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Our editors’ weekly take on humanitarian news, trends, and developments from around the globe.
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Iran war enters sixth week, Israel takes control of south Lebanon
Daily strikes continued across the Middle East as the US-Israeli war on Iran entered its sixth week with no ceasefire deal in sight. In Lebanon, where Israeli airstrikes killed three journalists, Israel announced plans to demolish homes in villages near the border and to control parts of southern Lebanon even after a potential ceasefire with Hezbollah. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said his country would bar 600,000 people who have fled their homes from returning “until the safety and security” of residents of northern Israel could be ensured. Lebanon’s Defence Minister Michel Menassa called it “a clear intention to impose a new occupation of Lebanese territory”. Israeli leaders are also accused of warning Christian and Druze residents – who would be allowed to stay in southern Lebanon – against providing shelter to Muslim neighbours. Iran continues to target its Gulf neighbours in response to US-Israeli aggression, striking a desalination and water plant in Kuwait. The 3 April attack came days after Qatar warned the US and Israel against attacking Iranian desalination services. Iran’s foreign ministry says more than 600 educational institutions, including schools and dozens of pharmacies, have been struck by the US and Israel since 28 February. The United States, meanwhile, boasted about the partial destruction of a key bridge connecting Tehran to the city of Karaj and the Caspian Sea. At least eight people were killed and 100 others injured. US President Donald Trump warned of “much more to follow”.
World feels economic shock of Strait of Hormuz closure
More than a month into the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the global economic impact has been immense – but also asymmetric. Energy importers have been more affected than exporters, and poorer countries more so than richer ones. But everyone will feel the hit of increased inflation. As oil prices balloon, Cambodia has faced the largest spike, with petrol up by 68%. Yet the turmoil in the oil markets is not the only worry – other essential commodity supply chains are being squeezed. A third of all fertiliser passes through the strait, and emerging shortages will affect crop yields, pushing up food prices. Major agricultural economies are at risk – including India, Australia, Brazil, and the United States. Subsistence farmers around the globe will also suffer, especially in Africa. The duration of the war will be key. A short-term conflict can just about be absorbed. But if the strait remains closed for several more months the damage becomes significant. Already 3.4 billion people live in countries struggling with high debt-servicing obligations, leaving little room to absorb new shocks.
Dubai Humanitarian CEO flags big aid hub hit
The amount of aid flowing in and out of the world’s largest humanitarian logistics hub has dropped dramatically amid disruption caused by the US-Iran conflict. Dubai Humanitarian, which stocks supplies for use in emergencies in Africa, the Middle East, and beyond, dispatched just $3 million worth of humanitarian goods in March 2026, compared to $8 million in March 2025, a fall of 62.5%. The drop in aid coming in – key to having prepositioned humanitarian supplies in place – was even steeper, with just $4 million worth entering in March 2026, compared to $13 million in March 2025, a fall of 70%. These statistics were revealed by Dubai Humanitarian CEO Giuseppe Saba in an interview with The New Humanitarian. Disruption to air and sea travel has been one of the main ripple effects of the conflict, and has placed yet more pressure on overstretched humanitarian organisations – and their budgets – as logisticians scramble to reroute supplies. “The full supply chain is impacted… but we are trying to do our best to cope with the current situation,” Saba said, stressing that Dubai International Airport is “fully operational” despite the disruption.
Israel’s new death penalty law for Palestinians draws condemnation
Israel’s parliament passed a law on 30 March approving the death penalty for Palestinians from the illegally occupied West Bank for carrying out deadly attacks against Israelis. Language in the bill also suggests the death penalty may be applied to Palestinian citizens of Israel. The new law has drawn widespread condemnation, with the UN’s top human rights official saying its application would constitute a war crime. Other global leaders condemned the bill as discriminatory for applying different punishments for the same crime to people based on their nationality or ethnicity. Israel has not prosecuted any Jewish Israelis for killing Palestinians in the West Bank in the past decade. Israeli settlers have killed at least seven Palestinians already this year. Before the new law, rights groups already argued that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians meets the legal definition of apartheid. Already high levels of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank have surged since the beginning of the Iran war, while attention has drifted away from the Gaza Strip.
MSF details extent of sexual violence against women in Sudan
Between January 2024 and November 2025, at least 3,396 survivors of sexual violence sought treatment in Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) clinics across North and South Darfur. But the medical charity warns in a new report that this represents only a fraction of the true scale, as many survivors of Sudan’s three-year civil war cannot safely reach care. It identifies the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and allied militias as responsible for the bulk of the systematic sexual violence against women. “Sexual violence is a defining feature of this conflict – not confined to frontlines, but pervasive across communities,” notes MSF. In South Darfur, hundreds of kilometres from the fighting, 34% of survivors were assaulted while farming or travelling to farmland, and 22% while collecting firewood, water, or food. According to MSF, one in five survivors was aged under 18. Many of the cases in the report occurred last year, following the RSF’s takeover of the Zamzam and Abu Shouk displacement camps, and of the city of El Fasher in October, which MSF calls “one of the most shocking iterations, unfolding the most unimaginable brutality”.
Humanitarians may be more dependent on AI than they realise
Artificial intelligence is already “infiltrating” aid operations, even if many humanitarian groups don’t yet know it, digital rights group Access Now warns in a new report. Aid workers are experimenting with AI faster than organisations are creating guardrails. But the other side of the surge may be more far-reaching: AI is already seeping into workflows through updates and add-ons to pre-existing products used by humanitarians. Think of all the tech software and tools that have become “cloud-based” – the researchers call this “the gradual cloudification of most common digital systems”. The public obsession with generative AI may be a distraction, given that many cloud-based tools rely on some form of algorithm for creating analyses and outputs. “Aid organisations should start treating any external digital system – especially if proprietary and non-auditable – as possibly involving algorithmic tools,” Access Now says.
Weekend read
And finally…
Catastrophe betting is perverting humanity
With the click of a red or green button, users of online prediction markets like Kalshi or Polymarket can enter the world of “catastrophe betting”, where financial wins and losses are determined by the date, quantity, or magnitude of events in which people are killed, livelihoods are lost, and ecosystems are destroyed. People have been betting on the weather for over a century, both on black markets and simply by buying rain insurance, reports a recent essay in Aeon. But the modern crypto-fuelled, dashboard-equipped prediction markets reflect – or promote – perverse responses to wars and natural disasters: Human suffering is abstracted by the opportunity to profit, and responsibility for shaping a better future is supplanted by the yes/no binary of whether an event will occur. The comments sections of these sites feature people openly hoping for catastrophes, feigning influence over outcomes tied to unimaginably complex systems of politics, economics, and climate. This lack of real influence – for most betters at least – can breed desperation. In early March, journalist Emanuel Fabian received death threats after reporting that an Iranian missile had struck Israel. Polymarket users who had bet against that outcome tried to avert losses by persuading him to amend his reporting to say the explosion he documented was from an interceptor. These attempts at market manipulation illustrate what Fabian told The Atlantic about prediction markets: “What I’ve heard is that those who bet on Polymarket either know the right answer or are wasting their money.”