TRANSCRIPT:
SBS WN: "A ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas is holding tonight."
MASPERO: "The needs of children in Gaza are just enormous."
TRUMP: "I was saved by God to make America great again."
SBS WN: "For nearly a week now, LA firefighters have been engaged in an exhausting battle on multiple fronts."
GHELANI: "The Sudan war is one of the biggest humanitarian crises in the world today."
SBS WN: "Breaking news tonight. Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church, has died aged 88."2025 saw the world lurching from geopolitical crises to natural disasters, with one particular force of nature proving instrumental in many of the world's biggest developments:
TRUMP: "The golden age of America begins right now. For American citizens, January 20th 2025 is liberation day!"
That's right, the ever-quotable and often-controversial Donald Trump returned to the United States presidency in January and began setting the global agenda quickly.
"I always say tariffs is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary because tariffs are going to make us rich as hell, it's gonna bring our country's businesses back that left us."
The President's effort to put tariffs on most goods coming into the US ignited trade wars with allies and geopolitical rivals alike, and saw fears from the likes of US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell of a recession.
"If the large increases in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they're likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth and an increase in unemployment."
But it's the tit-for-tat trade war with China that threatened to destabilise the global economy.
The US imposed 145 per cent tariffs on goods from China, with China responding with 125 per cent tariffs on US goods.
The two largest global economies reached an uneasy truce in June, but Mr Trump revived the tariff war in October by announcing additional levies of 100 per cent on Chinese goods.
By the end of October, President Trump had agreed to sign a trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping, lowering proposed tariffs on Chinese exports to 47 per cent and securing expanded US access to Chinese rare earth minerals.
At the meeting, President Xi said - through a translator - the trade tensions are understandable but must always be resolved.
"Given our different national conditions, we do not always see eye-to-eye with each other and it is normal for the two leading economies of the world to have frictions now and then."
Donald Trump also worked hard to project himself around the world as a peacemaker in an increasingly war-ravaged world.
The 2025 Global Peace Index from the Institute for Economics and Peace found war on the rise with militarisation increasing by 2.5 per cent.
They identified 59 active state-based conflicts, the most since the end of World War II and three more than 2024.
At the centre of several of these conflicts sits close US ally Israel, embroiled in conflicts in the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran.
After two years of devastation in the Gaza Strip, a ceasefire deal proposed by the US president was signed on October 10th, bringing much of the violence in the Israel-Hamas war to an end.
"We ended the war in Gaza and really on a much bigger basis created peace. And I think it's gonna be a lasting peace, hopefully an everlasting peace. Peace in the Middle East. We secured the release of all remaining hostages."
More than 69,000 Palestinians have been killed and 170,000 wounded by the Israeli assault on Gaza, according to local health authorities, with a famine declared by the IPC in August.
Following the October ceasefire deal, UNICEF senior emergency manager Emma Maspero said the needs of Gazans were overwhelming.
"The needs of children in Gaza are just enormous, whether it be from clean water, drinking water, and sanitation to avoid spreading any diseases, to basic medical facilities to being able to get nutritional support. We see so many children severely, acutely malnourished."
The UN estimates that approximately 92 per cent of all residential buildings in Gaza – around 436,000 homes – have been damaged or destroyed and between 55 and 60 million tonnes of rubble is covering the enclave.
One of the most devastating conflict-induced humanitarian crises in recent memory is the civil war in Sudan.
The two-and-a-half-year long war between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, has consumed the country of 50 million people and re-ignited an ethnically-targeted killing campaign in the western Darfur regions.
Reena Ghelani, CEO of Plan International, spoke to SBS from Sudan in October, outlining the scale of the suffering.
"There's extreme violence against children and girls in particular. There's a lot of sexual violence to the point where people are saying it's a weapon of war. People are fleeing for safety, so they're displaced within the country. There's about 12 million people altogether. There's people starving, there is actually people facing a famine and many more will dive into that situation if we don't get food to them urgently."
In January, the US State Department issued a statement accusing the Rapid Support Forces of committing genocide in the region amid a campaign of tribal violence in communities.
Nathaniel Raymond is head of the Yale Humanitarian Lab, which has been investigating massacres throughout Sudan.
"What is this? Is this genocide? Yes, but it's not just genocide. This is the final battle for the completion of the Darfur genocide that began 20 years ago. The scale of killing, the hyper-violence, is unlike anything I've seen in my career."
The Rapid Support Forces deny all claims of genocide.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, it's been an especially deadly and brutal year of war with the invading Russian army making slow territorial gains in the East and striking key energy infrastructure across the country.
After more than three-and-a-half years of war, the future is looking bleak for Ukraine's efforts to repel the advancing Russian military forces and they have faced devastating losses along the way.
The United Nations Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has reported 12,062 civilian casualties in the first 10 months of 2025, a 27 per cent rise from 2024.
And as President Volodymr Zelenskyy looks to a diplomatic solution to end the war, he's found a less reliable ally in the current US President.
TRUMP: "You're right now not in a very good position. You don't have the cards right now. With us you start having the cards."
ZELENSKYY: "We're not playing cards. I'm very serious Mr President."
TRUMP: "You're playing cards. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people."
While relations between the leaders have improved since, Dr Jessica Genauer from Flinders University told SBS it seems unlikely Ukraine will regain all of its lost territory in any negotiated peace.
"President Putin, he's not going to withdraw from territory that they've already captured unless it's very small parts and it would only be in exchange for additional territory in, for example, Luhansk and Donetsk."
Around the world, a wave of protest movements led by Generation Z took hold after 2024's student-led uprisings in Bangladesh.
From Mongolia to Morocco, Madagascar to Peru, Mexico to Timor-Leste, youth-led protests swept the globe, bringing down governments and seizing the levers of power.
There's perhaps no more shocking example than the explosive September protest movement in Nepal, spurred on by a ban on social media platforms and claims of widespread government corruption.
"We are witnessing the future!"
"Every corruption in the country from the local level to the federal level, all the Nepalese students are fed up with the corruption."
The mostly young protesters swarmed the streets of Kathmandu and set fire to Parliament and the homes of some of the country's top political leaders, only to be met with force by Nepal's security forces.
At least 72 people were killed in the protests with at least 34 protesters dying from gunshot wounds as confirmed by a UN-backed autopsy report.
However, the protests were a rapid success, forcing the social media ban to be lifted, the country's Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli to resign and Nepal's House of Representatives to dissolve all in a matter of days.
Nepal is now expected to head to an early general election on March 5th, 2026.
And in April 2025 at the Vatican, the world shifted again.
"Dear brothers and sisters, it is with profound sadness that I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis."
Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope and the first pontiff from South America, succumbed to a lengthy health battle and died on the 21st April, the day after Easter Sunday.
The event sent shockwaves through the worldwide community of 1.4 billion Catholics and hundreds of thousands of mourners from across the world went to the Vatican to pay their respects.
“We are really sad about it. We come from Australia, we are hoping that there was some chance to see him but then we heard about it when we came in here. It pretty much devastated all of us.”
After two days of deliberation at the papal conclave, cardinal electors selected Cardinal Robert Prevost to succeed Francis.
The first American pope, Cardinal Prevost has since been known as Pope Leo XIV.
In his inaugural address to media, he urged a curious world free of prejudice and open to new understanding.
"Let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred. Let us free it from aggression. We do not need loud forceful communication but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice."
2025 was also a concerning year for natural disasters and the worsening climate crisis.
The year started with devastating fires throughout Los Angeles and southern California.
"The flames were up about 30-40 feet high and we heard pop-pop, it sounds like a war zone. In fact there were two big explosions that actually shook the ground."
More than 7,500 firefighters and prisoners worked with the assistance of helicopters to extinguish the deadly blazes.
The fires burned through over 23,000 hectares and 16,000 structures, and killed an estimated 440 people, according to a study by Boston University.
Elsewhere, researchers from the Imperial College London say a brutal heatwave over the European summer killed an estimated 16,500 people.
Dozens of cyclones and typhoons also wreaked havoc in 2025, with Hurricane Melissa the strongest and costliest for the year.
The storm swept the Caribbean, killing at least 96 and displacing tens of thousands throughout Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti.
“Yesterday was horrible, horrific, terrifying. To see my place being flooded out, it was terrifying for me and my child. The water level reached me to my waist. They had to break into my home to save me.”
Scientists warn these events will only grow more severe and devastating, with the independent Climate Action Tracker putting the world on course to heat up by 2.6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times by the end of the century.
They say these rises could see the end of agriculture in the United Kingdom and much of Europe, rising sea levels, lethal heat and worsening natural disasters.
The year drew towards its end at November's COP-30 climate summit in Brazil, where UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned of what comes next if the world doesn't rapidly act to limit carbon emissions.
“More heat and hunger, more disasters and displacements, and a higher risk of crossing climate tipping points, unleashing irreversible damage. Communities on the front lines are watching too and asking how much more must we suffer. They have heard enough excuses, they demand results.”
