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The UN's emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths on Monday expressed deep concern about the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the fate of Israeli hostages, while also anticipating "good news" regarding aid access into southern Gaza from Egypt.
“History is watching,” Martin Griffiths told UN News in Geneva, highlighting the desperate situation facing around one million Gazans uprooted in recent days, after the Israeli military warned of an imminent offensive following the deadly 7 October attack on Israel by militant group Hamas.
“Aid access is our overwhelming priority. And we are in deep discussions hourly with the Israelis, with the Egyptians, with the Gazans about how to do that,” Mr. Griffiths said, adding that he was optimistic about hearing “some good news” soon that a solution could be found to the political impasse.
Transcription:
“We're living in the worst of times. The first thing I want to emphasize is the unacceptable, illegal act to take those hostages from Israel, many of whom, for God's sake, are children, women, old and sick, and keep them hidden in Gaza against some future eventuality. They have to be let out straight away.
Number two: the response to that egregious act also includes humanitarian rules of war. You cannot ask people to move out of harm's way without assisting them to do it, to go to places of their choice where they want to be safe and with the humanitarian aid that they need to make that journey safely.
And right now, the movement that has happened has not had those provisions and it must have it; hospitals are running out of fuel, are running out of supplies up in the north. People can't move without help.
Number three: we need access for aid. We are in deep discussions with the Israelis, with the Egyptians and with others, hugely helped by Secretary Blinken in his travels around the region. And I'm hoping to hear some good news this morning about getting aid through Rafah, one of the crossing points but an important one, into Gaza to help those million people who have moved south as well as those who live there already. So, rules of war, aid, access.
I shall be going myself tomorrow to the region to try to help in the negotiations, to try to bear witness and to express solidarity with the extraordinary courage of the many thousands of aid workers who have stayed the course and who are still there helping the people in Gaza and in the West Bank.
And I want to leave you with one final thought. History tells us that an act of war has consequences which are often unconsidered, when people move into those acts of war. We have seen this movie far too often before. We need to be concerned about creating a situation - absurd as it may seem at the moment - where Israelis and Palestinians can live as neighbours, as friends, ideally, certainly as interlocutors, where they do not need to teach each other lessons through war.
Thank you.”
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As world’s water reserves change, countries must prepare for a new reality: WMO
New data showing that rivers were at their lowest level for decades last year provides further evidence that the climate crisis is real and countries must act immediately to protect themselves from the increasing threat to communities and livelihoods, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.
The key findings from WMO’s State of Global Water Resources 2025 report covering the hydrological cycle and extreme events in the five-year period to last year:
- 2025 was one of driest years for river discharge in 35 years
- Past seven years have seen abnorfmal river flows
- Water storage on Earth’s land surface has decreased in past decade
- Widespread glacier loss across all regions for fourth consecutive year
- Asia and Africa are regions most affected by water-related disasters
- Water data availability has improved, but gaps remain in hard-hit areas
Highlighting the long-term decline in the Earth’s freshwater storage and glacier melt, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo explained that the planet’s water reserves used to act as a planetary “savings account” that absorbed the occasional dry season, avoiding a water crisis. “One of the central stories of the 2025 report is what is happening to that savings account? And the simple answer is that we are depleting it,” she told journalists in Geneva.
Groundwater reserves are equally stretched and have been in decline since 2014, WMO’s report states, with nearly two-thirds of monitored wells worldwide showing levels lower than the historical norm and indicating a shift “further toward deficit…not recovery”.
“At the same time, we are seeing more water-related disasters,” Ms. Saulo said, while also stressing that the currently strengthening El Niño “will increase the risk of drought in some areas, and flooding in others”.
Glaciers disappearing
In 2025, for the fourth consecutive year, every major glaciated region on Earth lost ice mass, leading to short-term hazards including floods and long-term water insecurity, according to WMO.
Responding to a question about whether the changing global water cycle might have contributed to the deadly Nepal-China flooding disaster, Ms. Saulo explained that melting ice and rock was just one factor in the chain of events that ultimately sent a massive and deadly wall of water and debris downstream on 26 August, killing at least 1,367 people.
“You asked if it could happen again? Absolutely; the problem in this region is that there’s 63,700 glaciers at the last count,” she told a Press Conference in Geneva. “Even if you’re looking with remote sensing with satellites at these glaciers, you might see some faults, you might see some slight shifting, that does not mean necessarily catastrophic collapse. So, in order to plan for this, it’s very, very difficult. But the international community is looking very hard at ways in which we can bring people together to solve some of these monitoring issues.”
Data indicates that glaciers shrank between 2023 and 2025 with cumulative losses of 1,400 gigatonnes of water – or about one third of annual fresh water needs.
Every major glacier region on Earth lost ice for the fourth consecutive year.
“All 19 glacier regions around the globe lost ice; in Central Asia, Iceland, the Russian Arctic and western Canada and the United States, it was among the three worst years on record,” said Wayne Jenkinson, WMO’s Director of Hydrology and Cryosphere.
Some regions with smaller glaciers such as Central Europe, the Caucasus, the western Canada and the United States may already have reached “peak water”, Mr. Jenkinson warned.
“After this point, the glacier gives less meltwater each year simply because there is less ice left to melt. That matters for every community downstream that relies on water during hot, dry summers,” he explained.
Narelle van der Wel, WMO’s Head of Cryosphere Monitoring, Predictions and Services, stressed that while some further glacier loss is unavoidable, the eventual scale of the decline is not predetermined.
“Some glacier loss is inevitable, but total loss of glaciers is not yet inevitable,” she said, pointing to emissions reductions as central to limiting future losses.
Preparing for moving baselines
The report does not attribute every observed change to climate change alone. WMO says pressure on water resources and natural variability also contribute.
Mr. Jenkinson said governments need to prepare for “moving baselines” as historical patterns become less reliable.
“The situation 30 years ago is not where we are today,” he said. Countries, he added, need to prepare “for those changes that have really already arrived”.
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