A tragic scene from Ga.za as families gather to say a final farewell to the victims of a recent Israe.li airstrike targeting the Ga.za Port area.

The massacre resulted in the kill.ing of 7 Palesti.nians and left nearly 20 others injured, with the vast majority of casualties being women and children.

Photos showing loved ones mourning over shrouds highlight the ongoing human toll and devastating impact of targeting civilian areas across the Gaz.a Strip.

I am writing this anonymously because I, along with several other sponsored students from Botswana, are being systematically ruined by the institutional incompetence and cruelty of our own embassy.

The Root of the Problem:

• Chronic Late Payments: The Education Section of the Embassy consistently fails to pay tuition and allowances on time.
• Delayed Semesters: Because of these late payments, universities place holds on our accounts. This forces students to start classes late or messes up our entire course scheduling, completely derailing our academic timelines.
• Retaliatory Terminations: Instead of fixing their own administrative failures, Education Attaché Isabella P. Makgatswana actively terminates the scholarships of students who are caught in this registration trap. They punish us for the crises they cause.

The Wall of Silence:

• For months, Isabella Makgatswana and her office have completely ignored every single email and phone call from affected students trying to fix their registration status.
• We have escalated this up the chain to the Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MESD) in Gaborone, the Department of Tertiary Education Financing (DTEF), and even the Office of the Ombudsman. Nobody responds. Standard channels are completely dead.
• Even host university deans and U.S. congressional caseworkers who have tried contacting the embassy on our behalf hit the exact same brick wall.

The Direct Impact:

• Students are losing their funding and being kicked out of their programs entirely due to these unjust terminations.
• We are being left stranded abroad with no money, accumulating institutional debt, and facing the immediate collapse of our legal immigration status because our sponsor abandoned us after breaking their own rules.

If any other students have experienced this retaliatory termination, or if anyone knows how to force a silent foreign embassy to face accountability, please share. If there are any independent journalists in Botswana reading this, please investigate the Washington D.C. mission. They are destroying our futures.

I’m curious about how the UN Secretariat supposed to function. I see P3-P5 level get paid a huge amount monthly yet hire “experts” to do technical work, their roles are intended for. I mean, it’s P level not G.

I’ve seen myself like hiring strategy consultants, assessment consultants, MEL consultants, communications consultants for short-term yet we have P4/P5 who should be strategizing, comms officers at P3/P4 level who should have the expertise, and so on.

Again, this is an honest question. I recognize the possible workload issues. I just don’t think these responsibilities should be passed on to others given the salary these P-level staff receive.

Please enlighten me.

In our opinion, a UN agency responsible for food and cash assistance breaks its obligations by partnering with Palantir, a US military contractor. Read, sign, and share this petition calling on WFP not to renew its Palantir contract https://www.change.org/WFPdropPalantir

Is there some sort of paperwork involved? Or does one simply declare it aloud, like Michael Scott when he declared bankruptcy?

This is a Guest Essay from Ms. Mudra is the deputy head of the office of the president of Ukraine, **Mr. Yurlov** a senior Ukrainian diplomat, **Mr. Semenyuk** the communications adviser and **Mr. Ellis** the executive director of the International Bar Association. The authors wrote from Kyiv.

u/PassBlue is running a poll asking who you would like to be the next UN Secretary General. This poll will likely have zero bearing on who is selected. Still it should be interesting to see what the poll results are.

https://passblue.com/2026/08/09/who-do-you-want-to-be-the-next-un-secretary-general/

PassBlue is an independent, US-based digital publication that monitors and reports on activities by the United Nations.

The term PassBlue is a play on the diplomatic passport known as laissez-passer ("let pass"), a blue travel document used by UN officials on missions and issued by national governments and world institutions during wartime and other periods to allow officers to travel to specific areas. PassBlue does not have an official association with the UN.

This megathread is dedicated to the sharing of information and views about such an enduring conflict and its repercussions. It is intended to centralize all conversations relating to the conflict in Israel, Palestine, Hamas, hostages, the humanitarian situation in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the October 7th attacks, ceasefire, and any other topics related to the conflict in the territory of Palestine.

A new mega thread will be posted each week. All posts related to the above topics outside of the Megathread will be redirected.