The latest humanitarian news, direct to your inbox
07/12/2025
Read our editors’ weekly take on humanitarian news, trends, and developments from around the globe. ⬇️
A weekly read to keep you in the loop on humanitarian issues.
06/12/2025
🗞️ In the latest Inklings aid policy newsletter: What is special leave with full pay and how can we get on it?
Notes on aid: The politics and horse-trading behind UN leadership races, more aid cuts, and what is special leave with full pay?
06/12/2025
New investigation: The Egyptian government has sharply escalated deportations of Sudanese refugees, even as war worsens across the border.
Through leaked documents and extensive interviews, we examine how the system operates and how UNHCR has failed to push back and protect many of those affected. https://buff.ly/FXBwG8q
06/12/2025
“You have this whole mosaic of violent people using lethal force…it's not predictable at all,” said an observer on Haiti´s new Gang-Suppression Force. In this in-depth report we look at the many concerns the new foreign force has risen. https://buff.ly/WedC4nj
05/12/2025
“As a cisgender heterosexual man, if I was to go and pretend to speak on behalf of all women, I would be rightly ridiculed and rejected. But for someone who's never been in the experience or positionality of a displaced person to go and speak on their behalf and be the person who represents them…it's still an accepted position, and I think it is problematic.”
bsky.social on the prospects of another UN refugee chief not having lived experience in displacement.
🎧:
On the podcast: The race to lead the UN refugee agency, how to make the selection more transparent, and what refugees want from a new UNHCR boss.
05/12/2025
Climate change demands urgency now, but the UN Climate process is excruciatingly incremental. Everyone knows that one, but what about the other contradictions bedevilling the COP? Are there any lessons to be learned from the decline of the aid budgets and humanitarian law? ⬇️
Climate change is too time-sensitive to be left to incrementalism. That’s why the main process for dealing with it needs a radical rethink.
05/12/2025
Last year, an investigation by The New Humanitarian and the Refugees Platform in Egypt exposed the Egyptian government’s covert mass deportations of Sudanese refugees fleeing one of the world’s worst conflicts and humanitarian crises.
This new follow-up – based on more than a year of additional reporting – shows that the deportation system has expanded and how the UN’s response has fallen short.
Read the full story: ⬇️
Critics say the UN has failed to mount a sustained public challenge to an unprecedented crackdown.
04/12/2025
The rate of GBVF in South Africa is staggering. Intimate partner femicide is almost five times the world average.
Recent killings have sharpened public anger, with women demanding concrete steps to ease the fear they live with.
04/12/2025
A UN-backed team investigating alleged war crimes in Myanmar is at risk of losing more than a third of its people to looming funding shortfalls, in what would be a heavy blow to hopes of holding the accused to account.
Whole units investigating crimes against women and children could be axed, even as violent acts of impunity are on the rise in the country.
04/12/2025
Will Haiti's new anti-gang force (GSD( avoid the mistake of the previous foreign mission? How will it interact with controversial private military contractor Erik Prince´s drone operations in the country? To find out more read this briefing.
Observers fear the anti-gang mission will repeat the mistakes of the previous foreign intervention and could throw more fuel on the fire.
01/12/2025
Washington’s decision to suspend the immigration cases of tens of thousands of people because of a lone shooter is only the latest example of how Afghan refugees are having their cases politicised by countries that previously promised them safe haven from the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, particularly those who served alongside foreign forces during the 20-year US-led military intervention in the country.
Trump’s moves are only the latest additions to the litany of restrictions confronting Afghan migrants and asylum seekers around the world.
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The New Humanitarian (formerly IRIN News) was founded by the United Nations in 1995, in the wake of the Rwandan genocide, out of the conviction that objective on-the-ground reporting of humanitarian crises could help mitigate or even prevent future disasters of that magnitude.
Almost twenty years later, we became an independent non-profit news organisation, allowing us to cast a more critical eye over the multi-billion-dollar emergency aid industry and draw attention to its failures at a time of unprecedented humanitarian need. As digital disinformation went global, and mainstream media retreated from many international crisis zones, our field-based, high-quality journalism filled even more of a gap. Today, we are one of only a handful of newsrooms world-wide specialized in covering crises and disasters – and in holding the aid industry accountable.
In 2019, we changed our name to The New Humanitarian to signal our move from UN project to independent newsroom and our role chronicling the changing nature of – and response to – humanitarian crises.
Throughout our journey, we have remained true to our mission to inform crisis prevention and response by amplifying the voices of those most affected; shining a light on forgotten crises; and resisting superficial, sensational narratives about the crises of our time.
Our name and brand identity
Evocative of respected media brands such as The New Statesman and The Economist, The New Humanitarian is the authoritative news source for policy-makers and practitioners involved in humanitarian response. We are to crises what POLITICO is to politics.
Our logo is designed in GT Sectra, a modern serif font that originated as the house typeface of a Swiss longform journal called Reportagen. It marries the flourish of calligraphy to the precision-cut lettering of a printing press, echoing our commitment to evocative story-telling based on sharp reporting.
The cursor at the end of our logo signals our aim to be fresh and forward-looking, ready to tap in to the latest developments, and tell the ongoing story of crises as they evolve.
But most importantly, The New Humanitarian speaks to the profound shifts impacting our world today.
The drivers of humanitarian needs are changing, thanks to new threats like climate change, longer-lasting conflicts, and a geopolitical landscape that makes the resolution of crises at the international level more challenging.
The impacts of humanitarian crises are changing too, becoming more global in their repercussions. The exodus of refugees from Syria is one of many examples.
Traditional forms of humanitarian intervention are bursting at the seams; new approaches and players are emerging to fill an increasing gap between needs and response.
Tackling the world’s crises is no longer the exclusive domain of governments, “Big Aid” and the United Nations -- nor is it only about disaster relief and aid delivery. In many ways, the whole conception of humanitarianism is changing, evidenced by the private sector’s response to refugees; high school students marching for climate change; and local communities reclaiming agency in shaping their own futures. Today, a new generation of humanitarians is redefining the way the world responds to crises – demanding a seat at the table and a voice in the conversation.
We remain the trusted news source for policy-makers and practitioners in humanitarian response, but The New Humanitarian is expanding to reach this wider audience of people who want to better understand our complex world, in order to change it for the better.
