Sea levels are rising and oceans are becoming warmer. Longer, more intense droughts threaten crops, wildlife and freshwater supplies. From polar bears in the Arctic to marine turtles off the coast of Africa, our planet’s diversity of life is at risk from the changing climate.

Approximately 36.4 million individuals in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia urgently require humanitarian aid due to the ongoing crisis in the Horn of Africa. Severe drought, the worst the region has faced in 40 years.

Ongoing violence in the Sahel escalated in 2022, with countries like Burkina Faso and Niger affected by new levels of conflict and insecurity.

The humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has persisted for several decades, has been compounded by heightened violence in 2022.

Afghanistan has been caught in conflict since 1978, meaning that several generations of Afghans have never known life without conflict and political instability. The current humanitarian situation in Afghanistan has left 24.1 million Afghans in need of humanitarian assistance, including 15.3 million children.

The Yemeni Civil War has, according to one UN estimate, has left nearly 80% of the country’s population in need of some form of assistance, and has damaged food systems, local infrastructure, the economy, and education prospects. 21.6 million people require humanitarian assistance. 12.9 million are children.

The level of severity in Pakistan escalated in 2022 due in large part to last year’s floods, which affected 33 million people — roughly one out of every seven people in the country.

On February 24, 2022, a long-simmering crisis in Ukraine escalated into violence with devastating impact. By mid-March, it became the site of one of the world’s largest refugee crises, with 7.9 million Ukrainians displaced abroad as refugees, and an additional 6.5 million displaced internally.

What began as a peaceful protest in 2011 has now become more than a decade of crisis in Syria — as well as one of the largest refugee crises in the world.

Ethiopia is heading toward its sixth consecutive failed rainy season, which could prolong a drought already affecting 24 million people.

More than a million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in China’s Xinjiang region. The reeducation camps are just one part of the government’s crackdown on Uyghurs.

Opioid addiction in the United States has become a prolonged epidemic, endangering not only public health but also economic output and national security.

At present, approximately 150 million individuals globally are experiencing homelessness, a number equivalent to the combined population of France and the UK.

Human trafficking is a modern form of slavery. It is an extreme form of labor exploitation where women, men and children are recruited or obtained and then forced to labor against their will through force, fraud or coercion.