Global Issues

While international attention has primarily focused on the vast region’s declining opium production, advanced criminal drug trafficking networks have successfully shifted toward manufacturing and exporting synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine, commonly known as meth. The evidence Iranian seizures of meth increased from 30,393 kilos in 2022 to 40,453 kilos in 2025. Seizing the often-fatal drugs wasn’t easy.

That information comes from the World Health Organization (WHO) which on Friday reiterated that the critical sector must not be targeted. The UN agency maintains a surveillance system for attacks on healthcare, which includes hospitals and other facilities, personnel and patients, ambulances and other transport, as well as warehouses and supplies.

Pregnant women travel for hours to reach emergency maternity care Golo town hospital is only one able to perform C-sections for miles around Essential medical supplies running out, including oxytocin to prevent fatal bleeding War is ongoing and humanitarian needs are massive In an alert, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, highlighted urgent needs among expectant mothers in Golo, in western Sudan’s Central Darfur region.

As rescuers search for signs of life beneath collapsed buildings, people across Cali have come out with water, food, tools and often just their bare hands, to help. The UN has deployed teams and resources to support the response and meet the most urgent needs. ‘Incredibly intense’ Víctor Manuel Rodríguez thought he might be living his last moments when the building where he lives began to shake.

Although many families in rural Afghanistan struggle to secure food and water, the UN’s aid coordination office spokesperson Olga Cherevko said on Thursday that the chief concern is the continuing ban on girls’ education. “They told me that basically they had lost hope for their daughter’s future and of course for themselves,” Ms. Cherevko told UN News.

Civilian casualties in Ukraine reached their highest monthly level in July, with more people killed and injured than at any time since March 2022, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in the country, HRMMU, said in an update on Thursday. Investigators verified that at least 437 civilians were killed and 2,610 injured last month, marking “a new high” in casualties this year, with a 30 per cent increase compared to June and a 70 per cent increase compared to July 2025.

Even with the guns largely silent, Palestinians in Gaza continue to face daily threats from unexploded ordnance left behind by the fighting.

In its latest update, published Thursday, WHO said hidden chains of transmission are being fuelled by patients who reach advanced stages of the disease without ever receiving care. Deaths are still occurring outside health facilities and known transmission chains, while several treatment centres are now overwhelmed. “Transmission is occurring faster than case detection and isolation, while contact tracing capacities are increasingly strained,” WHO said.

Adopted on Saturday, the changes to the Child Protection Law broadly increase sentences for offenders aged 15 to 18, empower judges to decline age-based sentence reductions for those accused of intentional killing or aggravated injury and mandate the detention of child offenders in closed juvenile institutions – rather than education centres focused on rehabilitation.

&nbsp: CIVICUS discusses the challenges posed by Paraguay’s ‘anti-NGO law’ with Hugo González, executive director of the Paraguayan Network of LGBTQ+ Artists (REPAR+), a civil society organisation (CSO) that promotes the rights of LGBTQI+ people, which has joined the constitutional challenge against this law.