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Geneva announcements
Rhéal LeBlanc, for the United Nations Information Service (UNIS), speaking on behalf of the World Health Organization, said the Director-General of WHO would give a regular press conference today at 5.30 p.m. An invitation would be sent to journalists this morning.
First Ethiopian refugees relocated to a new refugee site in Sudan
Andrej Mahecic, for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said UNHCR continued to register new refugee arrivals at the Sudanese-Ethiopian border. Some 800 people had crossed from Ethiopia’s Tigray region into eastern Sudan in just the first few days of the new year. Since early November, more than 56,000 Ethiopian refugees had fled to neighbouring Sudan. In support of the government-led response in Sudan, UNHCR and Sudan’s Commission for Refugees (COR) continued to relocate the refugees from the arrival locations at the border to the designated refugee camps, further inland in Sudan’s Gedaref State.
A full briefing note is available here.
Responding to a question about Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia, Mr. Mahecic said there had been some progress with access. UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies had only been given access to some parts of Tigray, but assessments were underway. Mr. Mahecic added that the arrivals had now come down to several hundred per day. They were no longer at the levels seen in the early stages of the crisis.
Efforts to assist hundreds of migrants living without shelter this winter
Paul Dillon, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said that over the past two weeks IOM watched with growing concern the dire humanitarian situation facing migrants in Bosnia. On 23 December, local authorities had decided to close the Lipa Emergency Tent Camp, which was run with IOM’s support. The 1,400 men living in the camp joined an estimated 1,500 others including women and children sleeping rough in Una Sana Canton, on Bosnia’s border with European Union member Croatia as nighttime temperatures dropped well below zero. IOM and its partners were providing support as best they could but it was clear that a sustainable long-term solution must be found.
Peter Van der Auweraert, Bosnia Chief of Mission for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said Bosnia-Herzegovina had hosted 70,000 migrants since early 2018. The political response has been somewhat haphazard, and each winter there had been thousands of people sleeping rough. There were currently about 6,000 migrants housed in accommodation centers. While there were two other centers that could host the remaining migrants, it had not been possible to do so given the lack of consensus between the central government and the concerned local governments. It should be stressed that there was sufficient international funding to house the 8,000 to 8,500 migrants and refugees currently in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Responding to questions, M. Van der Auweraert said the migrants sleeping rough received food, non-food items and some medical care services from the Red Cross, the Danish Refugee Council and IOM. Their physical health was deteriorating, however, and there were signs of the situation taking a toll on their mental health. Overall, there seemed to be a consensus among the population that migrants should be treated humanely. The current asylum request process was excruciatingly slow; and yet, it was critical that access to asylum be guaranteed.
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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
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- Water storage on Earth’s land surface has decreased in past decade
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- 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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