Today's top news: Sudan, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Democratic Republic of the Congo
UNOCHA - United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Sudan
UN Relief Chief meets senior officials and humanitarian partners
The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, continues his visit to Sudan this week.
Yesterday in Port Sudan, he met General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, President of the Transitional Sovereign Council of the Republic of the Sudan, to discuss continued dialogue and cooperation to improve humanitarian access across the country. "The UN appreciates the clear commitment to support us to deliver lifesaving aid everywhere it is needed," Fletcher said in a social media post.
The Under-Secretary-General also held talks with Sudanese Foreign Minister Mohieldin Salim Ahmed Ibrahim and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty on urgent steps to reach people in need across Sudan, from Darfur to the Kordofan region. Mr. Fletcher expressed his gratitude for their partnership and commitment to facilitate neutral and impartial humanitarian action. While in Port Sudan, the Under-Secretary-General also met with UN agencies and humanitarian partners.
Fletcher is now traveling towards Darfur to meet families who escaped the bloodshed in El Fasher - a city he says was "already the scene of catastrophic levels of human suffering" which has "descended into an even darker hell" - and the aid workers struggling to reach them amid insecurity, access constraints and funding cuts.* He recently allocated US$20 million from the OCHA-managed Central Emergency Response Fund to scale up lifesaving aid in Tawila, other parts of Darfur, and the Kordofan region.
The UN is intensifying its efforts to reach people in need across Darfur and beyond, together with local aid organizations.
*Donations made to UN Crisis Relief help UN agencies and humanitarian NGOs reach people in Sudan with urgent support.
Occupied Palestinian Territory
UN and partners stress need to lift constraints on Gaza humanitarian operations
OCHA reports that the humanitarian response in Gaza continues to ramp up, despite the many constraints that remain. The UN and its partners stress that these impediments must be lifted so that humanitarians can expand the response quickly.
Overnight, Israeli authorities informed the UN that the Zikim crossing, between Israel and northern Gaza, will reopen for humanitarian cargo. In recent weeks, the UN has been repairing the road leading to Zikim inside Gaza in preparation for the reopening and is now carrying out final checks - including for potential explosive hazards - to enable the resumption of cargo collection.
OCHA has been informed that for the time being, cargo will need to be scanned elsewhere, offloaded from Israeli trucks, and then reloaded onto Palestinian trucks on separate days. Zikim has been closed for two months, and no supplies were entering Gaza directly from the north.
Partners working on food security report that they continue to deliver hot meals and bread to people in need across Gaza. They warn that due to ongoing customs clearance delays and other impediments impacting the distribution of food parcels, partners are having to adjust the quantity to stretch the available stock.
Partners managing displacement sites in Gaza report that people continue to move from southern Gaza to areas in the north, with about 4,000 movements recorded over the past week. While the distribution of shelter and winter supplies is scaling up, the needs remain vast, and much more aid needs to enter to address them at the scale necessary.
Meanwhile, the fiber-optic cable near the Erez crossing in northern Gaza has been out of order since 6 November - and partners working on emergency telecommunications have been unable to access the area to fix the issue, as requests to coordinate repairs have been denied by Israeli authorities. Partners warn that a prolonged outage could lead to an Internet blackout across Gaza, which would jeopardize ongoing humanitarian operations by the UN and its partners.
As humanitarians continue to scale up assistance - with the commercial sector and bilateral assistance further supporting the response - market prices for basic commodities are gradually stabilizing. Partners continue to provide critical cash voucher assistance, with 66,000 cash transfers since the ceasefire came into effect.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Violence imperils civilians in North Kivu and Ituri
OCHA remains deeply concerned about continued attacks against civilians in Beni and Lubero territories in North Kivu province, as well as in Ituri province, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Since the beginning of the year, partners report that more than 1,000 people have been killed across North Kivu and Ituri.
According to partners, as of the end of October, some 400,000 people have been displaced in Beni and Lubero territories.
The impact on health services has been devastating. At least six health facilities have been attacked since the beginning of 2025. In total, since 2024, at least 28 health sites have been affected by armed attacks, and more than half of those facilities remain non-functional today, depriving over 150,000 people of access to essential care.
Humanitarian access is increasingly constrained due to insecurity and the presence of explosive remnants of war. Attacks by armed groups are also disrupting agriculture and reducing trade flows, further destabilizing local markets.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo remains one of the countries most affected by food insecurity, with the situation particularly severe in the east. Nearly 25 million people - more than 20 per cent of the population - are currently facing high levels of acute food insecurity, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Phase 3 or above, according to the latest IPC analysis. This number is projected to rise to nearly 27 million in the first half of 2026, with the situation in several territories in North Kivu, including Lubero, expected to deteriorate to emergency levels of food security, or IPC Phase 4.
OCHA reiterates its call on all parties to respect international humanitarian law and ensure the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Nearly 11 months into the year, the $2.5 billion 2025 Humanitarian Response Plan for the DRC is just 17 per cent funded, with $435 million received.
Posted on 12 November 2025
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