rubble of a home in Gaza.

The continued onslaught and mass deprivation of people in the Gaza Strip is becoming normalised, the UN aid coordination office OCHA warned. (UN News)

  • On the road in war-torn Gaza (UN News)
  • Syria crisis: Hundreds killed in ongoing violence, hospitals overwhelmed (UN News)
  • SECURITY COUNCIL LIVE: Emergency meeting on rising tensions in Syria (UN News)
  • UNRWA Commissioner-General on Gaza: The ban on the entry of international media must be lifted (UNRWA)

The UN Charter remains humanity’s best hope for peace.

Amid geopolitical divisions, member countries must uphold it & ensure that the UN lives up to what it was meant to be:

A forum for solutions.

A guardian of international law.

And a force for peace and security.

António Guterres

Secretary-General of the United Nations (27 May 2026)

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