Wars are ongoing in four continents in 2023. Ukrainian forces are battling Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, trying to liberate the region invaded and annexed by Moscow in 2022.

Sudan's military and a paramilitary force are vying for control of the northern African country since April. Myanmar's junta is being strongly challenged by ethnic rebels. Israeli troops are going after Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

From February to December 2022, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights counted 6,826 civilians killed and 10,769 injured in the Ukraine war. As 2023 ends, the figures have risen though still unverifiable.

The office of the president of Ukraine counted up to 13,000 of its troops killed during the period, with 15,000 missing.

Citing Western intelligence figures, Christian Freuding, who oversees the German army's support for Kyiv, has told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that 300,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the war began.

Since the Sudan conflict broke out in April, the violence has killed more than 12,000 people, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

Meanwhile, the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza killed more than 1,500 mostly Israeli civilians during the Palestinian terrorists' attack on 7 October. The ministry of health in the Palestinian territory claims that more than 21,500 people were killed since Israeli forces laid siege on the enclave to hunt for Hamas terrorists.

In the first 11 months of 2023, 45 journalists were killed carrying out their work in Gaza, down from 61 last year, says the annual report by the media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

Arms race

Millions of missiles, drones, ammunition and artillery shells under production threaten to kill more people.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country would produce one million drones this year. Ukrainian officials told Agence France-Presse the armed forces needed 100,000 to 120,000 drones per month in their efforts to fend off invading Russian troops.

The European Union has pledged to provide Ukraine with one million artillery rounds by March 2024 to aid in Kyiv's fight against Russia. German industry's share of the EU plan should eventually reach 300,000 to 400,000 shells a year, more than three times the production in early 2022, industry sources told AFP.

Also boosting the arms race is the United States' military aid to Kyiv, including more than 15 million rounds of ammunition, the US State Department said.

Even Japan has been dragged into the race as it ramps up production of US Patriot missiles for export to that country as its own stockpile have been depleted by Ukraine's needs.

The US claims that Iran has supplied attack drones to Russia. On top of this, Iran has increased its production of 60 percent enriched uranium to a rate of about 9 kilograms a month since the end of November, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.  

Nuclear weapons require uranium enriched to 90 percent.

In November, a confidential IAEA report seen by AFP indicated that Iran's enriched uranium stocks were 22 times the limits authorized in the 2015 accord limiting the country's nuclear activities in exchange for lifting economic sanctions.

Not to be left behind is North Korea. A new reactor at its main nuclear facility will likely be fully operational by next summer, Seoul's defense minister said, a week after the IAEA called it a "cause for concern."

Displacement

The number of people displaced worldwide hit a record 114 million at the end of September. Among them, nearly 36.5 million have fled across borders and are living as refugees, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees — a number that has doubled in the past seven years and looks set to rise.

The UN says at least 7.1 million people in Sudan have been displaced, including 1.5 million who fled across the border into neighboring countries to escape the fighting of the army and Rapid Support Force.

There are millions displaced by conflicts in Ukraine and Sudan, the plight of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, and the millions who have fled due to conflict and insecurity in Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and across northern Africa's Sahel region. More than a million Palestinians have been added to the refugee population with the fighting in Gaza, and conflicts continuing to rage elsewhere. 

Meanwhile, US border officials have in recent weeks counted some 10,000 daily crossings by migrants from Mexico, an uptick from preceding months. There were more than 2.4 million migrant interceptions via land in the year from October 2022 to September 2023.

Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims from refugee camps in Bangladesh have sailed to eastern Indonesia.

Nearly 350,000 Afghans — many born in refugee camps in Pakistan — have returned voluntarily or been deported by Islamabad.

Disasters

In the early hours of February 6, one of the deadliest earthquakes in a century flattened entire cities in southeast Turkey, killing more than 50,000 people, with nearly 6,000 others killed across the border in Syria

A shallow magnitude-6.8 temblor struck near the town of Oukaïmedene in western Morocco on 8 September, killing more than 2,900 people and injuring 5,500 others.

Mediterranean storm "Daniel" caused two dams near the city of Derna in Libya to fail and the rampaging waters killed more than 4,000 people, with between 10,000 and 100,000 others going missing.

Meanwhile, one heat record after another tumbled in 2023, which is on course to be the hottest year on record, according to the European Union's climate monitor Copernicus.

The northern hemisphere had its hottest summer ever and temperature records were also smashed in the southern winter, with the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires experiencing its warmest 1 August on record at 30 degrees Celsius.

Global consumption of coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, hit an all-time high of 8.5 billion tons in 2023, the IEA energy watchdog said.                                        

WITH AFP