Alex Crawford

I broke down while filming these scenes. I couldn't bear the scale of the suffering unfolding before my eyes. I tried my best to amplify these families' voices, but what I witnessed was beyond words. Children soaked, tents completely flooded, and families left exposed to the cold and rain. The world is not just witnessing this tragedy; it is complicit through its silence. Watch the report for yourselves.

Recent heavy rains in Gaza directly affected more than 106,000 people, damaging or destroying shelters, latrines, and belongings. Three children aged four, five and eight were killed along with their mother over the weekend when a sand dune collapsed onto their tent in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, after heavy rainfall. The deaths happened as families, exhausted by war and the protracted crisis, prepare to face a fourth winter under very dire conditions. Some 1.7 million displaced people are still living in tents, makeshift shelters, or damaged buildings exposed to flooding, cold and collapse. The flooding caused by the heavy rains is compounding a sanitation crisis created by the war.  No wastewater treatment plant in Gaza is currently operational. UNICEF and partners are distributing tarpaulins, winter clothing, blankets, and hygiene supplies, clearing blocked sewers and stormwater basins, and installing sandbags at sites to mitigate the impact of flooding.  In the past week alone, we reached at least 10,000 children with winter clothing and thermal blankets, distributed tarpaulins to families whose tents have flooded, and cleared sewage and stormwater at more than 50 locations. The emergency response is vital but is not a long-term solution. Tents and tarpaulins offer little protection against severe storms, and damaged water and sanitation systems continue to put children’s health and lives at risk. UNICEF urgently calls on the Israeli authorities to allow the immediate entry of pumps, generators, spare parts and other materials needed to repair water and sanitation infrastructure, including the Sheikh Radwan stormwater basin and the Sheikh Ejleen Wastewater Treatment Plant. We urge the international community to join the call for the entry of all life-saving humanitarian supplies and equipment, and to provide urgent funding for UNICEF's winter response in Gaza. Learn more: unicef.link/4C96qDo

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is getting worse. Heavy rain. Flooded tents. The reality on the ground is heartbreaking. The UK government will not stand by. We will not rest until we bring an end to the intolerable suffering.

Beyond the U.S. election results, there's something else you should care about: My friend Joshua Wong has been sentenced to another 10 years in prison for his peaceful advocacy of democracy in Hong Kong. He's been behind bars for over 2,100 days. When the police knocked on his door, Biden had just been elected, the iPhone 12 was brand new, and OpenAI had only recently launched the GPT-3 API for developers. He has not walked free since November 2020. — In 2016, I was elected as the youngest member of the legislature in Hong Kong. Joshua led the election campaign and worked 18 hours a day. I promised Joshua that we'd form a caucus together in the next term, in 2020, when he'd be old enough to run. It turned out to be the last time Hong Kong held a Legislative Council election in which a genuine political opposition could compete (though only around half the seats were electable). Beijing later imposed an election reform to make Hong Kong's election more like Iran's. Since 2020, the Chinese regime has dismantled Hong Kong's civil society and cracked down on political dissent. Nearly two thousand people have been imprisoned on political grounds. Many others have left the city to seek refuge elsewhere. I fled and was granted asylum in the UK. Joshua is expected to leave prison at 40, after 16 years in jail. Some say he’s naive or reckless; I fiercely disagree. He's one of the most strategic, persistent and risk-taking people I know. He might well have become an amazing entrepreneur if he'd been born elsewhere. He’s brave enough to do something most wouldn’t: risking his freedom to stand up for what’s true and right. I am so humbled by his dedication, and proud to call him my dear friend. When I left Hong Kong, I had no idea that we wouldn't be able to speak for nearly six years. Now, plus ten. When you're young, and work is so intense and busy, you never think to take time to chat. When you're young, and work is so intense and busy, you don't always think to make time just to get together. When people asked me what I regretted most, I often said I hadn't spent enough time simply hanging out with the brilliant people around me. I still feel that loss deeply. I wish I could see him as soon as possible. Joshua should be released immediately. — If you don’t know who Joshua is, I suggest you turn on Netflix and search for his name. No matter how long the authoritarian Chinese regime keeps him imprisoned, his name has already been written into history as one of the bravest activists to stand up against one of the world's most powerful autocracies. Even behind bars, he continues to demonstrate extraordinary courage.

Michigan's Democratic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed confronted @jamesmatthewsky, telling him he wouldn't answer his questions as he wants "zero" votes in the UK. Watch the heated exchange between the two. Watch our live coverage of the US midterms➡️ trib.al/BikRSb2

What a night and what a story! 🇺🇸 Good to see a real ‘Trump-branded’ watch in the flesh, Only 250 of this batch made. The US President made a cool $4.7 million from these. Affordability anyone? Big thanks to panel @erolmorkoc @hilaryr @robfordmancs & our amazing U.S. team.

Indeed, women in Afghanistan have been systematically erased from public life. UN experts have warned that this may amount to crimes against humanity, including gender apartheid. We appreciate France’s firm support to us in many front throughout our history including their support of Afghanistan case with ICC and the independent mechanism. No nation committed to human rights and equality should normalize this reality or engage unconditionally with those denying fundamental rights to half the population. We reiterated this position in our meeting with H.E. @jnbarrot today. Our rights should not be bargained. @PorteParoleMEAE

.@the_andrey_x and I were charged with assault, along with five other offenses. After being kept up all night and interrogated for seven hours, we finally saw a judge. He watched the footage and concluded it was clearly a one-sided attack and that we were the victims. His response was to ban us from the West Bank for two months, let the police keep my phone, and bring no charges against the settlers he had just watched attack us.

I am appalled & deeply saddened by the death of a @UN colleague, Mohammad el Shami, while in the custody of the Houthi de facto authorities in Yemen. He served with @UNHumanRights & had been arbitrarily detained by the Houthis since 2024. This is the second death of a UN staff member in Houthi detention, following the death of a @WFP colleague in 2025. I remain gravely concerned for the safety & well-being of the UN personnel, former UN staff & personnel from humanitarian & civil society organizations who remain detained. I reiterate my call for their immediate & unconditional release.

👉🏿 I was born under a dictatorship and have spent a great deal of my adult life denouncing authoritarian regimes. I am deeply shocked to read the threatening statement issued by the Met Police UK. Threatening to arrest people for providing "logistical support" to peaceful demonstrators is the kind of threatening statement we are used to getting from the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship in Nicaragua. This is not what I expect from PM Andy Burnham’s Government. The UK is supposed to be a democracy, where freedom of speech is a pillar of society. Churchill’s words remind us that a true civilisation relies entirely on these liberties to maintain democratic accountability. Criminalising and proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is a shameful authoritarian overreach. @metpoliceuk @TheBJHRF #FreedomOfSpeech #FreedomOfPress #HumanRights @DefendOurJuries #StopGenocideInGaza #DeproscribePalestineAction

Nobody will ever trust the West ever again. This is a betrayal of your allies. Sending them to their deaths….

Powerful last words from @TamanaParyaniP to the #UNSC: “We are the resistance to repression...and we will not stop until we win justice and equality for all women.” Read her statement here: wps.ngo/tamana

👉🏿 I urge everyone to watch Banished: The Taliban’s War on Women, the latest powerful and deeply disturbing documentary by the outstanding and courageous journalist @AlexCrawfordSky. Five years after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, Alex Crawford returns to expose the devastating consequences of their systematic persecution of Afghan women and girls, who continue to be stripped of their fundamental human rights, denied education, employment and freedom of movement, and increasingly erased from public life. What Afghan women and girls are enduring is nothing less than gender apartheid and a form of modern-day slavery. The Taliban have imposed a brutal system of institutionalised oppression and subjugation upon an entire female population, stripping women and girls of their fundamental rights, their freedom, their independence and their autonomy over their own lives. They are being denied the right to determine their own futures, reduced to a condition of enforced submission and deprived of their dignity and humanity. Yet, despite this relentless persecution, Afghan women continue to demonstrate extraordinary courage and determination, refusing to surrender their rights or abandon their hopes for a better future. I commend Alex Crawford for her unwavering commitment to exposing these grave injustices and giving a voice to women whose courage and resistance deserve the world’s attention and solidarity. The international community must not look away. We cannot stand by while an entire generation of Afghan girls is deprived of an education, its dreams and its future. The Taliban must be held accountable for their systematic violations of women’s and girls’ fundamental human rights. Silence is not neutrality. Indifference is complicity. The world must act. Afghan women and girls must not be abandoned. 🎥 Please watch and share this essential documentary: youtu.be/XXpg5jKt6Cg #Afghanistan #GenderApartheid #StandWithAfghanWomen #HumanRights #LetAfghanGirlsLearn

I am following with concern the grave humanitarian situation in Yemen, particularly in the city of Taiz, where the population is suffering from a lack of food, water and medical care. I make a heartfelt appeal for hostilities to cease and for the Yemeni people and all the peoples of the region to be guaranteed the right to live in peace.

I listened to #MercuryPrize on 6Music from 7:00pm to 1:00am I think, and BBCFour for one and a half hours too. These clashed with @AlexCrawfordSky's documentary on Afghanistan. Many will have missed it because of that. I think her @SkyNews bosses knew and wanted that to happen.

A grim snapshot of Palestinian life in the West Bank - that we witnessed over a week: - Settlers besieging a family in their own home - Israeli authorities demolishing Palestinian properties - Settlers repeatedly attacking farmers, even beating to death more than a dozen lambs - Israeli soldiers blocking the delivery of water to an isolated community Watch our full report here: youtu.be/lhRXrmg4_6M?is=NgRj…

Afghanistan on the Agenda. Afghans off the Guest List? Two days discussing Afghanistan in Oslo. Uzbek officials named. Norwegian counterparts acknowledged. Not a single Afghan participant identified. Were any Afghans invited? If not, why not? Our country is treated as a security problem to manage, a market to supply and a corridor to cross, while our people struggle to be heard. The stakes are painfully real, over 21 million Afghans need humanitarian assistance this year. Over two million girls remain excluded from secondary education. Where do they feature in this “pragmatic” agenda? Uzbekistan has every right to pursue trade and protect its borders. But commercial interests should face scrutiny when presented as peacebuilding. Of the reported $1.6 billion in bilateral trade in 2025, roughly 94% consisted of Uzbek exports to Afghanistan. What has this growing relationship delivered for Afghan livelihoods and what influence has Tashkent used to defend Afghan rights? NOREF and the Norwegian participants also owe answers. Who brought the concerns of Afghan women, journalists, teachers and struggling families into the room? Who challenged the assumption that greater regional connectivity will, by itself, produce lasting peace? The public account mentions security, trade, energy and transit. It says nothing about rights, representation or accountability. Were these priorities raised, or were they inconvenient to the conversation? This echoes a familiar pattern from the 1990s. Outsiders discussing their interests in Afghanistan while Afghans bear the costs. Our borders can open to commerce while our classrooms remain closed to girls. Dialogue has value. But another meeting, another photograph and another promise to meet again are not evidence of progress. Which commitments emerged? Who will follow them up? How will ordinary Afghans benefit? Before calling this a “promising start,” tell us: promising for whom? @NOREFno @president_uz @uwedofficial @IICAinTashkent @EUSEAfghanistan

Police in Türkiye carried out a raid on the widely watched, independent news channel Halk TV on October 14. The seizure of the channel is part of a wider effort by the government to restrict Turkish citizens’ access to independent news sources. hrw.org/news/2026/10/14/turk…