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COP29 news: UN’s Guterres appeals for ‘robust’ net zero plansTorture is never justified, says UN human rights chiefIn Gaza: aid is still blocked from reaching desperate communities in the north: OCHA
COP29 renewable energy transition must not be a ‘stampede of greed’, warns UN chiefLebanon’s displaced are exhausted and face constant danger: UNHCRGaza: Markets are ‘in decay’, warn WFP, OCHA
Dead bodies lie in northern Gaza’s streets and people beg for bread: UNRWACOP29 update: Time is not on our side to save planet from climate crisis, says UN chiefUkraine braces for grim winter with power shortages a daily reality, says UNHCR
COP29: UN envoy calls for countries to agree on new climate financing dealLebanon’s food insecurity ‘set to worsen’ amid ongoing conflict: WFPSouth Sudan election delay offers time for democracy to take root: top UN official
Sudan’s displaced have endured ‘unimaginable suffering, brutal atrocities’: UNHCRUN’s rights chief Volker Türk demands justice for violations in Gaza and IsraelClimate crisis: Samoa is facing a plastic tide, warns top rights expert
Ukraine nuclear security situation ‘highly challenging’ warns UN atomic watchdog chiefMyanmar’s Rakhine state is ‘a famine in the making’: UNDPCountries pledge to tackle childhood violence affecting one billion youngsters: WHO
The war in Lebanon has reached a ‘critical point’ with more than 3,000 confirmed dead: OCHAIn Gaza, specialist newborn care has been decimated, warns UNICEFRise in Afghan opium production reflects hardships, despite Taliban ban: UNODC
Gaza’s polio vaccination campaign in north nears targetMore than two billion people in cities face 0.5C rise warns UN HabitatWHO publishes first list of ‘top pathogens’ requiring new vaccines
First famine, now cholera and dengue fever surge hits war-torn SudanGaza: polio vaccination successes achieved despite deadly weekend airstrikesWest Bank: mobile health clinics provide a lifeline, says UNFPA
Gaza: polio vaccination campaign to resume in shattered north UNRWALebanon war sees 50,000 displaced in a matter of days UNOCHAMpox update from WHO for DR Congo and region
‘Catastrophic’ hunger persists in multiple countries, warn food agenciesIn Lebanon, aid teams tackle obstacles faced by pregnant women impacted by warSudan: nearly 120,000 displaced by conflict in Al-Jazirah state
Top UN Middle East negotiator condemns deadly strike on Beit Lahiya in northern GazaBelarus: Engagement with UN rights system at historic low, warns expert UN migration agency IOM expands its appeal to battle the mpox outbreak in Africa.
We cannot replace ‘vital lifeline’ of UNRWA, insist partner UN agenciesSudan: 11 million now internally displaced, warns UN migration agencyHealthy diet recommendations to take away from WHO and FAO
Greenhouse gases surged to new highs in 2023In Gaza, no let-up in Israel’s military offensiveFrance should reverse hijab sports ban, say independent rights experts
In Gaza, children are dying while waiting for medical evacuation, UNICEF revealsSudan’s humanitarian crisis continues to spiral as aid is blockedAttacks continue against UN peacekeepers on Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel
‘Crunch time’ for reducing carbon emissions says new UN reportThe war between Israel and Hezbollah threatens to push Lebanon ‘off a humanitarian cliff’Marking UN Day, Guterres says hope for the future means “all countries working as one”
UN agency UNRWA targeted again in Gaza as fighting postpones polio campaign in the northPercentage of women killed in conflict zones doubles year-on-yearRights experts demand clarification from Russia following reported death of Ukrainian journalist
North Gazans just ‘waiting to die’ as Israeli bombardment continues: UNRWALebanon: UN rights chief slams deadly strike near major Beirut hospitalWFP reaches one million people this year across crisis-wracked Burkina Faso
Israel still preventing aid missions to northern Gaza, UNRWA reportsUN chief calls for swift probe into the killing of two opposition figures in MozambiqueWHO supports South Sudan in the face of severe flooding
Many Gazans hope Hamas leader’s death will end conflict: UNICEFLebanon: Peacekeepers pledge to stay, doing ‘whatever they can to help’West Bank Palestinians facing deadly ‘war-like tactics’, warns OCHA
Lebanon: Cholera fears for communities uprooted by warRisk of famine remains high across the entire Gaza StripUNDP poverty and conflict report
Lebanon crisis: Essential services in south close to collapseOn World Food Day, aid coordination office warns that women and girls suffer most in conflict settingsUN human rights office, OHCHR, urges halt to execution of two men
Lebanon crisis: UN Human Rights office calls for probe into Israeli strikeHistoric drought in Southern Africa leaves millions facing hunger: WFPTwo billion women without access to social protection, says UN Women
Gaza: School set for polio vaccine campaign hit in overnight strike, says UNRWAUN peacekeepers update after Israeli tank ‘breach’ A surge in new disease outbreaks raises risks of a new pandemic
Myanmar is spiralling, warns UN chief in peace call to ASEAN nationsMiddle East sees worsening violence300 million children a year are victims of online abuse
Lebanon crisis: health workers and facilities targeted or hit, warns UN OCHANorth Gaza aid missions impeded or denied, say UN humanitariansMore than 370 million girls and women globally raped or sexually assaulted: UNICEF
Lebanon on verge of all-out war, warns UN chief,Northern Gaza: No end to hell, warns head of UNRWAEnd ‘collective amnesia’ over COVID-19, says UN health agency WHORefugee agency awards top honour to campaigning nun in Brazil
Fears grow that Lebanon may become another Gaza, warn UN aid agenciesDR Congo still in the grip of violence including a rise in sexual slavery, warns UN’s TürkHurricane Milton gathers off Florida coastline: WMO
UN’s Guterres calls for peace in Gaza, one year since war eruptedLebanon: UN refugee agency chief urges global support amid ‘overwhelming need’Glaciers suffer largest melt in 50 years, warns WMO
Lebanon: Desperate scenes at Syrian border after Israeli airstrikesNuclear legacy in Marshall Islands in spotlight Human Rights Council WHO approves first mpox diagnostic test for emergency use
Victims of deadly Lebanon escalation describe fleeing ‘total destruction’In Ukraine, aid teams report that another apartment block has been hit by Russian shelling in the city of KharkivMore justice is needed for people of African descent who’ve died in police custody, human rights chief Türk underlines.
Middle East escalation: UN human rights chief adds voice to calls for peaceAt least 700,000 displaced in Haiti, half are children, says UN migration agencyGlobal immunization coverage remains below pre-pandemic levels: WHO
UN chief ‘extremely concerned’ over Lebanon escalationUkrainian prisoners of war tortured at scale by Russian captors, says UN Human Rights officeBrazil eliminates elephantiasis as a public health problem WHO
Lebanon crisis: over one million people flee deadly escalationAlgerian court urged to reverse ‘abusive sentence’ against poetCondemnation for Ukraine hospitals attacks: OCHA
Lebanon crisis: ‘This is just the beginning’ say those impacted by deadly escalationHaiti’s “senseless criminality” responsible for thousands of killings: UN rights chiefSexual violence in Sudan’s affects millions of women and girls: UN Women
Lebanon crisis: 90,000 displaced in last 72 hours, warns UNHCRUN human rights chief sounds alarm over Sudan’s El FasherUkraine’s children face a freezing winter amid ongoing energy strikes
UNHCR scales up support as Lebanon’s Syrians head homeTop ministers demand urgent action at UNGA to end Sudan crisisUkraine war: Children among victims of latest attacks on power plant city, say UN humanitarians
Lebanon escalation is worst in 18 years, warns UNICEFSudan famine must not be forgotten by world leaders, says WFPMyanmar military has ‘doubled down on repression’, Human Rights Council hears
Lebanon escalation: 1,500 blast victims still in hospital, says WHOMpox alert: UNICEF issues $58.8 million appeal to stop outbreak in six African countriesFood security under more pressure from La Niña weather phenomenon, warns FAO
Middle East crisis: No let up in spiralling violence in Gaza, Israel and LebanonAt least one in seven youngsters have a mental disorder, says WHO’s TedrosBelarus authorities quell ‘all avenues of dissent’, Human Rights Council hears
HIV services in sub-Saharan Africa choked by growing debt crisis: UNAIDSIndependent rights panel expressed deep concern at Palestinian children held by IsraelRussian attacks on Ukraine power stations set to push 500,000 people out of country
Satellites and AI offer hope for climate change solutions: WHOSoutheast Asia Typhoon Yagi impacts millions of children, warns UNICEFRefugee agency urges end to arbitrary detention of asylum-seekers
Venezuela: Rights probe points to ‘unprecedented’ repression of criticsAt least 1,800 people have died in custody in Myanmar jails since coup, says OHCHRUN aid teams warn of increasing challenges delivering relief in war-torn Ukraine
Nigeria floods: humanitarians ramp up emergency responseSanitary disaster in Gaza ‘worsening by the day’, warns UNRWAGaza’s civil society activists have nowhere safe to work, warn top rights experts
UNRWA mourns loss of first staffer in West Bank for ten yearsWHO approves first mpox vaccine in big boost to fighting disease across AfricaHumanitarians rush to Nigeria to assist flood victims following dam collapse
UNICEF scales up protection for Congolese children amid mpox outbreakSudan’s cultural heritage under “unprecedented” threat from looting and destruction, warns UNESCOCambodia: Independent experts call for suspension of new Government-mandated journalism code
U.S. government needs to deliver justice for 9/11victims: human rights expertUN refugee agency seeks millions to combat mpox outbreak in AfricaUNICEF condemns migrant family separation in Latin America and the Caribbean
The UN’s top envoy in the Middle East condemns a deadly strike inside Gaza’s humanitarian zoneWar-torn Syria falls deeper into crisis, warn UN rights expertsNicaragua’s people left “defenceless” in the face of grave rights violations
Humanity at ‘fork in the road’ amid global crises: UN rights chiefUN expert concerned over worsening detention conditions for Palestinians in Israeli custodyUN chief urges global action to protect education
Sudan war: Rights investigators demand arms embargo extension to end ‘rampant’ abusesFlooding affects more than 710,000 people in South Sudan: OCHAMiddle East crisis: top UN envoy condemns latest West Bank killings
Air pollution kills 4.5 million people a year, warns UN weather agency WMOViolence and insecurity close 14,300 schools in West and Central Africa: OCHAGaza: UNRWA reports positive start to mass polio vaccination campaign in south
AI in the workplace could be linked to shrinking pay packets: ILOGaza: Despite vaccination success, children still in front line of disease, war, says UNRWAIn Ukraine, humanitarians mobilize as Russian attacks kill and injure scores of civilians: OCHA, UNHCR
Venezuela: UN Human Rights office concern over ‘climate of fear’Gaza polio vaccination campaign extended by a day to meet increased demand: UN health agencyYemen: UN appeals for immediate release of staff held by de facto authorities
Gaza polio vaccination campaign day two: thousands more children protectedA teenager in Cambodia has died from avian flu but risk of spread is low, says WHOUN agencies welcome Ecuador’s efforts to regularize Venezuelan refugees and migrants
Libya: mass graves at Tarhuna in human rights spotlightGaza polio vaccine workers prepare to roll out campaignNeeds grow in Yemen amid catastrophic flooding, warns UNHCR
UN chief calls for immediate halt to Israeli military operation in West BankRates of unprotected sex among European teens ‘worryingly high’: WHOAfghanistan: more than six in 10 women feel unsafe leaving house alone, warns UN Women
UN rights office condemns large-scale Israeli escalation in occupied West Bank.Viet Nam in the spotlight over alleged misuse of counter-terrorism lawAs Paralympics begin, WHO’s Tedros urges support for crucial prosthetic aides
Sudan dam burst threatens communities as far as Port Sudan, say aid teamsGaza: humanitarian aid hub faces being uprooted once again, warns OCHAAfghanistan: Taliban’s new ‘virtue and vice’ order makes situation even worse for women, says UN human rights office
Ukraine: UN top aid official condemns latest Russian attacks.Gaza: Vitally needed polio vaccines reach embattled enclave at lastMyanmar: UN and partners boost flooding response
Aid teams highlight dangers of new cholera outbreak in SudanGaza: First polio case is confirmed in war-shattered enclaveA top rights committee urges UK to do more to tackle hate speech
UN chief urges climate justice for Pacific nations hit by rising oceansMpox: WHO highlights ‘higher risk’ to children under fiveGaza: UN agency UNRWA mourns another deadly school strike
UN migration agency issues $18.5 million appeal to prepare for likely mpox ‘surge’In Gaza, the latest evacuation orders leave civilians dangerously close to the frontlineA week out from the Paralympics, UNESCO supports push for inclusivity
Combating mpox is a ‘litmus test for global equity’, says UN health agencyAttacks on civilians in Ukraine must stop, top UN aid official insistsGaza evacuation orders have uprooted 13,500 Palestinians: OCHA
An appeal for greater protection of aid workers on World Humanitarian DayNearly 2,000 attacks on healthcare since Ukraine war began: WHOGuterres welcomes move to reopen key border crossing for aid delivery to Sudan
UN rights office calls for accountability after deadly settler violence in occupied West Bank: OHCHRIn Gaza, more evacuation orders add more pressure on those seeking shelter: UNRWA, OCHAIn Sudan, vital border crossing is set to open from Chad: WFP, WHO
Relentless rain and flooding batter desperate families in Yemen, warn UNFPA, UNICEFBahrain: prisoners’ treatment in human rights spotlightMost of the 40,000 Gazans killed in the war were women and children says UN rights chief
Gaza remains at high risk of polio virus spread, warns WHOExtreme heat increasingly disrupting children’s health: UNICEFWomen face being erased, three years since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan
Mpox still being transmitted ‘across the world’, says WHOSexual violence and famine stalk Sudan’s displaced: UNICEF, IOMMyanmar rights probe warns over ‘incredible brutality’ of warring forces
Youth unemployment rate at 15-year low, says ILOUNICEF highlights plight of children caught up in Sudan warGaza: clean water crisis adds to latest evacuation order misery, say humanitarians UNICEF, UNRWA
IOM says urgent humanitarian aid is needed in the Democratic Republic of the CongoOHCHR calls for the release of peaceful post-election protesters in VenezuelaUNHCR aids flood-affected families in Sudan
UNDP and UNHCR launch joint programme to aid war-affected civilians in UkraineWHO elevates Mpox response as cases rise in the African regionWHO provides humanitarian care in Yemen following heavy rainfallWMO says extreme levels of heat continued through July
UNRWA says “swift and safe delivery” of vaccines essential for GazaUNIFIL provides free medical care for south LebaneseWFP aids flood-affected civilians in Myanmar
COVID-19 infections are surging, with over 40 Olympians testing positive in ParisUN chief António Guterres condemns nuclear sabre rattling as the world marks the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945An independent rights expert denounces the “deliberate targeting” and killing of two Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza
UN rights chief expresses concern over growing conflict risks in the Middle East: OHCHRIran's protest crackdown disproportionately targets minorities, new report findsUN refugee agency shocked by violent protests in United Kingdom
Heat claims more than 175,000 lives annually in Europe, numbers set to soar: WHOUN’s Middle East peace negotiator urges action to address ‘growing risk’ of escalationFamine in Sudan: WFP calls for unfettered access to hunger hotspots
More access to breastfeeding support could save 820,000 infants annuallySenior UN officials welcome verdict in 2009 stadium massacre trial in GuineaA new programme aims to get Gaza’s children back to learning
Israeli military in spotlight over ‘incommunicado’ detention of PalestiniansUN health agency leads bid to tackle acute diarrhoea outbreak in Yemen AI set to transform jobs rather than replace workers: ILO
Gazans need polio vaccines amid ‘deathly cycle’ of malnutrition, heat and disease, say UNICEF, WHO1 in 3 victims of trafficking is a child, warns UN migration agencyOver 6 million youngsters at risk as deadly floods lash across South Asia: UN Children’s Agency
Sudan: UN condemns deadly attack on a hospital and residential areas in North DarfurWHO and partners launch project to speed up bird flu vaccine development in low-income countries.Thousands of Gazans forced to flee their homes amid rising regional tensions and continued evacuation orders.
Deadly West Atlantic shipwreck highlights victims’ desperation, says UNHCRIn Ethiopia, UN agencies boost response to killer landslidesWHO sending one million polio vaccines to Gaza
Growing concerns over a significant rise in avian influenza cases across the Asia-Pacific region…In Gaza, hunger fears persist as fighting puts more pressure on the enclave’s farmersAnd…Little progress made in reducing alcohol consumption in Europe - the UN health agency has the latest booze stats…
The world has been set back 15 years in its fight against hunger, according to a new UN reportA massive exodus from Gaza’s Khan Younis puts pressure on aid resources already under huge strain…And, nearly 400 children a year are dying from rising heat in Europe and Central Asia….
In Gaza, the UN health agency says polio and other diseases could prove deadlier than bombs and bullets…Meanwhile in the Sahel, insurgents force thousands to flee Burkina Faso for neighbouring Niger, and...On your marks, get set, go…the UN chief issues a peace call - in the ‘spirit’ of the Olympics
UN convoy hit by 'heavy shooting' en route to Gaza city, UNRWA reportsClimate change heightens threats to global forests, FAO report urges innovationWHO report highlights the need for accessible neurological treatments
Polio stalks Gazans as 'anarchy' spreads, humanitarians warnIn Afghanistan, with 33 of 34 provinces hit by natural disasters, the UN refugee agency steps up assistanceFighting in Sudan holds up lifesaving aid deliveries in Darfur and Sennar state
‘Largest’ displacements so far in Gaza’s war of attrition: UN aid agenciesUN calls for urgent action on human rights violations in Central African Republic's detention centresUNFPA warns of maternal death crisis in Yemen: One woman dies every two hours
Over 1,000 attacks on healthcare facilities across Occupied Palestinian Territory since OctoberHaiti: Displaced women lack basic safety and servicesUN chief marks 10 years since MH17 tragedy, urges accountability
Gaza: Five UNRWA schools hit in 10 days, reports UN agencySudan: 800,000 still trapped in El Fasher warns WHOForced labour in North Korea is ‘widespread and institutionalized’: UN human rights office
Conflict in Gaza continues with airstrikes: UN shelters hitSouth Sudan faces growing humanitarian crisisIncrease in conflict, main cause of stalled child immunization rates
The UN continues to mediate peace talks in Geneva between the warring factions in Sudan.Conflict escalates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sparking disease outbreaks.And…an ambitious UN bid to connect every school in the world to the Internet by 2030…
Sudan: Conflict spreads, displacing another 136,000 peopleWorld population to peak at 10.3 billion by 2080s, decline by 2100UN humanitarians and partners launch $9 million response plan for Hurricane Beryl victims
Schools ‘bombed-out’ in latest Gaza escalation, says aid agencyFirst hepatitis C self-test gets health agency pre-approvalAnd… the real cost of the booming digital economy
Ukraine’s main children’s hospital likely received a direct hit when it was struck on Monday, say UN rights monitorsGazans are continue to reel from intensified malnutrition and heat risks Arbitrary detentions and impunity are happening on a massive scale in Libya, the Human Rights Council hears
After nine months of war in Gaza, another UN school is hit by an Israeli airstrikeSeveral Ukrainian cities have been hit during a new wave of Russian strikes, including a children’s hospitalThe record temperature streak continues worldwide through June
Refugees and migrants face violence, abuse and death on Africa routesOngoing and generalized impunity in Burundi for the ‘Imbonerakure’ youth wingAnd …Hurricane Beryl - just an indication of a long storm season to come
Gaza’s forcibly displaced run out of space to shelterMyanmar’s military ‘doubling down’ on its attacks against civiliansUN chief António Guterres urges peace above all else, and an end to multiple conflicts
Belarus is not safe for anyone critical of authorities, warns rights expertIn Ukraine, May was bloodiest month in a year, says UN missionSyria still in grip of appalling violence, the Human Rights Council hears
Gaza: 250,000 feared displaced in new Khan Younis escalationNear-famine conditions only one of Sudan’s problemsIn Haiti, a child a minute is uprooted by gang violenceAnd… a 5,000-metre mountain is named in honour of the UN
Tens of thousands displaced in new Gaza City escalationAfghanistan’s de facto authorities take part in international talks in DohaAnd…why UN rights chief Volker Türk believes that the world of sports is not immune from the goal of human rights for all
Over 10,000 patients still waiting to be evacuated from GazaUN Refugee Agency sounds alarm as climate change pounds displaced communitiesUN sexual health agency launches new strategy to help end FGM and child marriage in East and Southern Africa
Famine risk is real for 14 areas of Sudan amid ongoing fighting Andaman Sea among most deadly for migrants zones for migrantsRoad safety experts wheel in fix for pedal error accidents
We'll never abandon Gaza, the UN’s top aid official tells me in an exclusive interview…The International Criminal Court convicts a former police chief of war crimes in MaliA new report this World Drug Day highlights rising drug use and increased trafficking
There’s a new famine alert for Gaza where families go days without food.Top court the ICC, issues arrest warrants against senior Russian officials for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.And…Julian Assange’s release is welcomed by the Human Rights Council’s independent expert on torture.
The head of the biggest UN agency in Gaza warns that an entire generation could be lost;In the latest outrage in Sudan, a maternity hospital comes under fire; And it’s time for the ‘war on drugs’ to end, the Human Rights Council hears
Gaza is more than two million stories of loss: UN agenciesInternal displacement set to surge as paths of climate change and conflict meet #HRC56UNHCR rushes support to Rohingya refugees hit by deadly landslides in Bangladesh
Don’t forget Sudan crisis on World Refugee Day says aid agency chief GrandiGaza today: Scorching heat, dire aid shortages and heavy fighting, warns OCHAForeign direct investment declines for second year, UNCTAD report shows
• The laws of war are being ‘consistently violated' by Israel during its Gaza bombing campaign, says the UN human rights office• Gazans are barely surviving amid the massive destruction• China is being urged to provide information on an imprisoned Uyghur doctor
Gaza: UN rights chief’s ire amid fresh strikes on refugee campMyanmar in Human Rights Council spotlightStark variations in attitudes to migrants, asylum seekers: UNHCR
Top UN official in Ukraine warns daily life becoming harder for ci lead to more suffering and a difficult life for civilians there. ‘Transnational’ FGM undermined by the practice of travelling across national borders and beyond to have the procedure performed on girls.Human rights report in Ethiopia reveals a 56 per cent human violations increase since 2022.
Gaza: Malnourished children ‘dying before their families’ eyes’ Worldwide levels of forced displacement hit new high: UNHCR Africa not spending enough on quality education for children: UNICEF
Guterres hails 60 years of UN trade and development actionGaza: Hamas and Israel carried out war crimes, says top independent rights probeKharkiv: amid destruction, thousands more evacuated from frontline villages: UNHCR, UNECE, UNEP
Yemen: UN chief demands release of aid workers held by Houthi forces Gaza: ‘high time’ ceasefire and hostage release, says Guterres 49 migrants dead and 140 missing in shipwreck off Yemen coast: IOM
Sudan crisis: UN health agency alerts over attack on key hospital Rights abuses against civilians still rampant in eastern DR Congo Almost all women in Gaza say families struggling to survive: UN Women
Amid Gaza war, kids now work so families can survive: UN labour agency ‘Unimaginable trauma’ haunts Sudan’s displaced while violence, famine threaten millionsClimate change impacts on health of pregnant women, children, older people
Dozens feared dead in Israeli airstrike on UNRWA school in Gaza181 million under-5s experiences severe child food poverty WFP expands emergency response to avert famine in war-torn Sudan
Acute food insecurity set to rise in 18 hunger hotspots: FAO/WFP There is an exit off ‘the highway to climate hell’, Guterres insists2025 global refugee resettlement needs spike to almost three million: UNHCR
More than 500 Palestinians killed in occupied West Bank: UN rights chief Let’s break free from climate chaos, urges UN chief for Environment DayIncrease in migrants from Middle East and Asia on Africa migration routes: UNHCR
WFP reaches Haiti’s capital with truckloads of foodGaza: conditions ‘unspeakable’ as one million people flee Rafah: UNRWAGlobal pandemic treaty to be agreed by 2025, says UN health agency: WHO
Afghanistan: Children the main victims of flash flood disaster: FAO Sudan crisis has left millions at imminent risk of famine: WFP Gaza: Kids are starving, warns UN health agency: WHO, UNOCHA
Afghanistan: Children the main victims of flash flood disaster: FAOSudan crisis has left millions at imminent risk of famine: WFP Gaza: Kids are starving, warns UN health agency: WHO, UNOCHA
As Israeli ground incursions into Gaza continue, aid is cut by two-thirdsSudan: ‘Noose of war’ tightens on civilians in El Fasher: top UN official Mali in rights spotlight over widespread recruitment of children in conflict zones
Gaza: vital medical supplies running out, warns UN health agency In Sahel, grave violations against children up 70 per cent: UNICEF Global unemployment set to drop slightly this year: ILO
Deep concerns over ‘inhuman’ detention of Gazans by Israeli authorities Papua New Guinea disaster: Rescue efforts face complex challenges: IOM3.2 million children at risk in Bangladesh as Cyclone Remal hits hard: UNICEF
Papua New Guinea landslide: UN chief’s solidarity with victims Gaza: Mass casualties reported in Israeli attack on camp for displacedPandemic treaty is a ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity’, says GuterresHaiti: 2 in 3 households do not have enough to eat, says WFP
World court orders Israel to halt Rafah operation immediately COVID-19 eliminated a decade of progress in global level of life expectancy: WHOUkraine: Kharkiv city still under attack, sparking further displacement, says OHCHR
‘Appalling’ Russian attacks on Kharkiv region must end says top UN humanitarian in UkraineInternational action ‘crucial’ to save thousands of Rohingya lives in MyanmarUN rights experts welcome maritime tribunal ruling obliging countries to cut CO2 pollution
Gaza: Conflict in Rafah puts key relief supplies warehouses out of reach Geopolitical tensions threaten global trade, warns UN’s Amina MohammedBiodiversity breakdown alert: one million species under threat, says UNEP
Gaza: UN health agency’s Tedros calls for end to siege of Al-Awda hospital Ukraine: 16,000 uprooted by deadly Kharkiv escalation, humanitarians warn OCHA aid call for southern African nations suffering worst drought in 100 years #ElNiño
World court seeks arrest warrants for Hamas leaders and Israel’s NetanyahuGaza: Now 810,000 have fled Rafah amid ongoing Israeli operationYemen: human rights experts press for release of detained Bahá'ís
UN rights chief says horrified by Sudan escalation as famine draws nearerWHO: antimicrobial resistance an increasingly worrying threatUkraine’s civilians facing daily drone and glider bomb attacks: IOM
Guterres repeats call to Israel to halt Rafah assault as aid stocks dwindle Global temperature record streak continues: WMOTürk welcomes 20-year jail sentence for Gambian ex-minister for crimes against humanity
Gaza: underweight babies, heavy fighting and more displacementSudan alert as civilians remain trapped in war zoneSaudi Arabia violated rights of religious scholar, UN rights experts warn
450,000 Gazans now uprooted from Rafah as Israeli bombardment continuesUkraine: UN rights office expresses deep concern over Russia’s eastern offensive Afghanistan flood disaster is not an anomaly, warns UN World Food Programme
Rafah exodus reaches 360,000 as UN issues $2.8 billion aid appeal for Gaza, West BankUkraine: aid teams warn as Russian offensive in Kharkiv heightens displacement fearsCountless lives at stake in Sudan’s El Fasher, warn UN aid teams
Gaza: As exodus from Rafah continues, ceasefire calls grow Myanmar spike in fighting fuels humanitarian emergency: OCHA Belarus probe finds torture of detainees is systematic: rights experts
Gaza: 80,000 flee Rafah amid Israeli military escalation fears, say UN humanitarians Former Guantanamo Bay detainee faces re-victimisation in Algeria, right experts warn Early data on vaccine ‘patches’ is welcome news in battle against measles: WHO
A vast array of weaponry has been used in the last seven months of conflict in Gaza, so much so that UN mine action experts say that land potentially contaminated with unexploded ordnance will take years to make safe.Patrick McCabe is a UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) veteran whose job is to help civilians move around Gaza as safely as possible, now and when the fighting ends.He spoke to UN News’s Daniel Johnson, about what he’d seen in the shattered enclave so far.
Gaza: No aid is coming through the south, confirms @UNRWA Unprecedented flooding displaces hundreds of thousands across east Africa: IOMNo respite in sight for Brazil suffering flood emergency: WMO
Uncertainty in Gaza amplified by closure of key border crossingsRussia: UN rights chief troubled by increasing crackdown on journalistsDRC: more than 80,000 newly displaced people amid new fighting in Kivu
We won't abandon Gazans sheltering in Rafah, says UNRWASeven months into the war in Gaza, deep fears over unexploded ordnance threatUrgent appeal launched for Yemen where 18.2 million people need lifesaving assistance
Targeting Rafah could lead to slaughter, warns UN aid agency Sudan violence leaves many areas beyond reach of aid teams; UNHCR Tropical cyclone Hidaya threatens further flooding in east Africa: WMO
Development in Palestine set back more than 20 years due to Gaza warNiger responds to 50 per cent spike in meningitis since last yearDetention of child migrants in EU must end, say top rights experts
Gazans on tenterhooks awaiting news of ceasefire call Ukraine landmine contamination still having global economic impactDR Congo conflict driving record levels of displacement, hunger
‘Extraordinary, deep anxiety’ in Rafah from feared Israeli attack: UNRWA Gaza war spillover compounds misery for most vulnerable in LebanonUN rights chief Türk ‘troubled’ by law enforcement crackdown on Gaza protests in US
Gaza at ‘most dangerous’ stage amid huge unexploded weapons risk, warns demining expertLift tax on aid relief, top UN emergency relief chief urges South Sudan UN expresses solidarity with Kenya following deadly floods
Gaza humanitarian update, rights experts’ appeal over aid accessSudan: Civilians ‘are trapped’ in El-Fasher, warns UN’s Türk ‘Just in case’ antibiotics widely overused during COVID-19, says UN health agency
Teen alcohol and nicotine use in Europe is up, WHO urges preventive measureUK gender change therapy review reveals devastating impacts on kids, says top rights expertIndependent rights body to investigate fate of missing persons in Syria
Gaza: People ‘are clearly dying’ from hunger, warns UN food agency Global hunger set to rise amid record displacement, warn FAO, UNHCRTanzania in rights spotlight over ritual attacks on people with albinsm
Gaza mass graves uncovered with victims’ hands tied: UN’s TürkEthiopia clashes displace 50,000, warn UN humanitarians Asia, the world’s most disaster-hit region from climate shocks: WMO
Gaza violence continues unabated, claims lives of civiliansClimate shocks lie behind rise in workplace dangers and deaths: ILOAirlines, aviation authorities should not facilitate unlawful removals to Rwanda, top rights experts say
Pandemic experts express concern over avian influenza spread to humans Rights chief Türk urges peace for shattered DR Congo communities Fears of Middle East escalation undiminished amid ongoing violence
Pandemic experts express concern over avian influenza spread to humans Rights chief Türk urges peace for shattered DR Congo communities Fears of Middle East escalation undiminished amid ongoing violence
$2.8 billion flash appeal launched in support of three million across Gaza and West BankViolations of women’s reproductive health rights trigger rise in preventable deaths, says UNFPALives depend on success of Cameroon emergency appeal: Humanitarians
Gaza: No let up in deadly toll as rights chief calls for end to civilian suffering Ethiopia hunger rates focus of pledging forum: OCHAUN migration agency calls for $112 million to save lives in Africa and Yemen
Gaza: Rights experts condemn AI role in destruction by Israeli militarySudan crisis in international spotlight one year since war beganGrower taskforce mulls action to tackle spike in plant pests
Gaza: No improvement in aid access to north, insists senior UN aid official Sudan facing looming famine, warn humanitariansUkraine war leaves 3.3 million in dire need on frontlines: IOM
Life-threatening heat alert for children in east Asia: UNICEFMyanmar middle class ‘disappearing’: UN development reportGaza: Security Council demands accountability for humanitarian attacks
‘Fear and loss’ for Sudanese displaced by brutal fightingHepatitis killing thousands each day and numbers rising: WHODozens of migrants perish in Djibouti shipwreck
Palestine UN membership in spotlight amid Rafah invasion fears Attacks on Ukrainian nuclear facilities ‘must cease immediately’: UN atomic watchdogHealthcare ‘inaccessible’ for displaced people, warns UN migration agency
Israel must allow ‘quantum leap’ in aid delivery UN chief urges, calling for change in military strategySudan: UN food agency convoy reaches Darfurs for first time in monthsGlobal deployment of rapid diagnostic tests to boost fight against cholera
Ukraine: Ambulance teams at 3 times greater risk of death and injuryHuman Rights Council resolution demands further Iran violations probeMore than 700 attacks by Israeli settlers in occupied West Bank
Haiti: Armed gangs continue assault on healthcareUN teams in Sudan and South Sudan team up over crucial medical aidEgypt must halt executions, urge UN human rights experts
Gaza: health system ‘barely surviving’ warns UN health agency chiefUkrainians suffer Russia-imposed ‘violence, intimidation, and coercion’, Türk tells Human Rights Council Malawi drought affects nearly two million farming families
Protect Gaza hospitals: WHO chiefAfghanistan: Children killed or injured in two mine blastsHeavy rains destroy homes and farmland in Afghanistan
Gaza: health system ‘barely surviving’ warns UN health agency chiefSudan’s 24 million children have a right to live in peace: UNICEF Refugee agency launches $1.4 billion appeal for South Sudan
Gaza war: ‘Direct hits’ on more than 200 schools since Israeli bombing began 783 million people go hungry today but one-fifth of all food goes to waste Cameroon: vital aid assistance under threat, warn UNHCR, WFP
Gaza: ‘Double-digit’ number of children reported killed overnightOne in three migrant deaths linked to countries at war or with large refugee populationsDevastating humanitarian crisis in DR Congo: UNHCR
We must push for lasting peace in Gaza, UN chief insists, as starvation threat nears Deadly cholera infections spreading fast in Somalia, warn UN aid teamsYemen conflict enters 10th year with 17 million-plus people in need of health aid
Gaza: UN aid team reaches stricken north, confirms ‘shocking’ disease and hunger Mass grave found in Libya highlights migrant horror, says UN migration agencyAid ramps up to Mozambique communities impacted by tropical storm Filipo
Amid ongoing strife in Gaza and Ukraine, UN chief reiterates peace call Sudan war could see 222,000 children die from malnutrition, says aid coordinatorMobile phones called to order for part in 62 million tonnes of e-waste
Gaza: Less than 1 in 2 UN aid missions allowed into northern zones this month M-pox deaths falling everywhere but Africa, says UN health agency expert panel Belarus opponents ‘increasingly oppressed and punished’: Human Rights Council
Gaza: Increasing numbers of newborns on brink of death, agencies warnForced labour exploiters make $236 billion a year, says ILO More climate records smashed, WMO report confirms
Famine could happen ‘anytime’ in Gaza’s northern governorates, warn UN humanitarians Iran: Repression continues two years after nationwide protests, say rights investigators ‘Pandemic treaty’ deal enters final round of negotiations
I lost hope and will to live in Russian jail, says Ukraine prisoner of war Gaza: Nearly 23 million tonnes of debris ‘will take years to clear’Sudan: hunger ‘pervasive’ in Khartoum streets, warns UNICEF
Gaza: More children dead from war than from four years of global conflict Ukraine: Condemnation after Russian strike kills dozens in Dnipro regionWith internal displacement at a record high, UN aid chief backs solutions
Gaza: Aid missions risk being halted without security guaranteesHaiti crisis: UN mission announces airbridge to facilitate aid relief Human Rights Council: Climate crisis a principal factor in global hunger emergency
Gaza: Ceasefire now, urges UN Secretary-General on first day of RamadanWFP races to preposition aid in Chad for Sudan’s displacedRampant abuse of counter-terrorism laws globally, Human Rights Council hears
Gaza: Ceasefire now, urges UN Secretary-General on first day of RamadanSyria in grip of violence not seen in years, warn top rights expertsTruth and justice call for disappeared Thai lawyer
Marking International Women’s Day, UN chief launches plan to tackle baked-in bias Rafah ground assault would increase risk of atrocity crimes Mozambique: Thousands displaced over fear of violence
Gaza: Fears over growing toll of starvation among youngSudan: UN chief leads call for Ramadan cessation of hostilitiesNigeria mass abductions condemned
Gaza humanitarian update 11 months into Sudan war, ‘world's worst hunger crisis’ looms 2023 was deadliest year on record for migrants
North Gaza aid mission reveals more infants may die from hungerEl Niño weakens but impacts continueDrug controls: UN-backed body offers e-solutions to counter narcotics surge
Gaza: Gaza conflict could fuel much wider Middle East ‘conflagration’, warns UN rights chiefTürk: ‘Mega election year’ 2024 could be a landmark for democracy: Pacific accounts for nine in 10 most obese countries in the world (WHO)
Gaza: Worst famine fears realized as 10th child reportedly starves to deathMyanmar crisis now a never-ending nightmare, warns UN rights chiefSudan’s displaced in desperate need of basics to survive: UNHCR
‘Carnage’ in Gaza must end, UN rights chief tells Human Rights CouncilRisks from climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss are realUN chief “committed” to Sudan as UNITAMS mission ends
Gaza: Famine imminent without more aid relief, warn UN humanitarians All parties to Gaza crisis may have committed war crimes: UN rights chief Aid agencies underscore need to help Ethiopians brought low by climate, war and disease
Gaza: Frustration mounts over blocked UN aid missions Peacekeepers’ alarm over exchanges of fire on Israel-Lebanon border $9 billion investment boost for global internet connectivity: ITU
With eyes on Gaza, UN chief launches rights protection pledge UN migration agency teams up with top manufacturer against ‘slave’ labour Russian anti-war campaigner’s harassment reflects pressure on judiciary: top rights expert
Ukraine: Frontline children and mental traumaUN human rights report details Sudan war abuses Rights experts call for arms embargo on Israel
Shock and desperation throughout Gaza, Security Council hearsHorrific war in Ukraine will be felt ‘for generations’ warns rights chiefUNHCR welcomes AU Protocol to end scourge of statelessness
WHO chief says severe malnutrition is soaring in Gaza, SudanUS companies dumping “forever chemicals” with impunity: UN expertsInternational Mother Language Day
WFP pauses food delivery to north GazaUkraine war and ongoing uncertainty among displaced people$2.6 billion appeal for DR Congo
Rafah invasion would have “dire humanitarian consequences”25 million battle hunger due to Sudan warHuman rights must “guide” transition to lasting peace in South Sudan
Guterres calls for a ‘global order that works for everyone’UN human rights office ‘appalled’ by Alexei Navalny’s death in prisonLack of social protection puts 1.4 billion children at risk
Gaza: Situation dire in Rafah UN agencies warnUN weather agency declares warmest January everOn International Childhood Cancer Day, WHO hails vital role of parents
Gaza: Rafah invasion would be a disaster ‘beyond imagination’ UNICEF steps up fight against cholera in eastern and southern Africa Condemnation for new attacks on public cases in Ukraine
Gazans ‘living in fear’ of Israeli assault on Rafah, warns top UN aid officialSenegal: UN rights office concern over suspended election People of Sudan facing ‘life or death’ situation: WHO
Gaza: Relief over rescued hostages as Tedros warns of ‘ocean of need’Economic progress must be linked to a ‘human rights economy’, say experts68,000 children affected by Nepal earthquake still need urgent assistance: UNICEF
Gaza: UN health agency warns over continuing healthcare attacksSudan war leaves 700,000 children facing life-threatening malnutritionHaiti’s people suffering ‘deepening human rights catastrophe’, warns Türk
Gaza: UN’s top aid official reiterates extreme concern over Israeli ground offensive in Rafah ‘Debt caps’ needed to save developing countries from financial disaster: UNCTAD Mexico dreams: UN initiative offers hope for migrant workers in Mexico
Gaza war enters fifth month amid fears for hospital under siege UNRWA Sudan appeal launches for war victims left with nothing UNOCHA Ukraine: top UN aid official denounces attacks on public places
Gaza: War crimes fears over Israeli ground invasion of RafahThousands still struggling one year on from Syria-Turkïye earthquakesVaccine push underway in southern Africa amid unprecedented cholera spike
Gaza: Northern aid push frustrated as regional tensions rise Top rights experts spotlight deepening Sudan crisis Digital platforms and AI ‘facilitating’ child abuse, warns Special Rapporteur
Gaza: Rafah now a ‘pressure cooker of despair’ as exodus south continues Sudan war leaves 90 per cent of country’s most vulnerable going hungry Taliban dress code arrests of women and girls must end, say top rights experts
Gaza: Aid operations are in peril, UN agency warns amid funding crisis122 journalists killed while reporting on Gaza crisis, say top rights experts UN Human Rights chief appalled by alleged summary executions in Mali
We cannot abandon the people of Gaza, say chiefs of UN agencies in appeal for UNRWA Torture used to obtain evidence in Hong Kong trial, claim rights experts At least 170,000 children displaced amid violence in Haiti: UNICEF
Hungry Gazans empty UN aid agency trucks before reaching destination Myanmar situation spiralling three years after military coup WMO confirms new heat record for Europe
Gaza: ‘Simply not enough food’ to go around, warn UN humanitariansUN migration agency alert over Mediterranean deaths spikeWHO hails global progress on eliminating dangerous fats from food shelves
- UNHCR warn of looming cholera and malaria outbreaks in Sudan
- UN investigators: surging war crimes in Myanmar
- WHO says India-made syrup contaminated
As conflict escalates in Sudan, the need for humanitarian support keeps growing as people “die and suffer”, a senior UN aid official has said.
Edem Wosornu, Director of the Operations and Advocacy Division at UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, recently visited the country and neighbouring Chad.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than two-thirds of hospitals in Sudan remain out of service amid increasing reports of attacks on health facilities.
Ms. Wosornu spoke to UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki about the humanitarian efforts underway in Sudan and ongoing operations in Niger, in the wake of the attempted coup.
- UNICEF: 76% of children in South Asia face extreme heat
- Haiti: UNICEF says spike in kidnappings of children and women
- WHO calls for effective international action against biological weapons
- UN human rights close office in Uganda
- OCHA: Spike in settler violence against Palestinian communities
- Wheat and rice see price rise hikes in July, warn UN food economists
- FAO raises alarm on escalating food crisis in Sudan
- Colombia: UN Mission to monitor ceasefire with ELN rebel group
- UN: Solutions needed to situation in Darien Gap
- IOM: Four million displaced from Sudan conflict
- UN demands immediate end to expulsion of migrants from Tunisia
- UNEP: Earth Overshoot Day shows nature can only deliver so much
- Supportive workplaces key to achieve global breastfeeding targets
- Agencies warn against South Sudan food crisis
- Pakistan: Security Council condemns 'heinous' suicide bombing on Sunday
- WHO highlights need for more protective measures against tobacco
- UN condemns seizure of power by force in Niger
- IPCC Head warns against overstating the threat of warming
The continuing battle for control of Sudan between rival militaries has had a destabilizing effect on the contested area of Abyei claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan, for both the UN mission there, UNIFSA, and the civilians they are mandated to protect.
That’s according to Major General Benjamin Sawyerr, acting head and Force Commander for UNIFSA, who said the months-long clashes have seen close to 6,000 flee into Abyei and forced the mission to switch all its supply routes to South Sudan, increasing costs and logistical challenges.
- Sudan health crisis at ‘gravely serious’ level warns WHO
- Forced returns to Burkina Faso must end says UNHCR
- New liver care campaign launched on World Hepatitis Day
Climate-related court cases around the world are growing fast, and on Thursday the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) together with the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, highlighted the trend in their new Global Climate Litigation Report.
Andrew Raine, Head of the Frontiers in Environmental Law Unit of UNEP, spoke to UN News’s Anton Uspensky about the report’s findings, which show cases are surging in the Global South with human rights emerging as a powerful driver behind climate litigation.
As the UN weather agency WMO declared on Thursday that July is likely to be the hottest on record, UN News reporter Katy Dartford had other problems on her mind: filing her news bulletin from Greece, where forest fires have been raging.
Speaking from Corfu - where the wildfires have thankfully calmed down a bit since Monday – Katy puts the WMO’s announcement into context.
Here she is now, talking to Daniel Johnson.
- July set to be hottest month on record: WMO
- ‘Surge in diplomacy for peace’ needed on Korean Peninsula
- Niger: Guterres condemns ‘unconstitutional’ coup declaration
As technology becomes increasingly accessible across the globe, more must be done to ensure its use in education remains equitable, scalable, and sustainable.
That’s according to Manos Antoninis, Director of the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, produced by the UN agency specializing in education, science and culture, UNESCO.
In an interview for UN News, he’s been outlining the advantages and disadvantages of using technology in education, how to improve safety online, the future of artificial intelligence (AI), and describing how online education resources can be tailored to a more diverse, global audience.
Jordan Larrabee spoke with Mr. Antoninis just ahead of the launch of this year’s GEM Report in Uruguay on Wednesday.
- UNESCO calls for global ban on smartphones in schools
- UN calls on Uganda to repeal Anti-Homosexuality Act, condemns killings of Indigenous in Brazil
- FAO: Rate of mangroves loss slowed in last decade
Climate-induced disasters in Asia and the Pacific have become increasingly frequent and severe, resulting in loss of lives and livelihoods, hampering the post-pandemic recovery and potentially derailing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The effects of devastating floods, severe droughts and rising sea levels are not confined within national borders; they have international implications too, including for trade, communal tensions and forced migration. Climate change is only making things worse.
Against this backdrop, Vibhu Mishra from UN News spoke to Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), who outlined how countries can reduce disaster risk, and strengthen climate action.
- Yemen: UN starts high-risk operation to prevent catastrophic oil spill from decaying tanker
- IAEA: Anti-personnel mines found in Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine
- UN warns of looming disaster emergency in Asia-Pacific region
Artificial Intelligence may be the buzzword of the day, but before we know it, two new concepts may soon steal the limelight: Disruptive-tech and Artificial General Intelligence.
That’s according to Janet Adams, chief operating officer of AI experts SingularityNet, who maintains that these up-and-coming technologies have massive potential to combat inequality, in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda.
To find out more, UN News's Elma Okic caught up with Ms. Adams at the AI For Good Summit in Geneva earlier this month.
- UN chief lends support to tackle global hunger.
- Sudan: At least 435 children killed and 2025 injured says UNICEF
- WHO: 20,000 deaths a year from drowning are ‘entirely preventable’ in Europe
- UN expert demands end to mass detention and child separation in northeast Syria
- WHO warns of Dengue increase amidst changing climate patterns
- WFP warns of ripple effects of Sudan across West and Central Africa
Nelson Mandela was a giant of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the country’s first democratically elected President, but he also had a wonderful sense of humour.
That is just one of the recollections of American politician and activist Andrew Young, a former US Ambassador to the UN and friend of the man who was affectionately known as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name.
Mr. Young was US Ambassador in the late 1970s, when Mr. Mandela was still serving out a lifetime sentence for treason before being released in 1990 after 27 years in prison.
Mr. Young, 91, was back at the UN on Thursday for the official commemoration of Nelson Mandela International Day. He spoke to UN News’s Dianne Penn.
The artificial sweetener aspartame that’s widely used in fizzy drinks has just been classified as “possibly” cancer-causing by UN scientists - but there’s no cause for alarm.
That’s the key message from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), whose assessment of aspartame was carried out on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO), by an expert panel of nutritional epidemiology and nutritional toxicology scientists.
With more details on what these findings mean for all of us, UN News’s Daniel Johnson spoke to IARC’s Mary Schubauer-Berigan, who’s head of the agency’s Monographs Programme.
- UN condemns attacks on Odesa Port
- UNHCR: Rohingya refugees face more hunger as aid cuts bite
- UNODC partners with Royal Foundation to combat illegal wildlife crime
- UN Secretary-General urges regulation of AI at inaugural security council meeting
- Unitaid: Close to one million deaths by 2035 if TB prevention is not implemented.
- UN Women team up with FIFA to promote gender equality
- Health risks on the rise as heatwave intensifies across Europe: WMO
- Child vaccination makes unequal post-COVID recovery across regions: WHO, UNICEF
- More than 90 per cent of world’s women live in countries with large gender gap: UNDP, UN Women
- Honour Mandela’s legacy by fighting for equality and justice, says UN chief
- Russia: UN experts call for release of journalist Evan Gershkovich
- Devastating violations against Indigenous Peoples’ rights must stop: Türk
As the deadline to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 approaches, urgent action is needed to accelerate efforts.
The latest report by UNAIDS highlights the critical role of strong political leadership, and a comprehensive response, to address emerging challenges and ensure progress towards achieving this ambitious global goal.
UN News’s Anshu Sharma in India spoke to Eamonn Murphy, UNAIDS Regional Director for Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Warning against complacency, he said countries must leverage innovative solutions that are now available, and modernize their response, to target the people most at risk today.
- Sudan: Thousands may die due to healthcare disruptions: WHO
- Children’s deaths on central Mediterranean route have doubled this year: UNICEF
- 165 million newly impoverished in past three years: UNDP
Fresh allegations of crimes against humanity in Sudan’s Darfur are the latest indication that the world is failing to live up to the promise of “never again” forged in the ashes of the Second World War.
Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, sat down with UN News’s Sandra Miller to warn against risk factors for atrocity crimes in a rising number of countries, including Sudan, as the brutal conflict between rival militaries continues there.
She also described the framework of analysis for atrocity crimes which allows the UN to assess situations and sound the alarm, with hate speech as both a key indicator and trigger of genocide.
A new publication released today by UNAIDS shows that bringing the pandemic to a close by 2030, is possible, provided governments make the right political and financial choices.
The Path that Ends AIDS, contains data and case studies which highlight the way out, and shows that countries and leaders who have committed to the fight, are achieving extraordinary results.
For more insight on the new report and how governments and communities can collaborate to end the disease once and for all, UN News’s Pauline Batista spoke to Dr. Angeli Achrekar, Deputy Executive Director for the Programme Branch at UNAIDS.
- UN chief condemns North Korea missile launch
- Sudan: Türk calls for investigation over at least 87 buried in mass grave in West Darfur
- Ending AIDS by 2030 a “political and financial choice”: UNAIDS
- ‘Crushing’ debt crisis spells development disaster for billions: UN chief
- Türk: Accountability needed for ‘shocking’ violations by Russian forces in Ukraine
- Sand and dust storms know no borders: global action needed, says UN
- Sudan crisis: Thousands continue to flee Darfurs seeking safety in Chad, warn UN aid teams
- Financial distress affects eight in 10 of Ukraine’s displaced, warns UN migration agency
- UN rights chief calls for respect as States gather to discuss Quran burning stunt
Average global temperatures reached record levels on land and sea last month, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday.
The WMO announcement follows a report from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service declaring record global temperatures that extended into the first week of July, breaking the previous record set in August 2016.
There’s little doubt among UN scientists that higher-than-normal temperatures will come at a cost, with negative impacts expected in fishing grounds and knock-on climate emergencies, such as hurricanes, tropical cyclones, heavy rains and drought.
For more insight on the global temperature spike and a look ahead to weather trends for the rest of the year, UN News’s Nancy Sarkis spoke to Dr. Omar Baddour, who’s Chief of Climate Monitoring at WMO in Geneva.
- Temperatures off the charts, but more records are to come: WMO
- Ukraine: UN deplores killing of civilians during aid distribution
- Honduras: UN experts deployed to help lay foundation for anti-corruption body
- Renewal of Black Sea Initiative urgent as consumers await lower food prices: FAO
- Jenin: Soaring needs in aftermath of Israel’s military operation: UNRWA
- Ukraine: Support needed to rebuild homes destroyed by war, flooding: UNHCR
- UN chief says guardrails needed for AI to ‘benefit everyone’
- Myanmar atrocities and impunity must end: Türk
- Sudan: close to three million displaced
- Developing countries face $4 trillion investment gap in SDGs: UNCTAD
- Iran must end crackdown against protesters: rights experts
- Yemen: Surge in number of Horn of Africa migrants: IOM
Joan Baez needs no introduction. The legendary artist and peace icon has been inspiring generations of activists for decades to stand up against war, poverty and injustice.
While at the UN in Geneva, she sat down with UN News’s Daniel Johnson to talk about her earliest encounter with the UN and which of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) resonates the most with her. She pointed to the climate crisis as today’s most pressing struggle, warning that “if we don’t get it, it’s going to get us”.
The performer famous for her era-defining rendition of the protest song “We Shall Overcome” also spoke about why in the face of conflict and despair, she continues to choose action and “do her part”.
- UN chief, humanitarians concerned over Israeli military operation in Jenin
- El Niño onset likely to bring surging record temperatures
- Tajikistan: rights experts’ concern over sentencing, torture of human rights defenders
- Climate solidarity urgent to ensure Caribbean states’ survival: Guterres
- UN rights chief tells Governments: “Don’t leave the climate crisis for our children to fix”
- ‘Rewrite the narrative’ on food security: FAO
- Myanmar: Military’s obstruction of humanitarian aid could be international crime
- Cholera and measles rampant in eastern DRC as health system nears collapse
- Job guarantee programmes needed to end poverty: top rights expert
- Universal access to safer water, sanitation and hygiene could save 1.4 million lives: WHO
- UN-brokered grain and fertilizer accord vital to help alleviate crippling cost-of-living crisis: UNCTAD chief
- 12-month extension of Syria cross-border aid corridor ‘a critical step’ UN relief chief
The cost-of-living crisis continues to affect the world’s poorest families, which is all the more reason to redouble efforts to push for grain and fertilizer to leave key Black Sea ports, top UN economist Rebeca Grynspan said on Tuesday.
Ms. Grynspan, who is Secretary-General of the UN trade and development body UNCTAD, said although “there are things that are very difficult to solve… the UN will not spare any effort in trying to make this continue working for the future”.
Before 18 July – when a 60-day extension of the Black Sea Initiative by Russia is set to expire – Ms. Grynspan told UN News’s Daniel Johnson she’d likely head to Moscow to continue negotiations.
In 2020 alone, over 30 million people were displaced from their homes due to weather-related events, mainly devastating droughts. But those who cross national borders to flee climate change-related disasters are not recognized as refugees under international law.
The first-ever UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the context of climate change, Ian Fry, sat down with UN News’s Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer as he prepared to present his report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva this week. He talked about his call for full legal protection for people displaced by the climate crisis and how the private sector could help finance a “loss and damage fund” to support countries buckling under the effects of our warming planet.
Special Rapporteurs and other independent rights experts are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. They are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.
- North-eastern Nigeria: malnourished children fighting for their lives
- Top rights expert proposes legal status for millions displaced by climate change
- Limiting asylum access leads to rise in trafficking risks: rights expert
- Ukraine: Russian forces face new allegations of arbitrary detention, torture of civilians
- Sudan displacement higher than projected, humanitarian access thwarted
- Afghanistan: rise in suicide attacks against civilians since Taliban takeover
Close to 200 million people around the world are unemployed, and fears are rising that artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as Chat GPT will put even more people out of a job.
Alongside AI threats to the labour market, positive effects are also expected, such as helping workers automate more repetitive tasks to free up time for higher value work. But given the gaping digital divide between wealthier and poorer nations, will developing countries be able to reap AI’s productivity benefits?
Senior Economist Janine Berg from the International Labour Organization (ILO) is currently driving new research on the impact of AI on the world of work. She sat down with UN News’s Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer to assess the latest developments.
With security and humanitarian crises mounting across much of Africa, the international community is making a mistake by not engaging fully with South Sudan, which is at the centre of an increasingly volatile region.
That’s the view of the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the world’s youngest nation, Nicholas Haysom, who told UN News that if a fresh crisis erupts there in combination with the military power struggle in neighbouring Sudan, it would be “catastrophic” for the whole Horn of Africa.
Maoqi Li asked the head of UNMISS and UN Special Representative why he thought South Sudan was not getting the attention it deserved.
- Stop stigmatizing drug users and focus on treatment, rehabilitation: Guterres
- Horn of Africa hunger emergency: 60 million food insecure
- Paths to regularization crucial so migrants can enjoy basic human rights
- UN welcomes sentencing of ISIL member for Yazidi genocide
- Tunisia must ‘change course’ amid media freedom crackdown: UN rights chief
- Sudan update: 2.5 million displaced by fighting
- Global financial system must evolve to serve the most vulnerable: Guterres
- UN chief condemns violence against civilians in Occupied Palestinian Territory
- Technology can jeopardize right to health by exposing individuals’ sensitive data: top rights expert
A new report from UN global fund Education Cannot Wait (ECW) warns there are 224 million children and adolescents now in desperate need of education support: around 72 million are out of school because of conflict, crisis, and other emergencies.
Yasmine Sherif, ECW’s Executive Director, spoke to UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki about the fundraising challenge of helping the huge influx or refugees fleeing into Chad from Sudan, as well as the continuing crisis for girls’ education in Afghanistan.
- Ukraine: ‘Marshall Plan’ approach needed to stop landmines from blighting economy: UNDP
- Safe, voluntary returns of Rohingya to Myanmar remain impossible, warns UN rights office
- Belize certified malaria-free by WHO
In the nearly two years since Afghanistan’s de-facto authorities seized power, the “ambitions, dreams and potential” of girls and women have perished, a rights activist has told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
And in an exclusive interview with UN News’s Nancy Sarkis, Afghan civil rights activist Shaharzad Akba explains that women and girls there talk of “being buried alive, breathing, but not being able to do much else”.
- World Refugee Day: UN leaders call for solidarity and inclusion amid record displacement
- DRC: Lives shattered by violence and hunger in ‘forgotten crisis’: WFP
- Lebanon’s economic meltdown leaves cash-strapped families at breaking point
- Sudan: Guterres calls on donors to step up aid response
- ‘Vital’ human rights cooperation must be above the fray of politics: UN rights chief
- Europe is world’s fastest-warming continent: WMO
From Afghanistan to Ukraine, the survivors of some of the world’s worst conflicts live in fear of landmines killing them or their children.
The UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) coordinates the Organization’s work to rid the world of mines, explosive remnants of war and improvised explosive devices.
Ahead of Mine Action Week beginning 19 June, which brings major demining stakeholders to Geneva, UNMAS Director of Policy Abigail Hartley sat down with UN News’s Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer to express sadness at the deaths last week of 27 civilians – most of them minors – killed by unexploded ordnance in the Lower Shabelle region of Somalia.
The UN mine action service veteran also shared her optimism that Ukraine will one day be mine-free, too.
- Sudan’s Darfur spiralling into ‘humanitarian calamity’: UN aid chief
- Ukraine: hundreds of thousands affected by water shortages from Kakhovka Dam disaster
- Mediterranean migrant shipwreck: swift action needed to prevent further loss of life
Nobody yet knows what the full long-term effects of taking cannabis are and legalizing it for recreational use runs the risk of trivializing the dangers for teen consumers, the President of the UN-administered international narcotics watchdog has warned.
In an interview with UN News, Professor Jallal Toufiq also raised the alarm over the continuing proliferation of synthetic opioids on the black market, describing it as the International Narcotics Board’s number one issue - stating the INCB was doing all it can to tackle the scourge.
Khaled Mohamed of our Arabic news service, began by asking him to sum up the impact of cannabis on public health, and the push to legalize it recreationally.
People living with Down syndrome and other disabilities need a place at the table, according to a Canadian activist participating at a key UN event focused on their rights.
Inclusion is one of the key issues at the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which is taking place at UN Headquarters in New York.
Eileen Travers sat down with Nicholas Herd and his colleague Warren Pot, from L’Arche Canada, part of an international non-profit organization striving towards the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities.
She began by asking Mr. Herd why he came to the United Nations.
- UN chief calls for solidarity with people of Syria, with no time to spare
- Sudan: Displaced people victims of Darfur violence
- UN rights chief hails European AI regulation push
Mine Action Week takes place from 19 to 23 June in Geneva; it’s an opportunity to highlight how the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) works with partners to eliminate the menace posed by these explosive devices in more than 30 countries – including Ukraine.
To find out more about the challenge of clearing mines, explosive remnants of war and improvised explosive devices, UN News’s Nathalie Minard sat down with Hansjörg Eberle, head of the Swiss demining NGO, FSD.
- Number of people forced to flee their homes at a record high: UNHCR
- DRC: Security Council, UN officials condemn ‘horrific’ attack on displaced people’s camp
- Cyclone Biparjoy approaches India and Pakistan coast: WMO
In its new flagship report published on Wednesday the UN refugee agency UNHCR reveals that the 46 least developed countries are hosting more than 20 per cent of the refugee population – even though they account for only 1.3 per cent of GDP.
That’s one of the important data points contained in Global Trends in Forced Displacement 2022, which shows a record level of displacement, for the second year running, now standing at 108.4 million, UNHCR Director in New York, Ruven Menikdiwela told us.
UN News’s Pauline Batista began by asking her to outline the key findings.
- Kakhovka dam disaster a health crisis in the making: WHO
- Myanmar must re-instate aid access to communities hit by Cyclone Mocha, UN says
- Senegal: stop crackdown on protests and freedom of expression: OHCHR
The environmental and economic consequences of the dam disaster that’s inundated parts of southern Ukraine, flooding what is one of the world’s breadbaskets, is going to an awful shock to the people of the country and the entire ‘Global South’, the UN relief chief has told UN News.
In an interview on Friday night, Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths, said the world stands by Ukraine in the wake of this latest disaster stemming from the Russian invasion, but with agricultural land swamped, food security is bound to be hit.
Nargiz Shekinskaya began by asking him in the wake of initial criticism from President Volodomyr Zelenskyy, if the UN could have acted sooner with aid, once disaster struck.
- One in every 10 children worldwide works instead of going to school: ILO
- Ukraine Kakhovka dam humanitarian effort reaches 180,000 people despite inclement weather
- United States decides to rejoin UN cultural agency
Young people must have a voice in global efforts to combat climate change – not because of their youth, but because they are important stakeholders who offer solutions to the crisis.
That’s the opinion of Ayisha Siddiqa, a Pakistani-American environmental and human rights defender, who is a member of the UN Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change.
Ms. Siddiqa spoke to Nadeem Saeed of UN News’s Urdu Unit, about how her background informs her work to accelerate the “SG’s” climate agenda.
She also shared her honest take on UN climate conferences, known as COPs, and explains why poetry “can be a mechanism of quiet protest” in the face of the climate emergency.
- Ukraine flooding devastation: huge immediate needs; long-term impacts loom
- Sudan: UN rights office deplores killing of civilians, sexual violence
- Arrests and hate speech target Baha’i minority in Yemen
The flooding stemming from the Ukraine dam disaster near Kherson poses a grave risk to families, and threatens safe water and power supplies, said the UN Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) communications chief in the country.
Damian Rance said around 1,700 people have had to evacuate from flooded homes in the major southern city, and one of most direct threats is a doubling or even tripling of the threat posed by landmines, being swept away to new locations.
Oleksandra Burynska began by asking him what the latest was on the ground in the disaster area:
With new and emerging technologies, we hear a lot about killer drones, driverless tanks and autonomous airplanes on the modern battlefield.
One issue of particular concern is the use of what are officially known as lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), which can select and engage targets with force, without human involvement - raising a raft of security, ethical and legal concerns.
What are countries doing to regulate LAWS? And how can international law and the UN respond to this challenge?
To explore these and other questions, the Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS began meeting at the UN in 2017, as Mélanie Régimbal, Chief of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva, explains to UN News’s Nancy Sarkis.
The ocean is key to food security as the main source of protein for more than a billion people. Some 600 million worldwide depend on fisheries and aquaculture for their livelihoods.
As hunger continues to spread around the world, urgent efforts are needed to safeguard the ocean and ensure that it continues to provide food for a growing global population, in a sustainable way.
Ahead of Thursday’s World Oceans Day, Manuel Barange, Director of the Food and Aquaculture Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has been talking to FAO’s Michele Zaccheo about the promise of aquaculture, or farming in water, and how the ocean is an essential part of the solution to the interlinked issues of poverty, malnutrition, food security and climate change.
- Ukraine: increasing food security threats from Kakhovka dam disaster
- Bangladesh must suspend plans to return Rohingya refugees to Myanmar: top rights expert
- Haiti: Gang violence displaced 165,000 people: IOM
- Ukraine: Lack of clean water, spread of disease major risks in Kakhovka dam disaster: IOM
- Sudan: Close to two million displaced people
- Ocean crucial to food security: FAO
UN humanitarians are ramping up assistance in the aftermath of the Kakhovka dam disaster in Ukraine, as some 17,000 people find themselves in the critical zone at risk of flooding, and clean water has become scarce.
Health and security concerns are mounting fast, with flooding and the lack of clean water multiplying the risk of disease, while unexploded ordnance is being displaced by floodwater into new areas.
IOM’s spokesperson in Kyiv, Olivia Headon, has been talking to UN News’s Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer about the emergency response and the impact of the disaster on Ukraine’s future recovery.
- Ukraine: destruction of Nova Kakhovka dam sparks nuclear safety, humanitarian concerns
- Over 400,000 deaths a year due to unsafe food: WHO, FAO
- Safety belts: 50 years of saving lives
- World must ‘work as one’ to end plastic pollution: Guterres
- Foot on the “social justice accelerator” as labour market inequalities deepen: ILO
- UN pilots reconstruction projects in Ukrainian cities
The COVID-19 pandemic has rolled back progress in development but collaboration between countries of the Global South could help get the world back on track.
This exchange of technology and skills is known as South-South cooperation, and triangular cooperation, when supported by developed countries or partner agencies.
The UN’s High-Level Committee on South-South Cooperation met this week to examine how the process can help accelerate recovery from the pandemic and achieve a more sustainable future for all.
Dima Al-Khatib is the recently appointed Director of the UN Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), which is hosted by the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
She spoke to UN News’s Dianne Penn about some of the key issues discussed at the meeting, including the need for increased funding.
- Time running out to save Myanmar’s Rakhine from hunger and disease post-Cyclone Mocha
- Nicaragua crackdown on dissent must stop: OHCHR
- Regulation needed to curb use of AI for surveillance, disinformation: rights experts
The cooperation of governments in Southeast Asia is helping the region to address the “enormous” challenge of tackling transnational organized crime, according to a senior representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, (UNODC).
The trafficking of people and illicit goods, especially synthetic drugs like methamphetamine, from the Golden Triangle, an area which includes Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, has enriched criminal networks and flooded the region and beyond with addictive narcotics.
UNODC has brought governments together to collaborate through border liaison officers who share information about trafficking. Daniel Dickinson spoke to UNODC’s Chief of Border Management, Alan Cole on a trip to the Golden Triangle and began by asking him about the role of these officers.
- Over 1,500 children killed or injured in Ukraine; UN concerned over forced transfers
- Celeste Saulo becomes first woman to lead UN climate agency
- WHO launches database on drug dependence and risks
This week the UN hosts the 2nd Session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent – the human rights platform which brings together institutions at the UN, civil society and others, to advance equality and fight racism.
The Forum’s Chair, Epsy Campbell Barr, said it was vital to boost investment to help the poorest of the poor, and meet “elemental demands” for basic services like clean water.
She spoke to UN News’s Pauline Batista in our studio at UN Headquarters in New York.
Torture, conflict and low COVID-19 vaccination rates have all been the results of increasing levels of disinformation and misinformation in Papua New Guinea, according to the UN Resident Coordinator in the country, Richard Howard.
Speaking on the line to UN News’s Julia Dean in Australia, he stressed that these consequences were very worrying, and in some cases “horrifically wrong”, calling for strong and rapid measures to counter the scourge.
Mr. Howard began by describing the prevalence and intensity of misinformation and disinformation being spread across the Pacific Island nation.
- Uganda: Guterres deeply concerned over anti-gay law
- Global economic woes dash hopes of work in low-income countries: ILO
- Bangladesh: keeping workers poor hinders development, says top rights expert
- UN humanitarians complete first food distribution in Khartoum as hunger, threats to children intensify
- Flooding in Somalia could affect up to 1.6 million as climate puts generation of children at risk: UNICEF
- Melting cryosphere: WMO’s urgent call to action
- Guterres pays tribute to over 100 ‘blue helmets’ killed in the line of duty last year
- Stop tobacco farming, grow food instead, says WHO
- Ukraine: UN humanitarians bring aid to millions as civilian suffering continues
While more than 300 million people around the world face acute food insecurity, tobacco continues to be grown in 124 countries, diverting land and resources away from food crops – even in places where people are starving.
Ahead of World No Tobacco Day on Wednesday 31 May, the World Health Organization (WHO) has released new findings about tobacco’s disastrous health impact on development in low and middle-income countries.
WHO’s Director for Health Promotion, Dr. Rüdiger Krech, also busts the myth of tobacco as a lucrative crop, before explaining how the UN system helps farmers embrace alternatives that are better for their health and food security. Here he is, talking to UN News’s Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer in Geneva.
The arrest of one of the last remaining fugitives from the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda has been hailed as a commitment to ensuring that justice is served, no matter how long it takes.
Fulgence Kayeshima is alleged to have orchestrated the killing of approximately 2,000 Tutsi refugees at a Catholic Church in April 1994.
He had been on the run for more than 20 years, hiding in East African countries, including among refugee populations.
Mr. Kayeshima was arrested in South Africa on Wednesday by the UN tribunal for war crimes in Rwanda, known as the IRMCT, and local authorities.
This marked the culmination of an intense year-long process, as IRMCT Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz tells UN News’s Anold Kayanda.
- Africa Day: UN chief calls for international solidarity to realize continent’s potential
- Half of Sudan’s population need humanitarian aid
- Children in east Asia and Pacific most threatened by climate shocks
- Türk to Sudan’s warring generals: stop the ‘senseless violence’
- Climate shocks, Sudan conflict worsen Horn of Africa hunger crisis
- Green light for global greenhouse gas tracking network: WMO
- Cyclone Mocha: urgent funding needed in Myanmar and Bangladesh as hunger, diseases loom
- Gaza: over a fourth of patients at UNRWA health centres need mental health support
- Ghana peacekeeper named UN Military Gender Advocate of the Year
- Extreme weather caused two million deaths, over $4 trillion in losses over last 50 years
- ‘Bleeding needs to stop’ in DRC’s dire humanitarian crisis
- ‘Extremely vulnerable’ Ukraine nuclear plant loses power
- Sudan emergency: One million now displaced in ongoing conflict
- WFP renews appeals to help Cyclone Mocha victims in Myanmar, Bangladesh
- Cholera now a ticking global timebomb, warns UN health agency and UNICEF
The bamboo homes of Myanmar’s most vulnerable communities were no match for Cyclone Mocha which has left people with nothing, UN humanitarians warned on Friday.
With the latest from the country and neighbouring Bangladesh, here’s the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Anthea Webb, Deputy Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
- Cutting disaster risk ‘critical’ to 2030 sustainable development goals
- International Day spotlights women in maritime
- Syria-Türkiye quakes: Millions of children in dire conditions, 100 days on
- New temperature records likely in the next five years: WMO
- Guterres calls to eliminate digital divide, ensure technology is a force for good
- UN appeals for $3 billion to fund aid and protection for millions impacted by Sudan crisis
Since the launch of Chat GPT in November 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) has been dominating headlines, sparking excitement but also concern over the pace at which the technology is developing and driving misinformation.
The UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, Amandeep Gill, is busy working on a Global Digital Compact to be adopted at the UN’s Summit of the Future in 2024 – a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity for leaders to agree on common principles for addressing tech challenges.
Ahead of Wednesday’s World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, he has been talking to UN News’s Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer about using AI for good, why it’s not too late to regulate, and how getting AI governance right will be important for multilateralism itself.
- Dozens feared dead in Myanmar in aftermath of Cyclone Mocha
- Call for more funding to support countries dealing with Sudan exodus
- WHO praises Benin and Mali for reaching trachoma milestone
- WHO advises against using non-sugar sweeteners
- Decriminalizing homosexuality will save lives: UNAIDS
- Countries agree to phase out widely used toxic chemicals
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has been able to support around 50,000 Sudanese in need in three states, amid the continuing fighting and food crisis there, which temporarily halted the agency’s aid operation after three staffers were killed.
That’s according to Leni Kinzli head of communications for WFP in Sudan, who said a total of 19 million are expected to face food insecurity during the coming lean season, and called on the international community not to take their eyes off the crisis in the country, provoked by the ongoing military power struggle.
UN News Arabic’s Ezzat El-Ferri, asked her what the latest situation was on the ground.
- Sudan’s warring parties take “important first step” towards respect of humanitarian principles
- Over 500 killed by Malian troops, foreign military personnel in 2022 operation: new UN report
- Vulnerable communities, refugees brace for ‘dangerous’ tropical cyclone Mocha in Bay of Bengal
- Sudan violations in spotlight at UN Human Rights Council
- Afghanistan: rights experts alarmed over Taliban use of ‘brutal’ punishments
- Funding shortfall threatens food aid in Palestine
- Sudan: Hunger on the rise, more than 19 million face acute food insecurity
- Locust outbreak in Afghanistan threatens to wipe out a quarter of this year’s wheat harvest
- ‘Silent emergency’: Premature births claim a million lives yearly
- Sudan displacement doubles in one week: IOM
- Haiti: International support needed now to stop gang violence spiral: Türk
- Iran: Over 200 executed since January, rights chief warns
- Mali: ban slavery by law, say top rights experts
- Sudan: rise in unexploded ordnance a deadly trap for civilians, children
- Afghanistan: UN calls on Taliban to stop using corporal punishment
- DR Congo: millions now displaced by armed violence
- Hunger on the horizon for over four million in north-east Nigeria as lean season approaches
- Safer Tanker: additional funds announced for UN operation to avert Red Sea oil spill
- Around 258 million need emergency food aid: UN-backed report
- Ethiopia: essential measles vaccination campaign to save post-conflict Tigray from outbreaks
- Somalia: Funding urgently needed to save lives of thousands of migrants
- Sudan: Guarantees needed for humanitarian access, say UN chiefs
- Attacks on journalists must stop: Guterres marks World Press Freedom Day
- New temperature records likely as El Niño looms
UN Women is giving financial and technical support to young Sudanese who are leveraging the power of apps to keep women and girls safe amid the continuing military showdown that’s seen more than 100,000 already flee the country.
That’s according to the agency’s Representative in Sudan, Adjaratou Fatou Ndiaye, who told UN News that specially developed apps were also allowing women to map the availability of food and medicine, along with safe routes to escape the fighting.
She told Abdelmonem Makki of our Arabic service that above all, they deserve peace and development. He began by asking her to describe how the fighting was impacting women in particular.
Social media has long been a boon to press freedom, allowing journalists from all over the world to make their voices heard, grow an audience, and build trust.
But rampant disinformation has increasingly eroded the space for trustworthy information online, multiplying risks for the journalists who help separate fact from fiction.
Ahead of World Press Freedom Day, on 3 May, Derek Bowler, Head of Social Newsgathering at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), has been talking to UN News’s Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer about the complicated relationship between social media and free speech.
- Afghanistan: UN will continue to use convening power, ‘put Afghan people first’: UN chief
- Sudan latest: over 100,000 have fled the country: UNHCR
- Health systems start to recover from pandemic but backlogs delay access to care: WHO
- Sudan: WFP resumes operations, top UN aid official heads to the region
- UN chief convenes meeting in Doha to discuss key issues in Afghanistan
- Chemical pollution under scrutiny in Geneva
- Sudan latest: tens of thousands on the move, ethnic clashes rise in Darfur
- Stop deporting Haitians: rights experts’ appeal to countries in Americas region
- Afghanistan: Security Council condemns Taliban’s ban on women working for UN
During this week’s UN ECOSOC Youth Forum, young people have been gathering at UN Headquarters in New York, to discuss the importance of energy transition for a sustainable future.
They will be the ones left to deal with the consequences, if the necessary green energy transition fails to materialize, so they’ve been arguing for the right to be fully represented during this crucial climate change debate.
Forum delegate, Aashna Aggarwal spoke with UN News’s Shivani Kala, after taking part in a session on how to accelerate the recovery from COVID-19 and get the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) back on track.
- 90 per cent of adolescent girls in low-income countries are offline
- China: Risk of forced labour in Tibet “vocational training” programmes
- New UK law curtails key civil and political rights: UN rights chief
Conditions for children caught up in Sudan’s military showdown are critical, with at least nine dead and over 50 injured, though the UN Children’s Fund fears that total is probably much higher.
Ammar Ammar, UNICEF’s Jordan-based regional chief of advocacy and communications covering Sudan, said only a lasting humanitarian truce can help restore shattered services, and for now it’s too dangerous for their lifesaving work to continue.
Ezzat El-Ferri of UN News Arabic, began by asking him to describe what UNICEF’s doing to help ease the suffering.
- Sudan: UN chief warns against disastrous spill over effect of violence
- Ukraine: new medical assistance programme for nuclear power plant personnel: IAEA
- Aid in the face of sanctions: UN aid chief champions humanitarian principles in Iran
More resources are urgently needed for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) to meet the needs of thousands of refugees and internally displaced, who are fleeing the bloody showdown between rival military factions in Sudan.
That’s according to Faith Kasina, Regional Spokesperson for UNHCR who is based in Nairobi. Ezzat El-Ferri of UN News’s Arabic service began by asking her for the latest on the extent of internal displacement across the country so far.
- Sudan: UN working to deliver amid dire humanitarian situation
- Ukraine: calls to execute POWs could amount to war crimes: OHCHR
- World Malaria Day: better prevention could save tens of thousands of children each year: WHO
- UN Secretary-General welcomes safe relocation of staff in Sudan
- ‘Big Catch-up’ in vaccines focus of World Immunization Week
- UN World Data Forum key to SDG progress
The fashion industry has always been driven by esthetics, but its environmental and social impacts are now coming to the forefront. Growing awareness of fashion’s carbon footprint and evolving consumer attitudes are prompting some of its biggest names, to question their business models and embark on a sustainable transformation.
Ahead of this Saturday’s Earth Day, Riccardo Bellini, the CEO of luxury fashion house Chloe, has been talking to Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer about his company’s sustainability journey and why he’s optimistic that his industry can leverage innovation and partnerships, for a greener future.
Climate change has continued to drive hunger and displacement in 2022, as ever more frequent extreme weather events – drought, floods, heatwaves – have been threatening the very existence of vulnerable communities.
In a new report, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows that last year, humanity’s “war on nature” – in the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres – has resulted in several alarming records, while the years 2015 to 2022 have been the eight warmest ever.
Omar Baddour, WMO’s head of climate monitoring and policy, has been talking to Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer about the key trends identified in the report.
The UN Secretary-General has appealed for the military rivals in Sudan to lay down their arms for at least three days so that people trapped in their homes can get desperately needed food, supplies and medical help.
Six days of fighting have been extremely devastating for civilians, including thousands of pregnant women now cut off from care, or hospitals where they can safely deliver their babies.
The UN’s reproductive health agency, UNFPA, estimates that there are at least 219,000 mothers-to-be in the capital, Khartoum, alone.
UNFPA Regional Director Laila Baker spoke to UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki about how staff there – who are mostly Sudanese nationals – are supporting expectant mothers amidst the crossfire and frustrated hopes of a ceasefire.
- Sudan violence takes ‘devastating toll’ on children: UNICEF chief
- Millions of children deprived of life-saving vaccinations amid COVID pandemic, misinformation surge
- Nearly 2 million Ukrainians provided with crucial cash assistance
A new report from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) shows that immunization rates are in crisis, with 67 million children missing out on life-saving vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases are now on the rise, and it’s getting harder to play catch-up, as a surge in misinformation has dented the public’s confidence in the importance and efficacy of childhood shots.
UNICEF’s Global Head of Advocacy, Lily Caprani, has been talking to Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer about restoring vaccine confidence, and what needs to be done to accelerate immunization efforts now.
- End ‘alarmist narratives’ on population growth and recognize women’s rights: UNFPA
- Up to 20,000 new Sudanese refugees arrive in Chad: UNHCR
- West Africa and Sahel: Food insecurity, malnutrition, set to reach 10-year high
- Sudan latest: UN rights chief urges end to fighting
- Restrictions on women’s rights condemn Afghanistan to poverty: UNDP
- New investment in harm reduction to prevent Hepatitis C infections
A senior World Health Organization (WHO) official has condemned the reported military occupation of at least one hospital in Sudan as a base for attacks, as “an incredibly concerning development.”
Dr. Richard Brennan, WHO Emergency Director for the Eastern Mediterranean region which includes Sudan, told UN News that the use of any health facility by either side in Sudan’s current military power struggle, would be a gross violation of international humanitarian law.
He told Abdelmonem Makki of our Arabic news service, that WHO was in regular contact with hospitals in Khartoum and other areas affected by the fighting, and despite careful pre-positioning of medical supplies to treat civilian casualties, they were fast running out.
Humanitarian needs are skyrocketing today, and the vast majority of people requiring aid, live in rural areas.
But while more than 70 per cent of all those affected in food crises are farmers or working in the fishing industry, only 4 per cent of emergency assistance targets their needs.
The Director of Emergencies of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Rein Paulsen, has been talking to Michele Zaccheo about ways to improve emergency responses, and put resources in the hands of farmers themselves.
- UN chief calls for accountability over deaths of WFP employees in Sudan violence
- Russia: UN rights chief appeals for release of opposition figure
- States must apply international law to address growing displacement crisis: top rights expert
In April 1994, a sinister call was broadcast over radio stations across Rwanda, triggering the start of 100 days of genocide that left more than one million people dead. Henriette Mutegwaraba heard that call over the radio.
“Every time I talk about it, I cry,” she told UN News, describing how propaganda spread messages of hate that sparked a deadly wave of unspeakable violence. She lost 60 family members and friends in the genocide.
Ahead of the UN General Assembly’s commemoration of the International Day of Reflection on the 1943 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Ms. Mutegwaraba spoke with UN News about hate speech in the digital age, the 6 January attack on the United States capitol, how she survived the genocide, and how she explained what happened to her daughter.
- World Chagas Day: early detection essential to track ‘silent’ disease
- Yemen: UN envoy welcomes mass prisoner release, urges push for political solution to war
- Chad: aid for displaced desperately needed to avoid hunger
- Gender inequalities in food and agriculture are costing world $1 trillion: FAO
- UN rights chief alarmed at rise in deadly Mediterranean crossings
- ‘Fully financing’ HIV response in Africa will save millions of lives: UNAIDS
- Lost decade looms for debt-ridden developing countries: UNCTAD
- UN rights chief appoints expert on Haiti
- Inspections resume at Black Sea Grain Initiative Joint Coordination Centre
- China: UN rights chief ‘very concerned’ by sentencing of civil society activists
- New settlement opens for latest Somali refugees in Ethiopia
- World food prices continue to drop, but consumers still struggling
- World must unite behind Afghan women and girls’ rights: UN deputy chief
- UN rights chief alarmed over continuing political tensions in Sudan
- Tributes paid following death of Nuremberg trials prosecutor, Ben Ferencz
- Afghanistan: top humanitarian official sounds alarm as aid delivery compromised
- Türkiye: Funding needed to stave off risks to millions of children post-earthquake
- Ukrainian farmers to receive emergency seed support: FAO
- New WFP chief Cindy McCain warns of funding crunch in fight against hunger
- $6.9 billion needed to rebuild cultural sector in Ukraine: UNESCO
- Climate change accelerates rise in mosquito-transmitted diseases: WHO
- Better access to fertility care essential for global health: WHO
- Human Rights Council unites around environmental rights
- Tunisia: hate speech and violence against sub-Saharan migrants must stop, say rights experts
Future Olympic events are poised to drive sustainability in sport and fight climate change, led by a set of game-changing measures adopted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and supported by the UN.
Speaking to UN News ahead of the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace, observed on 6 April, IOC’s legacy director, Tania Braga, explains how the 2024 Paris Games will be the first time that new sustainability guidelines will be fully implemented, aligning sport with development and climate action.
Eileen Travers asked Ms. Braga how compatible the Olympics are with sustainable development.
Latest data shared by the UN World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that one in two frontline health workers suffered burnout during COVID-19.
To help protect these key staff in the event of another pandemic, the WHO has convened its Fifth Global Forum on Human Resources for Health, in Geneva.
Participants include Dr Emma O’Brien from The Royal Melbourne Hospital, whose celebrated music therapy ensemble known as the Scrub Choir, most recently provided comfort to 1,000 under-pressure health workers, as she tells UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
First, though, we’ll hear from the WHO’s Workforce Director Jim Campbell, who explains why an action plan is needed so urgently to strengthen the global health workforce.
Record numbers of people are on the brink of famine today in Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, northeast Nigeria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Burkina Faso and Haiti.
Conflict and armed violence are among the root causes of these complex emergencies, while climate shocks are compounding vulnerabilities, especially in the Horn of Africa, which has had four years of consecutive drought with no end in sight.
UN Famine Prevention and Response Coordinator, Reena Ghelani, has been talking to UN News’s Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer about what she’s been seeing in the affected regions.
- One in every two health workers worldwide reports burnout
- UN rights chief says efforts must redouble for accountability, justice in Libya
- South Sudan impunity must end ‘no matter perpetrators’ rank or office’ - rights probe
The transatlantic slave trade was a global phenomenon – directly affecting Africa, Europe and the Americas, with implications for Asia - and the UN can be a leader in promoting dialogue to addresses its complicated legacy.
That’s the opinion of renowned American lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a non-profit working to end mass incarceration in the United States, which mainly impacts people of colour and the poor.
He was at UN Headquarters on Thursday for an event to examine how museums can deal with the colonial past and include the voices of people of African descent.
Mr. Stevenson spoke to UN News’s Dianne Penn about what inspired his fight for justice, how slavery is linked to past atrocities such as lynchings and present-day violations such as police brutality, and why wider engagement by cultural institutions is needed to usher in a “new era” of greater inclusion.
Aniket Kadam is an android developer at a tech company called 100ms in India. After being one of the panelists at the pre-recorded UN event to commemorate World Autism Awareness Day, on 2 April, on the subject of work within the global theme "Transformation: Toward a Neuro-Inclusive World for All", UN News asked him to share his experiences living with autism alongside a message on the occasion of the international day.
A timetable for the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to fully withdraw, has yet to be agreed with the Government there, but constructive negotiations are continuing, MONUSCO chief Bintou Keita has told UN News, in an in-depth interview.
The UN mission’s core mandate is protection of civilians, but in many places of the partially militia-controlled east, there’s simply no authority which can keep people safe, if MONUSCO pulls out.
And when it comes to fighting deadly misinformation, Ms. Keita said it has been a “painful curve”, but the mission has now become proactive on social and other media platforms, to help stop its spread.
Jerome Bernard, of our UN News French service, began by asking her what the minimum conditions would be for MONUSCO to responsibly draw down, and leave DRC.
- UN rights chief deplores ‘shockingly routine’ violations in Ukraine
- Türkiye, Syria aid response continues, food security under threat
- Mozambique health crisis deepens in Cyclone Freddy aftermath
- UN chief calls on humanity to ‘declare war on waste’
- Guatemala: UN rights chief alarmed by reprisals against anti-corruption officials
- Honduras must step up efforts to tackle enforced disappearances: rights experts
- UN chief calls for climate justice as countries face historic vote
- WHO sounds alarm over heavy burden of violent injuries in conflict
- Counter-terrorism measures “misused” against protesters in Colombia: OHCHR
- DPRK: Truth, justice needed amid ‘tragic’ legacy of enforced disappearances: UN rights chief
- Unemployment, child labour concerns in Türkiye-Syria earthquake aftermath
- State of emergency in El Salvador brings mass detentions, rights violations
- Libya: crimes against humanity committed since 2016 – rights probe
- World at ‘critical juncture’ to leverage technology for development: UNCTAD chief
- Holistic approach crucial for health of people, animals and environment
- World Tuberculosis Day: WHO steps up efforts to end TB by 2030
- Haiti: Vicious circle of hunger and violence, close to five million food-insecure
- Holy month of Ramadan a high point in charity giving to aid displaced
- Amid recent slowdown in global trade, “green goods” are the winning ticket
- UN chief calls on EU to help world get ‘back on track’ towards development goals
- Southern Africa: Cyclone Freddy aftermath brings disease outbreaks, health care gaps
- World comes together to address water crisis affecting billions
- Uganda: UN rights chief calls on President not to sign anti-homosexuality bill
- Tanzania: first-ever outbreak of deadly Marburg Virus Disease
- School meals a ‘critical safety net’ amid global food crisis
- Pakistan: 10 million deprived of safe drinking water in flood-affected areas
- Yemen: Fresh negotiations conclude with release of 887 prisoners
- Sustainable future still possible if we take climate action now - climate panel
- Somalia drought may have caused 43,000 excess deaths last year
- Iran: possible crimes against humanity, absence of accountability - top rights expert
- Lives of 10 million children on the line as conflict rages in central Sahel
- UN rights chief calls on Belarus to end campaign of repression
- Emergency response continues in cyclone-hit Southern Africa
- Energy grid attacks, torture in Ukraine by Russian military could be crimes against humanity
- Cocaine trafficking surges following COVID-19-related slowdown
- UN human rights chief calls for further progress in Uzbekistan
The illegal cocaine trade has bounced back following COVID-19 lockdowns, with coca cultivation up by more than a third from 2020 to 2021, according to a new report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Speaking to UN News, UNODC’s chief analyst for the Global Report on Cocaine 2023, said new routes and networks had emerged, with global supply now at record levels.
Brazil has emerged as a major hub, and there’s concern demand is rising fast in West Africa and Asia, as Ms. Me told Pauline Batista.
- Investment needed to improve working conditions for essential workers - ILO
- Humanitarian needs soar in Syria soars as conflict enters 13th year
- Countries must stop undermining the work of human rights’ defenders: rights expert
- More than one in two Syrians now food insecure – WFP
- 55 countries face unsustainable health worker crunch linked to COVID-19
- UNHCR launches new appeal for displaced Afghans and host countries
As if the situation wasn’t bad enough for people facing starvation in the Greater Horn of Africa region, now UN humanitarians have warned that they’re in the grip of surging disease, linked to malnutrition.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda, have been particularly affected.
All seven countries are battling measles outbreaks, four have reported cholera outbreaks and malaria is a serious threat in Sudan.
With more on the human impact of this ongoing emergency, here’s Liesbeth Aelbrecht, WHO Incident Manager, talking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
- Syria rights investigators back calls for earthquake ‘failures’ probe
- Disability support under threat from workforce crisis, Human Rights Council hears
- Myanmar: Social media companies must stand up to junta’s online terror campaign say rights experts
- Cyclone Freddy: Mozambique, Malawi brace for more rain
- Horn of Africa hunger emergency: ‘129,000 looking death in the eyes’
- 300,000 flee ongoing violence in DR Congo in February alone
- Stricken Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant latest: IAEA
- Vanuatu emergency: UN aid team deploys after cyclones, earthquake
- Cannabis legalization fails to address health risks: UN-backed drugs control board
- Afghanistan: Experts urge Taliban to end ‘harmful annihilation’ of women’s freedoms
- Cholera vaccination campaign begins in quake-hit northwest Syria
- United Kingdom: UN refugee agency concerned about new asylum bill
As South Sudan prepares for elections in 2024, the world’s youngest nation sits at a fork in the road.
Progress towards a lasting peace include the need to hold fair elections, open civic spaces, and improved security. It also means having an inclusive constitution built for all.
But, right now, stark choices must be made, and 2023 is a “make or break” year, as Nicholas Haysom, who heads the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), tells UN News’s Eileen Travers.
- Secretary-General lands in Poland ahead of Ukraine visit
- Tropical Cyclone Freddy set to further weaken cholera-hit Malawi: UNICEF, WMO
- UN launches $876 million appeal for Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi hosts
- Eritrea: human rights situation remains dire, impunity is ‘complete’
- 2,000 shelters destroyed in Cox’s Bazar blaze – IOM
- Peru: UN experts call for end to violence during demonstrations
- Myanmar: Tatmadaw’s ‘scorched earth’ policy in spotlight
- Iran urged to investigate allegations of school ‘poisonings’
- For first time, women represented in all parliaments worldwide
- Guterres calls for ‘a path out’ for Al-Hol detainees
- Ration cuts ‘a matter of life and death’ for Rohingya refugees
- Niger to sign key UN water security convention for Lake Chad
- UN’s Guterres heads to Iraq for first visit in 6 years
- Lack of social protection for children seen all over the world
- Sustainable development can save world from ‘destructive spiral’: Türk
Survivors of decades of conflict in the Horn of Africa have told the UN how hunger and drought have finally uprooted them from their homes.
To help 3.3 million people who’ve been displaced in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, issued an urgent appeal this week for $137 million.
And although famine was narrowly prevented last year, the humanitarian outlook for 2023 is extremely uncertain, as the agency’s Olga Sarrado tells UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
- Refugee agency appeals for $137 million to help displaced in Horn of Africa
- Mozambique targets 720,000 in cholera vaccination drive: WHO
- Patent filings hit record high in 2022: WIPO
- Russia responsible for ‘widespread death and destruction’ in Ukraine
- UN seeks $4.3 billion to help 17 million most vulnerable Yemenis
- Italy shipwreck prompts call for safe, legal migration routes
- Ukraine: devastating year of conflict’s impact on children
- Southern Africa cholera spike fears after Cyclone Freddy
- Türkiye, Syria earthquake relief update
One year since Russia invaded Ukraine, UN food security experts are more concerned than ever about the global cost of living crisis that the war has fuelled.
In 2023, they’ve warned that the conflict could leave many developing countries – and particularly in Africa - facing potentially dire shortages of the essential foodstuffs that they used to import from the Black Sea neighbours.
With more on how the international community is coming together to tackle this affordability crunch, here’s Beth Bechdol, Deputy Director General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), with UN Geneva’s Michele Zaccheo.
This Friday will mark a year since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
For the World Health Organization (WHO), providing humanitarian support is the key priority during conflicts and other crises, said Dr. Jarno Habicht, the agency’s representative in the country.
Ahead of the grim anniversary, he spoke to UN News’s Andrei Muchnik about WHO’s ongoing operations amid missile and drone attacks, and how many local colleagues “have lost everything except their work”.
Dr. Habicht began by explaining what initially brought him to Ukraine.
- Ukraine: war must stop, we have no time to lose, urges Guterres
- Top UN official condemns West Bank killings
- Every two minutes, a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth
- Ukraine: deliberate destruction of culture must stop, say rights experts
- Israeli judicial reform undermines checks on executive power: UN rights chief
- Algeria: rights expert says crackdown on equality activists must end
- 1.5 million homeless in Türkiye after earthquake disaster: UNDP
- UN rights chief deplores Ukraine civilian death toll
- $1.3 billion appeal for South Sudan refugees: UNHCR
- Guterres condemnation for North Korea ballistic missile launches
- Language rights are key to pushing back against nationalist rhetoric: Special Rapporteur
- UN atomic energy agency in discussions with Iran over uranium enrichment reports
- UN’s famine prevention expert: drought-hit communities know what they need
- Aid continues to roll into quake-hit Syria to prevent a second disaster
- UNHCR and partners seek $605 million for one million Congolese displaced
- Ukraine: WHO increases 2023 appeal to $240m as one year mark nears since Russia invasion
- Guterres leads call to extend education to kids in emergencies
- $84 million appeal launched to address migrant flows to Yemen: IOM
- UN chief launches $1 billion humanitarian appeal for Türkiye
Somaya Faruqi is one of the lucky ones. She managed to escape from Afghanistan in August 2021, just as the Taliban overran the country’s capital. Today, while the 20-year-old engineering student pursues a degree at Missouri S&T university in the US, her former classmates back home have been banned from the classroom by the de facto authorities.
In support of this week’s Education Cannot Wait conference in Geneva and its call for learning support in emergencies, Somaya has been speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson. She strongly believes education can help change discriminatory views about girls, women and their place in society.
- Ukraine: UN appeals for $5.6 billion to help millions affected by relentless conflict
- Türkiye, Syria quake update – UN agencies
- Bangladesh: rights expert points to ‘needless suffering’ of leprosy patients
- UNESCO hosts global conference to tackle online disinformation and hate speech
The women of earthquake and war-ravaged northwest Syria all have the same message for the international community: help establish peace and restore some sense of hope for the future.
That’s according to Laila Baker from the UN sexual and reproductive health agency UNFPA, who has been telling UN News what she’s seen and heard on the ground in Syria, in the past nine days of frantic relief efforts to save lives following the disaster.
May Yaacoub of our Arabic service, asked the UNFPA Regional Director to describe conditions around her.
Nearly one year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the scale of destruction in the south and east has been massive - so much so, that one senior UN humanitarian worker has told UN News some towns “don’t even exist anymore”.
To help the vulnerable communities struggling to survive, the UN migration agency, IOM, has been stepping up aid and support.
That includes towns like Znamyanka in central Ukraine, where people fleeing escalating conflict further east have been arriving in search of shelter, as IOM’s Johannes Fromholt has been telling Daniel Johnson.
- Earthquake humanitarian update: UN agencies
- Marburg virus strikes Equatorial Guinea: WHO response
- UN rights chief’s concern over Tunisia crackdown
- Grasslands could be part of global carbon storage solution: FAO
Aid teams on the ground in Syria are working round the clock to help those displaced by last week’s earthquake disaster, but the needs remain massive, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday.
In Aleppo, where families have found shelter in schools, mosques and churches, the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination team (UNDAC) expressed concern that conditions are cramped and unsuitable, while many remain too terrified to return to their homes, fearing that they might collapse.
With more, here’s UNDAC Syria chief Samir Elhawary, speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
- Earthquake humanitarian update: UN agencies
- Construction begins on Yazidi genocide memorial: IOM
- Cambodia: OHCHR chief condemns closure of last independent newspaper
- Top rights experts say Israel should be held accountable for destroyed homes
Unless the international community can fully engage in the recovery work to save vulnerable lives across Syria following the deadly earthquake disaster, a whole generation will be lost.
That’s the dire warning from the UN World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, who says that the wholesale suffering of Syrians regardless of political affiliation, can no longer be tolerated.
UN News Arabic’s Reem Abaza, began by asking Dr. Ahmed Al Mandhari, who has just returned to Cairo from the Syrian city of Aleppo, to describe what he had seen.
More than 6,000 high rise buildings are known to have collapsed in last Monday’s devastating earthquake in Türkiye, killing thousands, but rescuers have not given up hope of finding survivors.
That’s the message from veteran UN disaster relief coordinator Winston Chang, who’s currently based at Türkiye’s national emergency management centre in Ankara.
Here he is now, speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson, with the latest on the international search and rescue effort.
- More aid reaches Syria’s quake victims but it’s not enough
- Rights experts call for new US policing approach after 'brutal deaths'
- UNFPA scales up protection for women at risk of sexual violence in Horn of Africa
- First UN aid convoy reaches Syria’s quake-hit northwest since disaster
- Malawi in grip of deadliest cholera outbreak in the country’s history: WHO
- Italy: Criminalization of sea-rescue activists must end, says rights expert
- Türkiye, Syria earthquake emergency update
- UNHCR’s Grandi urges support and solutions for Ethiopia’s displaced
- Somalia: humanitarian partners seek $2.6 billion to help 7.6 million
The deadly earthquakes that have killed thousands across Türkiye and Syria come on the back of an already desperate situation facing Syria’s northwest, the UN Resident Coordinator for the Arab nation told UN News in an exclusive interview on Tuesday.
El- Mostafa Benlemlih, who is also the UN’s top humanitarian official in Syria, said the needs were huge in the affected area, which has seen more than a decade of war, a recent deadly cholera outbreak, and freezing winter temperatures.
Abdelmonem Makki of our UN News Arabic team asked him to describe the latest situation on the ground.
- Türkiye, Syria quake latest: full scale of disaster still unfolding: UN agencies
- Security Council condemns attack against MONUSCO chopper in DR Congo
- UN rights chief Türk calls for probe after scores killed in Somalia clashes
- Aid teams begin emergency response to Türkiye and Syria quake
- UN chief’s top priorities for 2023: peace and equality for poorer nations
- South Sudan: UNMISS strongly condemns deadly violence in Central Equatoria
- Ukraine: UN aid convoys deliver lifesaving relief to war-ravaged east
- WHO launches bid to tackle inequalities behind breast cancer threat
- Switzerland: UN rights panel hails asylum decision for Kurdish refugees
- Pope Francis in DR Congo: WFP highlights Africa’s biggest hunger crisis
- Space security talks in Geneva must be ‘bold and ambitious’: Disarmament chief
- UN aid teams step up relief for South Sudan’s displaced victims of violence
The UN climate agency, WMO, has brought together governments and scientists in Geneva to push for the creation of a global greenhouse gas measuring network, that will help countries to adapt to climate change and mitigate its impacts.
With more on the initiative, here’s Dr Oksana Tarasova, Senior Scientific Officer at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), speaking to UN News’s Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer.
- WMO calls for radical overhaul of greenhouse gas monitoring
- UNAIDS hails bid to end HIV in children in Africa
- Myanmar: humanitarians committed to staying and delivering
- Amid increase in dangerous Rohingya boat journeys, IOM boosts support
- Mali: rights experts call for probe into Wagner Group alleged crimes
- Bangladesh urged to tackle migrant recruitment ‘middlemen’ scourge
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has warned that every day in Mali, civilians are being attacked by extremists who are forcing them from their homes and in some cases following them to displacement camps, to target them once again.
This is what has happened recently to more than 3,700 Burkinabé refugees and Malians who fled N’Tillit village for Gao, the nearest city, located 120 kilometres away. With more on this alarming situation, here’s UNHCR Representative in Mali, Mohamed Touré, who’s been speaking to UN News’ Daniel Johnson.
- Tedros: COVID-19 still an international health threat
- WHO calls for more urgency to tackle neglected tropical diseases
- Libya: human rights abuses must be addressed, says UN probe
A report by the UN environment agency (UNEP) produced at the end of 2002 provides insights into the destruction the war in Ukraine has inflicted on the country’s urban and rural landscapes.
Nargiz Shekinskaya from UN News spoke to Andrea Hinwood, UNEP’s Chief Scientist, and began by asking her how much this preliminary study can tell us about the true environmental cost of the conflict.
- ‘Reasonable grounds’ Syrian air force behind 2018 chemical attack
- High Commissioner for Refugees calls for sustained support for Ukraine
- Myanmar has ‘profoundly regressed’ two years after coup: UN human rights chief
- Top envoy deeply alarmed over deaths of 9 Palestinians in West Bank raid
- UN chief demands prompt and impartial investigations into mounting Peru protester deaths
- UN report shows Myanmar opium cultivation up a third since military coup
- Latin America, Caribbean ‘must step up’ to tackle rising hunger: FAO
- Stand with Lake Chad region, urges UN deputy relief chief
- Odesa added to UNESCO's World Heritage List amid threats of destruction
- Victims of human trafficking more vulnerable due to wars: UNODC
- Afghan mission led by UN relief chief keeps pressure on Taliban
- Armed groups continue to displace refugees and civilians in Mali
Without $1.6 billion in funding for essential services and humanitarian aid to help Palestinian refugees this year, they could hit rock bottom, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency – or UNRWA – said on Tuesday.
In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini explains where the needs are most acute, and why the agency is an “indispensable” stabilizing force in the Middle East.
Disturbing new data released on Tuesday from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has highlighted concerns that most human trafficking victims who manage to escape, do so without the help of law enforcement.
The worry is that the COVID pandemic has forced governments to divert resources away from law enforcement activities that include tracking smuggling rings and locating victims.
The coronavirus is also believed to be responsible for a reported 11 per cent drop in the number of trafficking victims, but the devil is in the details, as UNODC’s Fabrizio Sarrica tells UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
Disturbing new data released on Tuesday from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has highlighted concerns that most human trafficking victims who manage to escape, do so without the help of law enforcement.
The worry is that the COVID pandemic has forced governments to divert resources away from law enforcement activities that include tracking smuggling rings and locating victims.
The coronavirus is also believed to be responsible for a reported 11 per cent drop in the number of trafficking victims, but the devil is in the details, as UNODC’s Fabrizio Sarrica tells UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
- UN rights chief Türk condemns killing of Eswatini human rights lawyer
- $2.54 billion needed to tackle health emergencies in 2023: WHO
- Yemen: UN migration agency unveils water network for conflict-hit Marib
Sexual exploitation and abuse of vulnerable communities have “absolutely no place” in the United Nations and more needs to be done to help victims raise the alarm.
That’s the message from the top UN official tasked with eradicating sexual and gender-based violence, Christian Saunders.
In an exclusive interview, Mr. Saunders explains how he wants all peacekeepers, humanitarian and development workers to understand, respect and implement the Organization’s zero-tolerance stance on sexual and gender-based abuse.
Victims’ needs must come first, but there are lots of other practical measures that can be implemented across UN operations to reduce the risk of abuse from happening at all, he told Daniel Johnson at UN News.
- Ukraine: UN aid convoy reaches battered Soledar
- China ‘making enormous progress’ on elderly COVID-19 vaccination: WHO
- Sustainable restoration project offers hope for Madagascar’s rural south
- UNESCO to honour Afghan girls and women on International Day of Education
- Northern Ireland: UK ‘immunity’ legislation could hamper victims’ rights
- Top rights experts to advise on Zambia lead poisoning court case
- Ukraine war: no chance for serious peace negotiations yet, say UN chief
- Middle East gripped by cycle of violence, Security Council hears
- Small Island Developing States accelerate action to tackle preventable disease threat: WHO
- Rise in deadly boat journeys reflects Rohingyas’ desperation: UNHCR
- US border policy expulsions in spotlight as families arrive in Mexico ‘distraught’
- As rains stop in Pakistan, millions of children fighting for survival: UNICEF
The prospects of a political agreement between the Sudanese military and civilian groups, including civil society organizations, has moved a step closer, with the launch of the final phase of the Framework Agreement in Sudan, a process brokered by the UN and partners.
May Yaacoub from UN News spoke to Volker Perthes, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to Sudan, about the progress so far, and the efforts being made to ensure that different sectors of society, including youth and women, are represented.
- Economic slowdown likely to force workers to accept lower quality jobs - ILO
- UN rights chief’s condemnation for Burkina Faso ‘broad daylight’ abductions
- Pakistan: rights experts urge action on coerced religious conversions, child marriage
- Greece urged to halt trial against human rights defenders who helped migrants
- WHO updates COVID isolation guidance
- Indonesia: President’s apology for past rights violations welcomed: OHCHR
- 2022 confirmed as one of warmest years on record: WMO
- Uzbekistan: WHO warns over poisoning risk from contaminated medicines
- ‘Soaring needs’ in Central African Republic: OCHA
- Uganda declares end of Ebola virus outbreak
- UN emergency relief fund disburses $6 million for Cameroon’s most vulnerable
- US border enforcement actions pose risk to fundamental rights, warns UN’s Türk
- COVID-19: China surge not a cause for concern for Europe ‘at this time’ says WHO
- Tragedy of child mortality can be fixed with better healthcare access: UN
- Iran: UN rights chief Türk warns against further ‘State-sanctioned killing’ of protesters
- UN chief ‘shocked’ by attack on Brazil’s Congress
- Guterres urges radical global finance shake-up to help Pakistan after deadly floods
- 1.5 million vulnerable Pakistan children suffering from acute malnutrition: UNICEF
The rapid 10 degree Celsius rise in temperature across large parts of Europe before Christmas was “brutal” but it could be the shape of things to come, the UN Meteorological Organization WMO, said on Friday.
In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Cyrille Honoré, head of the UN agency’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Public Services Branch, explains the science behind unusual weather patterns in Europe and elsewhere.
- Belarus: Trial of Nobel winner Ales Bialiatski ‘politically motivated’
- New US border measures ‘not in line with international standards’: UNHCR
- Myanmar amnesty still leaves thousands in detention, OHCHR warns
- Pakistan floods: 9 million more, risk being pushed into poverty
- Warm start to 2023 breaks records across Europe: WMO
- UN peacekeepers launch joint mission with DRC troops in North Kivu
- Ukraine: FAO and EU in $15.5 million bid to tackle food insecurity
- Reach into your hearts and release all prisoners arbitrarily detained: UN rights chief
- Syria, Palestine, DPRK on UN Security Council’s new year agenda
- COVID-19: coronavirus experts to meet at WHO and discuss China infections
- UN humanitarians urge extension of Syria cross-border aid access
- Guterres ‘deeply saddened’ over South Africa fuel tanker tragedy
- UN chief calls for ‘maximum restraint’ in Bolivia
- UN Rights chief appeals to save Myanmar refugees
- Ethiopia: Nationwide measles vaccination campaign
The son and former wife of Brazilian football legend Pelé, have been talking to UN News about the father and husband they knew, recalling his big but soft heart - and love for children from all walks of life across the country.
His son, Joshua Nascimento joined his mother, Assíria Lemos, in conversation with Monica Grayley, head of our Portuguese service, to talk about the legacy of the footballing great and three-time World Cup winner, who died in hospital in Sao Paulo, on Thursday.
- Peace needed now, ‘more than ever’: Guterres
- Top UN and civil society officials slam Afghan rulers’ NGO ban for women
- Violent clashes in South Sudan stretch humanitarian operations
- Afghanistan: UN rights chief urges end to female discrimination
- Indonesia’s ‘act of humanity’ for migrants adrift at sea
- Ukraine: UN helps with vulnerable communities
The holiday season is upon us, and UN News will be taking a break from producing the News in Brief until early in the New Year. Many thanks for supporting our daily audio service.
- Global cholera spike driven by climate change: WHO
- Afghanistan: top rights experts call on the Taliban to immediately halt executions
- Scottish Parliament urged to adopt gender recognition reform
- UN emergency relief chief ends Ukraine visit pledging solidarity
- Ukraine: Human Rights Council hears of summary executions
- Communities must be empowered to lead fight against HIV pandemic, says UNAIDS
- South Sudan: UN Human Rights chief appeals for civilian attacks to stop
- Clean water investment boost needed to prevent health crisis: Tedros
- UN migration agency IOM accelerates winter support in Ukraine
- Ukraine: HIV patients in war-hit Donbass need antivirals now: WHO
- Somalia: famine narrowly averted - for now, warn UN humanitarians
- Global trade growth turns negative after record year: UNCTAD
- Global calorie intake increased by 9 per cent in last year @FAO
- More than 11,000 children killed or injured in Yemen – UNICEF
- Haiti famine risk rises, warns UN emergency food agency
Hate speech has cost the lives of UN peacekeepers and civilians on the ground they are there to protect in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the head of MONUSCO, the UN mission there, has said, but new initiatives to counter the scourge are making a difference.
Bintou Keita, who’s also the UN Special Representative in DRC, told UN News MONUSCO was countering fake-news and intolerance online, and the Government is working effectively to crack down on hate.
She began by telling Alban Mendes de Leon about the growing instability in eastern DRC caused by the many armed groups operating in the area, including M23 and the ADF – noting that despite the fighting across three provinces, most of the country was relatively secure and peaceful.
- Tigray crisis: Assistance ramps up to refugees and displaced in northern Ethiopia - UNHCR
- ‘20 million jobs’ from nature-based solutions: ILO, UNEP
- Amid intractable challenges, solutions are ‘within sight’: UN Human Rights chief
- Countries held the line against malaria cases and deaths in 2021: WHO
- 3.6 million children not at school in Ethiopia, says Education Cannot Wait
- MPs ‘in danger’ across the world – but some good news too, IPU says in new report
- Ukraine people’s suffering must not become new normal, says UN rights chief
- Thousands displaced by escalating conflict in South Sudan’s Greater Upper Nile
- WHO debates 'pandemic treaty' to prevent future threats
- 80,000 people flee Somalia for Kenya’s Dadaab camps: UNHCR
- 394 million people in Europe require rehabilitation care: WHO
- Developing countries face ‘impossible trade-off’ on debt: UNCTAD chief
- UNICEF appeal to help children in crisis
- Sudan: Human rights chief welcomes new pact
- Development cooperation for human rights: UN experts
- Ukraine rights probe highlights destruction of energy and transportation grids
- Dramatic increase in Andaman Sea crossings: UNHCR
- Global food prices hold steady in November: FAO
Fifty-one point five billion dollars: that’s the staggering amount that UN relief chief Martin Griffiths has asked donors for, to help 230 million extremely vulnerable people in nearly 70 countries next year.
Although relief needs are growing, Mr. Griffiths is under no illusion that less than half of what he’s requested will be provided.
Which is why he’s convinced that the money should come from other sources, including non-earmarked development funding, and even a windfall tax on energy companies, as he explains to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
- Legacy of slavery ‘reverberates to this day’ says UN’s Guterres
- FAO appeals for $1.9 billion to reach 48 million people next year
- Africa’s advances in maternal, infant mortality face setbacks: WHO
- ILO data shows extent of cost-of-living crisis on poorest workers
- Guidelines unveiled for fair and ethical recruitment of migrants
- UN agencies fear having to cut food aid to most vulnerable in Chad
Forty years into the battle against AIDS, a new UN report spotlights fundamental inequalities as the key reason why the disease has yet to be eradicated.
Just ahead of World AIDS Day, César Núñez of UNAIDS, the UN agency leading the fight against the virus, told UN News that gender inequality is “a key driver” of the epidemic – along with other prevailing inequalities, especially those impacting vulnerable sex workers, prisoners, and intravenous drug users.
Mr. Núñez began his conversation with Liz Scaffidi by reflecting on the many years spent struggling to contain the disease worldwide.
The current review of the world’s primary biological weapons treaty taking place in Geneva needs to “break the deadlock” over a verification mechanism, the top diplomat presiding the talks has told UN News.
Even if that thorny issue remains unresolved, there are other proposals on the table that could make it harder to produce lab-made threats in future, Ambassador Leonardo Bencini explains to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
- Large parts of world drier than normal in 2021, warns WMO
- UNCTAD urges more shipping industry investment in sustainability
- Uganda’s refugee response ‘bursting at the seams’, warns UNHCR
- WHO recommends adopting ‘mpox’ for monkeypox
- ‘Critical opportunity’ to strengthen Biological Weapons Convention
- UN Women launches advice for protection of women rights defenders in migration settings
- Afghanistan: Taliban treatment of women may be crime against humanity
- Tigray: High hunger levels despite stepped-up aid – WFP
- Biological weapons discussions must reflect our changed world
- UN Human Rights Council backs call for probe into Iran crisis
- Nearly 40 million children ‘dangerously susceptible’ to growing measles threat
- Racial discrimination panel calls for Xinjiang rights violation probe
- Migrant deaths since 2014 top 50,000
- Haiti: children account for two in five cholera cases (UNICEF)
- Humanitarian sanction exemptions fall short
- Human rights chief Türk on Saudi Arabia executions
- Iran: 300 people killed in protests since 16 September – UN rights office
- UN chief urges action to stamp out violence against women
- Myanmar: Rights expert urges Korea to play ‘enhanced leadership role’
- WHO updates list of ‘priority pathogens’ including ‘Disease X’
- 2021 global intellectual property filings reached new records: WIPO
COP27 officially ended on Friday, but no agreement was reached when Conor and Laura recorded their last podcast in Sharm El-Sheikh.But, despite the gloomy predictions of no deal, the COP27 outcome document was finally agreed, early on Sunday morning.Back home in New York after a 25-hour journey, Conor goes solo, to pull together a final COP episode of The Lid Is On. You can find all the details on the outcome document here.Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- UNCTAD chief welcomes solution to unblock Russian fertiliser exports
- DRC: UNHCR calls for ban on forced returns of asylum seekers
- UN experts alarmed by harassment of climate activists at COP27
It’s officially the last day of COP27, and the UN podcast team have their bags packed, ready to return home.
However, today did not see an outcome document agreed, and negotiating positions are reportedly still far apart on many issues.
Laura and Conor report on the current state of play, and run through some of the main takeaways from this COP, before waving goodbye to Egypt.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
UN Secretary-General António Guterres is back in Sharm El-Sheikh, in an attempt to nudge countries towards resolving their differences on contentious climate issues, and reaching an acceptable outcome to COP27. He boiled down the topics to three main areas: loss and damage, the emissions gap, and climate finance.
Conor and Laura were on hand in Egypt to make sense of the negotiations, and the reaction from activists and representatives of some of the countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis.
- UN Secretary-General welcomes renewal of Black Sea Grain Initiative
- UN experts condemn Israeli attacks against Palestinian rights defender Issa Amro
- Sea temperatures in parts of Pacific, three times global average: WMO
- Sahel countries risk decades of armed conflict and displacement, warns UNHCR
- UNICEF initiative to enhance countries’ climate resilience and disaster preparedness
- Guterres calls on G20 delegates to embrace digital future for all
With just a couple of days to go at COP27, agreement on an agreed text – committing countries to move forward on measures to tackle the climate crisis – seems a long way off.
On today’s episode of The Lid Is On, Laura and Conor pick over some of the main areas of contention, and report on the highlights from Biodiversity Day.
Guests include the British singer Ellie Goulding, who is calling for improved coral reef protection, and the head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Inger Andersen, who is preparing the ground for a major UN biodiversity conference in December.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
Although several groundbreaking treatments for diabetes are in the pipeline, some patients still cannot get access to lifesaving insulin, which was discovered over a century ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports.
Diabetes is rising across the globe, in part due to population ageing but also obesity and other lifestyle factors. Currently, more than 420 million people are living with the disease, which impacts blood sugar levels, mainly in low and middle-income countries.
In connection with World Diabetes Day marked this week, on 14 November, Andriy Muchnik of UN News’s Russian Language Service spoke to Slim Sluma, head of WHO’s Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) Department.
The UN is leading calls for an end to fossil fuel use, but lobbying for gas has been a feature of this African COP, and there have been warnings that new gas and other fossil fuel projects are underway in many developing countries.
On Energy Day, there were stark reminders of the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also signs that the world is moving in the right direction when it comes to renewable energy.
Conor and Laura sniff out the gas story, and speak to energy experts about the prospects for a clean energy future, based on renewable energy sources.
- Ukrainian and Russian prisoners of war tortured and ill-treated: OHCHR
- Call for immediate release of peaceful protesters in Iran
- Climate extremes threaten food security in Latin America and the Caribbean: WFP
- Aid delivered to Kherson for first time since Russia invasion
- Rights chief urges more protection for Somali civilians
- African region tops world in undiagnosed diabetes: WHO
The second half of COP27 has begun and there’s uncertainty in the air regarding the progress of negotiations in the packed conference venue.
Monday saw a focus on two main themes: water and gender. UN officials were at COP to prepare the ground and raise awareness for a major conference on water, due to take place next year, whilst senior leaders pointed out the inadequate representation of women in the climate action space.
Conor and Laura dissect the main events on this busy day, and Mary Robinson, the first woman Irish President and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, explains why the dandelion should be the symbol for the advancement of women leaders.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
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Saturday is a working day at COP, allowing negotiators just one day to catch their breath, before the really hard work of hammering out some kind of outcome document begins on Monday.
The theme of the day is agriculture and adaptation. We hear from the UN agencies that focus on agriculture (FAO and IFAD), and Conor and Laura explore options for sustainable diets. Beans and bugs are on the menu!
Subscribe to The Lid Is On on all major podcast platforms!Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- UN hosts Black Sea Grain Initiative talks
- Mozambique: Funds dry up amidst looming hunger
- Winter hardships for displaced families – UN Refugee Agency
COPs are a marathon, not a sprint. During the first week, country negotiators set the parameters for the serious, and often exhausting, horse-trading that begins next week, when ministers fly in, with the aim of hammering out a consensus agreement by the end of the conference.
On today’s show, Laura and Conor speak to Selwin Hart, the UN Secretary-General’s special advisor on climate, and Rueanna Haynes, a climate negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), about the progress made so far; and Conor sits down with former supermodel turned environmental activist Lily Cole, on how to bring the huge environmental cost of the fashion industry under control.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- 600,000 doses of cholera vaccine arrive in Lebanon
- Syria: UN expert calls for lifting of long-lasting unilateral sanctions
- Committee on Enforced Disappearances to visit Iraq
On Thursday, day four of COP27, the 2022 “10 Insights in Climate Science Report" was released, and the leading scientists involved declared that the world cannot adapt its way out of the climate crisis: emissions must be cut as a matter of urgency.
Conor and Laura discuss the report, and speak to climate activists and leading scientists on today’s show: one thing the two groups have in common is a focus on greenwashing, and compensating developing countries for the damage the crisis is inflicting on their economies and peoples.
Within the Earth, Ketsa
- Global disparity in access to essential vaccines, says WHO report
- Saudi Arabia urged to allow access to human rights defender
- The UN cookbook that gives fish a voice
The world leaders who congregated in Sharm El Sheik for the first two days of COP27 have left and, whilst the climate negotiators get to work, the thematic days of the conference have begun.
Wednesday was finance day, with a host of side events around the pavilions discussing the often thorny issues surrounding climate finance. It was also the day that former US Vice-President Al Gore launched a project to provide accurate, granular emissions date, and revealed that, in many cases, emissions are much higher than previously reported.
Conor Lennon and Laura cover all this and more, on today’s COP27 podcast.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- Over 27 million children at risk as devastating record-setting floods
- UN rights chief calls for release of Egyptian blogger on hunger strike
- ‘Grave concerns’ after deadly attacks on IDP camps in Syria
It’s day two of COP27, and Laura and Conor are deciding on a good name for the podcast, and hunting for a good place to record the podcast! In the meantime, Laura followed the launch of the Net-Zero expert group’s report, which called out greenwashing, as well the other main events of the day.
Conor spoke to the UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths, and Brad Smith – President of Microsoft and an SDG Advocate – about the UN plan to ensure that everyone has access to reliable early warning of extreme weather events and climate shocks, which could save millions of lives.
Presiding over the UN Human Rights Council this year has felt like captaining a ship in the middle of a tsunami, Federico Villegas has told UN News in an interview in New York, with three world-shaping events threatening the very future of the Council itself.
The COVID pandemic, climate change, and the war in Ukraine, have tested the rights system to its limit, but the fact the Council could take action over war in the heart of Europe by an “overwhelming majority”, while the Security Council was gridlocked with Russia using its veto, shows its value.
Council President Villegas, spoke to Jerome Bernard of our UN News French service.
- World on a ‘highway to climate hell’ warns Guterres
- Early warnings action plan against extreme weather launched at COP27
- Witnesses give testimony to UN human rights investigators on Israel-Palestine
COP27, the UN climate conference, has begun in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Conor Lennon and Laura Quinoňes are at the high stakes event, for daily episodes of The Lid Is On, explaining the main issues of the day, and talking to some of the experts, activists and leaders.
Monday saw the Secretary-General give a forthright speech at the opening session, and it became clear that the vexed issue of “loss and damage” – how to compensate developing countries for the damage caused by the climate crisis – is likely to dominate discussion over the next two weeks.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
On Friday, Judge Leonardo Brant was elected to serve on the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principle judicial organ of the UN, which settles legal disputes between Member States.
The Brazilian jurist joins a bench of 15 eminent justices from around the world, who hear cases that can often take years to work their way through the system, with profound consequences for not only the countries involved, but entire regions.
UN News recently sat down with the Registrar, or head of the ICJ, Philippe Gautier, at UN Headquarters in New York, who told us without the Court, there would be “no trust” in the international legal order, and “terrible consequences” for international peace and security.
Philippe Coste of our French service, began by asking him what role the Court could potentially play in bringing Russia to account for its illegal invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, on 24 February.
- Safety and security of Yemeni civilians at risk without truce extension
- Concern after 5 arrested at women’s civil society press conference in Kabul
- Climate crisis in Pakistan highlights need for adaptation investment
We’re just a few days away from COP27, the UN Climate Conference, which is taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, from 07 November.
For this episode of The Lid Is On, Conor Lennon and Laura Quiñones invited Selwin Hart – the Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on Climate Action – into the studio to gauge the atmosphere before this high-stakes event.
You will also hear from Ilana Seid, Palau’s Ambassador to the UN, on the tense atmosphere during negotiations during last year’s climate COP in Glasgow, and Ian Fry, the first ever Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the context of climate change.
From Monday, Laura and Conor will present daily episodes of The Lid Is On from Sharm El-Sheikh, where they’ll bring you all the highlights from an event that aims to refocus leaders’ minds on the most pressing existential threat to mankind: the climate crisis. You can subscribe to the show on all major podcast platforms.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
Just as racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination should have no place in the world, “povertyism” – or negative attitudes and behaviour towards poor people - should also be illegal.
That’s the hope of Olivier De Schutter, the UN expert working to give greater prominence to the plight of the millions of people across the globe who are living in extreme poverty.
Together with the head of the UN’s labour agency, ILO, he also advocates for supporting low-income countries to provide social protection for their populations, such as unemployment benefits and old age pensions.
Mr. De Schutter, whose official title is Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, was at UN Headquarters recently to present his latest report to the General Assembly.
He told Florence Westergard from UN News’s French Language Unit why abandoning a “charity” approach to poverty is the only effective way to eradicate it.
- Iconic World Heritage glaciers to disappear by 2050: UNESCO
- Horn of Africa: Climate-related health crisis worsens
- Renewable energy will save lives and money: WHO
- Rising temperatures in Europe more than twice global average: WMO
- Human rights must be at the heart of climate action: Türk
- Free press is vital to democracy: UN chief
- UN rights chief urges de-escalation amid renewed DR Congo violence
- Public health risks increase across flood-ravaged Pakistan
- Special tribunal finds CAR militia chiefs guilty of crimes against humanity
- UN chief deeply saddened after tragedy in Seoul stampede
- Global labour market to deteriorate amid Ukraine war shocks: ILO
- Progress, but more needed by oil and gas giants to reduce methane emissions
Countries in the ‘Global South’ recognize Israel’s “settler colonialism” manifested through its illegal occupation of the West Bank and other Palestinian territory, said the UN's independent expert for human rights there, after delivering her first report to the General Assembly.
Francesca Albanese told UN News that many Western States on the other hand, are living behind a “wall of denial” over the issue, and essential rights are non-negotiable when it comes to forging a lasting peace.
She took up her post as Special Rapporteur for Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, earlier this year, and Shireen Yaseen of UN News's Arabic service, began by asking Ms. Albanese why she wanted to take on the Human Rights Council-appointed role.
Devastating flooding – the worst in a decade – has affected millions of people in west and central Africa, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, warned on Friday.
It’s appealed to all donors to step up their support for the most vulnerable, from Burkina Faso to Nigeria, where fields, farms and roads have been flooded.
With the latest, here’s UNHCR’s Olga Sarrado, speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
- Millions under threat of flooding across west, central Africa: UNHCR
- Russia urged to repeal - not expand - restrictive LGBTI laws
- Haiti: 96,000 displaced by gang violence, reports IOM
Nearly four decades on from the adoption of the UN Convention against Torture, there is evidence that it is still taking place in all regions of the world, even though it’s a recognized international crime.
On this week’s episode of The lid Is On, Conor Lennon met Claude Heller and Suzanne Jabour – the chairpersons of the UN Committee against Torture, and the Sub-committee on the Prevention of Torture – two independent human rights experts who attempt to convince countries to end the practice.
They explain that, in some countries and regions, torture is still seen thought to be a useful or acceptable part of interrogations, even though it has been shown to be ineffective.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- Iran: Protest crackdown warrants independent international probe
- Ecosystems more sensitive to nitrogen pollution than previously assumed
- UN panel urges States to address stigma against indigenous women
- UN human rights condemns Kyrgyzstan arrests
- WHO releases first list of health-threatening fungi
- Chad’s ‘lethal repression’ of protests in UN human rights spotlight
- Ukraine war: at least 6,374 civilians confirmed dead, reports UN rights office
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Malaysia in spotlight over refoulement of Myanmar’s most vulnerable
- UNICEF on growing heatwave threat to world’s children
- Better, smarter investment needed to protect drinking water worldwide
- Pace of Lebanon, Syria cholera outbreak, threatens whole Middle East
- Sudan support group calls for protester death investigation
- Chad: UN human rights office appeals for calm after protests
- Deadly floods affect 2.5 million in Nigeria: UNICEF
- Guterres salutes UN partnership with Viet Nam
Despite the global prohibition against torture, it still “permeates many aspects of our lives”, impacting police conduct, conflict and even climate response, the newly appointed UN expert monitoring violations worldwide has said.
Dr. Alice Jill Edwards, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, has presented her first interim report to the General Assembly in New York.
She is the seventh person to hold the mandate, and the first woman in nearly four decades.
UN News’s Heyi Zou spoke to Ms. Edwards, who began by explaining her “breakthrough” appointment.
Most people are familiar with the phenomenon of refugees, those forced to flee their country of origin, because of a well-founded fear of persecution or, in some places, because of armed conflict or natural disaster.
But there is another, equally vulnerable category of people, who don’t cross international boundaries, but find it necessary to relocate to a different region of their country.
On today’s episode of The Lid Is On, Conor Lennon met with Cecilia Jimenez-Damary – the outgoing UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons – on the link between conflict and the climate crisis, which is increasingly causing people to leave their homes in search of safety.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- Somalia: WFP delivering lifesaving aid to record number
- Peace and security worsening for women worldwide
- Children in Africa five times less likely to learn basics
Propaganda and disinformation are nothing new in war, but digital technology and social media are fuelling it like never before, creating an ‘extremely dangerous’ situation in Ukraine and other warzones, for vulnerable civilians exercising their rights.
That’s according to the independent UN human rights expert on freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan, who tells us the “information blackout” inside Russia itself has wiped out any news independent of the State, offering encouragement to other aggressors around the world.
The UN News Russian service’s Nargiz Shekinskaya began by asked Special Rapporteur Khan if she saw any common themes in how information is being abused in warzones across the world today.
- WHO urges governments to get people moving
- Guterres highlights partnership between UN and India
- UNICEF warns of child deaths amid Somalia drought
The Chair of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has found reasonable grounds to believe war crimes have been committed there, since Russia’s invasion of 24 February.
On Tuesday, the Commission presented its first detailed written findings to the UN General Assembly.
Chair Erik Møse says there’s an undeniable need for accountability for the crimes which have been committed - the vast majority by Russian forces, although there are several instances involving Ukrainian troops.
In an interview with UN News, he told Dina Neskorozhana that the contents are report are simply “the truth as we have observed it”.
- Women and children pay heaviest price in global health reversals
- Impact of Tigray strikes on civilians ‘utterly staggering’: Türk
- Iran: Killing and detention of children ‘deeply worrying’
- 1.2 billion living in acute multidimensional poverty
- UN rights system must focus on the people we serve, vows incoming chief
- West Africa hit hard by climate crisis as floods decimate lives
- ‘Catastrophic’ hunger for the first time ever in Haiti
- UN chief welcomes historic Israel-Lebanon maritime border agreement
- Move ‘from despair, to hope and action’ over food crisis: Guterres
It’s been thirty years since the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to create the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, on 17 October 1992.
Great advances have been made in reducing global poverty since then, particularly in China and India, but the period has also seen significant increases in inequality, between and within countries.
To get a better idea of what progress has been made in dealing with poverty worldwide, Conor Lennon met Aye Aye Win, the President of the International Committee for October 17, which promotes the spirit and aims of the International Day, and Stacy White, an activist who advocates for some of the poorest people in New York.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- Disaster risk: Half the world lacks effective early warning systems
- WFP calls for urgent action to reduce hunger
- Southeast Asia trade unions strive for fairer, more sustainable economy
- Finland violated #HumanRights of Finnish children held in Syria
- New WHO framework to boost people-centric TB services
- Venezuelan refugees struggle to rebuild life in Latin America and the Caribbean
- Ukraine: UN rights office condemnation for wave of missile attacks
- DR Congo sees deadly surge in intercommunal violence
- WMO report urges swifter action on transition to clean energy
- Ukraine: Horrifying and large scale strikes an ‘unacceptable escalation’ – UN chief
- Humanitarians cannot solve impact of deadly heatwaves alone, says relief chief in mitigation action call
- Rights experts call for immediate release of jailed Nobel winner in Belarus
- Human Rights Council appoints top rights investigator on Russia
- Aid relief reaches reclaimed towns and cities in Ukraine’s Kharkiv oblast
- Egypt: rights experts alarmed by civil society restrictions ahead of climate summit
- Global food prices drop in September but cereal prices remain high
It’s World Space Week, a UN event celebrating the contributions of space science and technology to the betterment of the human condition.
This year’s theme is space and sustainability, with a focus on how the technology can help us to better understand climate change.
On this week’s episode of The Lid Is On, Conor Lennon from UN News is joined by Niklas Hedman, the head of the UN Office on Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), and Maruška Strah, the head of World Space Week, to find out about the growing danger of space debris, and why artists need to join scientists on the moon, mars, and beyond.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- Horrific Thailand shooting prompts swift condemnation: UNICEF
- Suicide prevention campaign launches in Africa
- Ecuador: Torture prevention rights experts' concern mounts over prison crisis
- Torture and hate speech in DR Congo: OHCHR
- Somalia: grave humanitarian crisis affects more than seven million
- Ukraine: 50,000 computers provided to teachers in Google/UNESCO project
- Pakistan: Urgent response needed to stem health disaster – WHO
- ‘Nowhere is safe’ for Afghan women
- Angela Merkel wins UN refugee award – UNHCR
In this episode of the UN Conference on Trade and Development’s Weekly Tradecast, Sarah Toms talks to Richard Kozul-Wright, Director of UNCTAD’s Globalization and Development Strategies team, about their major report out this week. He argues that despite the looming recession due to the Ukraine war, COVID and other crises, the world can change course, if countries put the right policies in place.
- UN deputy chief urges climate support for developing nations
- Africa’s economic slowdown to affect millions: UNCTAD
- Halt deforestation, preserve biodiversity, fight climate change: FAO
Counter-terrorism is one of the lesser-known subjects covered by the UN, but attempts to improve international cooperation to combat terrorism have grown in recent years, particularly since the 2001 plane attacks against the US.
On today’s episode of The Lid Is On, Jennifer Bramlette from the UN Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED), and Adam Hadley from Tech Against Terrorism, a public-private partnership, join Conor Lennon to talk about the pervasive threat posed by the use of online technology by terror groups, and how Governments can fight back.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- UN Envoy ‘saddened’ at death of boy, 7, in occupied West Bank
- Little progress in combating systemic racism against people of African descent: OHCHR
- Condemnation for deadly attack on Afghan educational centre
Following his first visit to the Central African Republic, the newly-appointed Special Coordinator on Improving UN Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, or SEA, `underscored the need to “turn words into deeds” when it comes to zero tolerance of the scourge.
During his first field visit since taking office this month, Christian Saunders reiterated the UN’s firm stance against any and all such acts.
Where abuses do occur, perpetrators will be held accountable, he declared, including though criminal investigations that could lead to job loss or imprisonment, he told Pascal Isidore Boutene, Coordinator for one journalist network in Africa, fighting gender-based violence.
- Black Sea exports ramp up, bringing food to the most in need
- Africa: bid begins to stop the spread of invasive malaria-carrying mosquito
- Reprisals continue against people cooperating with the UN
- G20 Agriculture meeting urges action to stop spiralling food crisis
- Iran: rights experts’ stay of execution call for two women LGBT activists
- UN unveils new measures to support mental health at work
- UN rights office condemns violent response to hijab protests
- Russia: alarm at arrests of demonstrators against Ukraine war mobilisation
- DR Congo families return home from Zambia: UNHCR
- Said trial opens at International Criminal Court
- Torture 'systematically practised' in Venezuela, sanctioned at highest level
- South Sudan violence proliferating all over the country, experts warn
On this week’s episode of The Lid Is On, we look at how the issue of the climate emergency has been raised during the opening session of the latest General Assembly session (UNGA77).
This week, we've heard powerful speeches by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, star-studded events and gatherings at UN Headquarters, and hundreds of events taking place in New York, capitalizing on the global attention the city receives, when so many world leaders are in town.
As well as Mr. Guterres, the episode features the voices of former New York mayor and climate envoy Michael Bloomberg, and the new head of the UN Climate (UNFCCC), Simon Stiell.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- War crimes have been committed in Ukraine conflict, finds top rights probe
- Half of Sudan’s most vulnerable children could die without aid
- Canada braces for Hurricane Fiona after a week of lashing wind and rain in Caribbean
- Ethiopia: Civilians mired in intractable and deadly war, Human Rights Council hears
- Myanmar: If Security Council won't act, other nations should - rights expert
- UN announces $75 million target reached for salvage of Yemen tanker
- Every two seconds someone is dying of a preventable disease: WHO
- Famine looms in Somalia, but many ‘hunger hotspots’ are in deep trouble – FAO, WFP
- Ukraine crisis: UN refugee agency unveils digital refugee support hub
- Pakistan floods update: 6 month wait for floods to recede, agencies say
- OHCHR alarmed at Iranian woman’s death after hijab arrest
- Rare Ebola outbreak declared in Uganda – WHO
- Multilateral diplomacy in spotlight ahead of UNGA77
- Afghanistan: UN repeats call for Taliban to allow girls back to high school
- Top rights expert urges States to provide ‘humane’ reception facilities
This week we bring you a bonus episode of The Lid Is On: an exclusive interview with UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
On the eve of High-Level Week, when leaders from around the world gather at UN Headquarters in New York, Nargiz Shekinskaya from UN News sat down with Mr. Guterres to discuss some of the key international issues on his agenda, including the climate crisis, the need to urgently transform education, and how to tackle the worrying rise in xenophobia and hate speech.
World leaders will soon be flying into New York, for High-Level Week at the UN General Assembly.
On Friday, the Peace Bell at UN Headquarters was rung by the UN Secretary-General and President of the General Assembly, and hundreds of young students filled the Economic and Social Council chamber, to reflect on this year’s theme for International Day of Peace, End Racism, Build Peace.
Conor Lennon from UN News went along to the commemorations, and met some of the young people, activists and celebrities taking part. This episode also contains a lookahead to some of the key events taking place during the busiest week of the year for most people working at Headquarters.
- Ukraine: Rights office set to probe reports of 'mass graves'
- UN humanitarians decry 'largest funding gap ever'
- States still selling arms to Myanmar junta, warns UN report
- Inflation threatens everyone’s right to development, Human Rights Council hears
- Climate change ‘recovery’ fund call
- Sri Lanka’s health care system close to collapse, warns UN Population Fund
- Palestinian opportunities dwindle, while Israeli settlements grow: UNCTAD
- Syria: Return to larger-scale fighting may beckon, warn rights experts
- Ukraine’s people need continuing international solidarity: IOM chief
- Climate impacts ‘heading into uncharted territory’, warns UN chief
- Somalia: Famine expected 'within weeks' unless world acts
- Rights crisis in Nicaragua is worsening, Human Rights Council hears
- Ukraine’s suffering continues – acting UN rights chief
- 50 million people live in modern slavery
- 6.3 million people in Sri Lanka face food insecurity
- UN chief appeals for "massive" help for flooded Pakistan
- WFP in Pakistan scales up response for flood-hit communities
- Europe records its hottest summer in history, says WMO
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on education are severe and will only be fully understood in the years to come, says Costa Rica’s former education minister, Leonardo Garnier.
Mr. Garnier is the Special Advisor to the Transforming Education Summit, which takes place during the opening days of the 77th session of the General Assembly.
On this week’s episode of The Lid Is On, Conor Lennon sits down with the Special Advisor to find out why the UN is putting such a focus on education, amid so many competing global issues and crises, and how lessons can be learned from a previous education crisis, in the 1980s.
Music: Ketsa, Within the Earth
- UNDP: ‘Back-to-back’ crises halt human development progress
- IOM: Migration trend in Africa
- WHO: Meningitis in Africa
- ‘Cascading global crises’ threaten gender equality
- Pollution and climate change upsurge the risk of ‘climate penalty’
- Grave human rights violations in China
- “Unprecedented numbers” of children face the threat of famine in Somalia, warns UNICEF
- UNHCR rushes aid by air and road following Pakistan floods
- Air pollution knows no borders, so nations must work together: UN Secretary-General
- Myanmar: OHCHR denounces arrest of former UK ambassador
- Food prices dip for fifth month in a row in August – FAO
- Pakistan floods: UNICEF warns many more children may die
Next Wednesday the UN marks the third International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies. However, the skies are far from clear of air pollution. Only a month ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that practically all the air we breathe is polluted, and that it’s killing around seven million people every year.
Ahead of the International Day, Conor Lennon from UN News spoke to Martina Otto and Nathan Borgford-Parnell from the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, which is hosted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
They discussed the evolving science surrounding the issue, the extent to which air pollution is improving – if at all – and why international collaboration is essential, if the number of annual deaths is to be addressed.
Music: Ketsa, Within the Earth
- Relief chief Martin Griffiths heads to Somalia as famine looms
- Emergency level alert for Afghans in all 34 provinces: IOM
- Yemen: Taiz attacks threatens new suffering, warns UN envoy
Amid catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, UN humanitarians have raced to offer support to the Government, in the crucial early days of the relief effort.
Beyond the immediate challenge of reaching all those stranded by the high waters, fears remain about next season’s harvest, if the waters do not recede in time for planting.
With more, here’s the UN World Food Programme’s (WFP) Country Director for Pakistan, Chris Kaye, who’s been talking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
- Major health risks unfolding amid floods in Pakistan: WHO
- Lack of basic hygiene found in 1 in 2 health centres, says UN health agency
- Top rights panel at UN finds Spain in violation of separatists’ political rights
- At least $160 million needed to help millions affected by ‘monsoon on steroids’
- Yemen: OCHA calls for support to prevent massive spill from tanker
- Bachelet calls on Israel to end visa veto for staff in Palestine
- Ukraine: UN atomic energy experts head to stricken nuclear power station
- Yemen to benefit from Black Sea food exports
- Ethiopia: Outrage over civilian casualties at Tigray playground
- Ukraine: Top UN aid official appeals for access across contact line
- WMO: Greater Horn of Africa drought forecast to continue for fifth year
- 1 in 2 children in Sri Lanka in need of emergency assistance, warns UNICEF
On this week’s Lid Is On, Conor Lennon speaks to two experts on racism against people of African Descent, on the insidious nature of everyday racism, the importance of reparations, and why an acceptance that the wealth of developed countries is built on the back of oppressed, Black people, is liberating for people of all races.
Dominique Day is a human rights lawyer, and a member of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. Verene Shepherd is a social historian, and the chairperson of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
This episode was recorded ahead of International Day for People of African Descent, which is marked on 31 August, with support from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Music: Ketsa, Within the Earth
- Tigray: massive fuel theft from WFP threatens aid relief
- Myanmar: Military escalating violence bloodshed says rights chief Bachelet
- Cluster munition attacks have killed or injured 689 civilians in Ukraine - new report
- Six months into Ukraine war, more than 5,600 civilians confirmed killed
- Myanmar: civil society and trades unions face existential threat, says ILO
- Nigeria: Monkeypox stigma ‘discouraging people from seeking care’ – UNAIDS
It has been five years since the bloody crackdown in Myanmar that forced nearly one million members of the minority Rohingya community to seek shelter in neighbouring Bangladesh, joining scores of others who had fled previous waves of violence.
Nicholas Koumjian heads the International Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), established by the UN Human Rights Council to document crimes committed in the country, including in the wake of the February 2021 military coup.
During a recent visit to UN Headquarters, Mr. Koumjian spoke to Dianne Penn about the Mechanism’s work, its outreach to Burmese citizens, and the challenges facing its staff.
As a veteran prosecutor of international crimes – from Cambodia to Sierra Leone, to the former Yugoslavia and Timor-Leste – Mr. Koumjian is adamant that one day, justice will prevail in Myanmar.
- Ukraine soldier trials in Mariupol may amount to war crime: OHCHR
- DR Congo declares Ebola resurgence in restive North Kivu: WHO
- Myanmar: 5 years since Rohingya mass exodus, UNHCR urges solutions
- War in Ukraine has left nearly 1,000 children killed or injured
- UN chief offers solidarity with Somalia after new terror attack
- Iranian authorities urged to act to protect victims of religious persecution
When a massive earthquake hit remote communities in Afghanistan’s Khost and Paktika provinces on 21 June, UN Children’s Fund staffer Veronica Houser knew it was going to be a tough assignment. So many families had been buried in rubble and mud while they slept. To highlight the work of aid workers for this year’s World Humanitarian Day, here’s her first-hand account of the relief effort.
Almost daily, we hear news about a global slowdown and how the war in Ukraine is driving up prices at a pace not seen in decades.
According to the UN trade and development agency, UNCTAD, other forces are also fueling inflation, including supply disruptions triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and severe weather that has decimated harvests.
In its latest podcast, the Geneva-based agency talks about inflation with economist Jeronim Capaldo of UNCTAD’s globalization and development strategies division.
Mr. Capaldo says developing countries, where people already spend much of their money on the basic necessities of life, are the ones who suffer most as prices soar.
Uganda’s status as a refuge has seen large numbers escaping conflict in neighbouring and nearby countries, in particular South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and living in relative safety.
Whilst many are living in refugee camps administered by the UN in the north of the country, such as the Bidi Bidi settlement, others have made their way to the capital, Kampala, and some are making an impact on Uganda’s alternative music scene.
Conor Lennon from UN News visited the headquarters of the Nyege Nyege record label in Kampala, which hosts a range of strikingly original artists from several countries, many of whom live on-site and collaborate with other musicians, whilst they develop their style, working towards critical and financial success.
Music: Ketsa, Within the Earth
- $5 million allocated to Haiti amidst surging gang violence
- World Humanitarian Day commemorated
- WHO pushes Ebola treatments to boost survival
- In Ukraine, UN Chief reflects on importance of civil society
- Afghanistan: deadly attack in Kabul Mosque
- Remembering Kofi Annan
- First UN chartered ship carrying wheat for Africa leaves Ukraine
- UN envoy travels to Myanmar for the first time
- New UN climate chief appointed
- One year since Taliban takeover women and children suffer
- UN chartered ship carrying wheat to Ethiopia leaves Ukraine
- Fifth attempt to pass UN Oceans Treaty begins in New York
Okubani Market is located in northern Uganda’s Yumbe District, within the Bidibidi refugee settlement which, during the South Sudan civil war, was the largest settlement of its kind in the world.
The market is a vital economic hub for refugees from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the host community, which suffered years of insecurity at the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army.
For the last of our mini-series recorded in northern Uganda, Conor Lennon from UN News visited Okubani, to see how the support of the local government and the UN is helping those living in the region to improve their livelihoods.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- Ukraine: first UN aid ship due to dock and load up with grain
- Attacks on Ukraine health care continue, warns WHO
- Funding gap for UN’s humanitarian operations is biggest ever, warns OCHA
- Guterres warning on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant
- Young workers have been hit hardest by COVID fallout, says UN labour agency
- UN rights chief Bachelet alarmed at number of Palestinian children killed in new escalation
After two years of incredible gains, the prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have plunged in recent months; and more turbulence is likely, according to the UN trade and development agency, UNCTAD.
In its latest podcast, the Geneva-based agency is talking about cryptocurrencies with economist Marina Zucker of UNCTAD’s debt and development finance branch.
Are cryptocurrencies here to stay? Is it time for governments to regulate them? Tune in to hear Ms. Zucker spell out the risks and share her ideas about solutions.
- UN chief expresses solidarity with Republic of Korea after deadly floods
- Ukraine: UN ups aid appeal to cater for 2 million more in need of aid
- 10,000 Da’esh fighters estimated to operate on Syria-Iraq border
While the economic crisis has impacted numerous sectors across Sri Lanka, nutrition security has been particularly affected.
According to recent UN data, 6.3 million people have been rendered food insecure, meaning that they cannot access a nutritious diet on a daily basis.
The World Food Programme (WFP) in the country is working towards solutions to the current food crisis.
UN News’s Anshu Sharma spoke to WFP’s Country Director, Abdur Rahim Siddiqui, and started by asking him about the economic impacts on people’s lives.
- July 2022 one of three warmest on record, WMO confirms
- UNITAID calls for more investment to scale up production of breathing devices for premature babies born in Ukraine
- WHO warns against misguided attacks on monkeys in Brazil, following spread of the Monkeypox virus
- Any attack on a nuclear plant is 'suicidal', warns UN chief
- Suitable workers conditions need during extreme heat in Iraq, ILO warns
- Amplify indigenous women’s voices – Guterres
- Ukraine: three more cargo ships loaded with grain leave port
- Global food prices fell sharply in July, says FAO
- Yemen: Houthis urged to reopen Taiz road to avert humanitarian emergency
Hundreds of millions of people do not have access to electricity, seriously hampering their ability to improve their development prospects.
In Arua, northern Uganda, where employment rates are low and poverty is high, the UN is supporting a company that is providing pay-as-you-go solar energy services, putting the benefits of electricity in reach of villagers who would otherwise never be able to afford it.
In this, the third episode in our mini-series recorded in Uganda, Conor Lennon from UN News heads to Arua to see the impact that solar power is having on people’s lives.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
- UN chief slams ‘immoral’ profiteering amid global energy crisis
- Healthy life expectancy in Africa grows by nearly 10 years
- Ukraine: Guterres calls for fact-finding mission after deadly prison attack
- Ukraine: Black Sea grain shipment spurs hope of further ports opening
- Iraq: Eight years after Yazidi slaughter, justice and security still lacking
- UN human rights office spotlights increasing attacks on Cambodia’s media
Years of violent insecurity in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo have left at least 5.6 million people there displaced.
There’s not enough funding to help all those in need, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has warned, adding that some have been forced to sleep out in the open, leaving them vulnerable to sexual abuse, which is widespread throughout the area.
In an interview with UN News’ Daniel Johnson, the agency’s Head of External Relations, Dominique Hyde, described the desperate scenes she saw for herself in Ituri province last week.
- Vital programmes in DR Congo cut due to funding shortfall: UNHCR
- Horn of Africa’s ‘catastrophic’ food insecurity -- WHO
- Harassment of rights defenders in West Bank must end: UN experts
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- UN chief welcomes 1st ship carrying #Ukraine grain
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- Conference to review #NPT now underway
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- Support breastfeeding in emergency situations: @UNICEF and @WHO
In Lumonga village, situated in a remote part of the West Nile region of northern Uganda, smallholder farmers have traditionally been cut off from the banking system, and been forced to rely on small savings and loans from their community to survive hard times.
For the second episode in our Lid Is On mini-series recorded in northern Uganda, Conor Lennon from UN News went to Lumonga village, to see how digital technology is helping the farmers to get connected, and have a better chance of getting the finance they need to buy basic equipment, grow more crops, and sell more produce.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
This past week in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, violent protesters have targeted the UN peacekeeping Mission there, MONUSCO.
Three UN ‘blue helmets’ have been killed, along with demonstrators, who have called on the force to do more to protect communities from the many armed groups that roam the mineral-rich east of the vast country.
It’s a deeply worrying situation, but as MONUSCO number two, Khassim Diagne explains to UN News’s Daniel Johnson, every effort is being made to restore calm and investigate the killings.
- Injectable HIV drug deal a possible game-changer
- 10 years since Za’atari camp opened, Syrian refugees face uncertain future
- Lebanon: refugees targeted in street violence
The UN response to HIV/AIDS is under threat from a host of international crises, from COVID to the war in Ukraine, and the ensuing financial challenges faced by countries across the world.
Mandeep Dhaliwal is the director of HIV and health at the UN Development Programme (UNDP). She spoke to Conor Lennon from UN News ahead of the 2022 International AIDS Conference.
She warned that the UN, and other organizations, are losing ground in the fight against the disease.
A Gambian woman who was tricked into being trafficked to Kuwait in 2015 has shared her story of abuse and subsequent activism, in the hope others will be spared the “hell” she went through.
Fatou Jagne studied pharmacy at university and was working at the biggest hospital in The Gambia. However, the salary was low, so a friend’s cousin offered to help her find a job in Kuwait.
When Fatou arrived at the airport, her documents were seized and she was immediately sold into domestic slavery.
She ended up working for more than 15 different families, toiling for long hours with little rest. She said life was “hell” because she was beaten, mistreated, and never paid.
Bessie Du spoke to the young activist ahead of Saturday’s World Day Against Trafficking in Persons to learn more about her traumatic experience, and how it spurred her advocacy.
- UN chief welcomes opening of Black Sea control centre for Ukraine exports
- Philippines Luzon earthquake: Aid teams ‘ready to reach’ victims
- Top rights expert spotlights ‘double standard’ towards Ukraine refugees in Poland, Belarus
- UN chief condemns attack on MONUSCO blue helmets, as possible ‘war crime’
- Türkiye risks backtracking on women’s rights, says top rights expert
- FAO warns that 90% of Earth’s topsoil will be at risk by 2050
- Monkeypox 'can be stopped' WHO declares
- Ukraine: Humanitarian aid still not reaching non-Government areas
- UN mission in DRC MONUSCO denounces attack on base in Goma
- UN condemns execution of 4 democracy activists in Myanmar
- Repatriation call following death of Australian boy in Syria detention camp
- Haiti: UN humanitarians deliver aid to people directly hit by gang violence
Northern Uganda has higher poverty and less employment that the south of the country, which is why the UN is backing projects aimed at boosting the regional economy.
In “Developing northern Uganda”, a special four-part mini-series, we go to Yumbe and Arua districts, to see how the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is helping to create sustainable employment prospects for local people.
In this episode, Conor Lennon from UN News visits Honey Pride, a social enterprise supported by UNCDF, and meets one of the hundreds of beekeepers whose lives have been improved since the business began.
Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa
The UN General Assembly is due to vote in a few days’ time on a resolution that recognises a universal Human Right to a Healthy Environment.
The draft text is based on the landmark resolution adopted last year by the Human Rights Council and calls upon States and international organizations to adopt policies that scale up efforts to ensure a clean, healthy and sustainable environment for all.
Laura Quinones spoke to UN Special Rapporteur, David Boyd, about why it’s important for nations to recognise this right and what is at stake for humanity.
She began by asking what impact last year’s Human Rights Council adoption has had so far.
- Latin America and the Caribbean: Far-reaching climate repercussions
- Hunger rising across East Africa
- At least 14 children killed and injured during attack in Syria
- Extend and expand 'transformational' truce in Yemen
- Monkeypox cases surpass 14,000: WHO
- Historic funding for malaria jab rollout in Africa
In this latest episode of The Weekly Tradecast from UN trade and development body UNCTAD, Jan Hoffman, head of trade logistics, explains how the Ukraine war has compounded severe strains on global supply chains, from the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 80% of goods move by sea. Space on ships is tight and the cost to transport a container has soared. Now, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prices are rising for almost everything we consume.
- Improve health coverage for a world ‘increasingly in motion’
- ‘Beyond time’ for Afghans to rebuild their lives
- Highlighting development in Africa
- 'Moment for Nature' debate addresses environmental threats
- Voluntary repatriation of Congolese refugees from Angola resumes
- $15 million allocated to fight hunger in Central African Republic
- Nelson Mandela honoured as ‘mentor to generations’
- Ghana confirms first outbreak of Marburg virus disease
- Half the world in climate crisis ‘danger zone’ says Guterres
While Giovanni Pintor was right in the middle of what turned out to be a devastating car accident, the only thing on his mind was what he would tell his mother.
But that turned out to be the least of his worries after his two brothers were killed when their car lost control on a notoriously deadly bend in his native Sardinia, in Italy.
Today, the 25-year-old youth activist and UN staff member uses a creative approach that involves hip-hop concerts and street basketball tournaments to show how young people can be agents for change.
He talks to UN News’ Daniel Johnson about his road safety association Adesso Basta, which translates to “that’s enough”.
- Iran: UN expert welcomes life verdict for former prison official involved in mass executions
- Vaccine backsliding left 25 million kids at risk in 2021
- Tunisia: Presidential decrees ‘sap’ judicial independence, says UN rights expert
In the second episode of their Weekly Tradecast, UNCTAD talks to Paul Akiwumi, Director of the Africa, Least Developed Countries and Special Programme division. Soaring food and energy prices are hitting especially hard as the region struggles with the impact of the pandemic and climate change.
The continent of 1.4 billion people relies heavily on grain and other essentials from Ukraine and Russia – exposing them to shortages and crippling costs that imperil development. Mr. Akiwumi, who led the production of the UN trade and development body’s latest Economic Development in Africa Report, says that to cope with this crisis and insulate itself for the future, Africa must rethink how it diversifies its economies to attract investment and narrow huge income gaps.
In this week’s podcast, aboriginal art custodians from the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia come all the way to Geneva to tell us they’re facing cultural genocide, while in Haiti, gang violence is creating a serious problem for UN relief teams. Across Africa, we find out why there’s serious concern about the spread of animal-to-human disease, and in the Philippines, a court ruling on Press freedom hero and Nobel winner, Maria Ressa, has sparked alarm from one leading human rights expert.
- Philippines: rights expert speaks out against court decision against Maria Ressa
- Africa sees 63% jump in zoonotic diseases from animals to people in last decade
- Climate financing could play key role in Africa’s economic diversification: UNCTAD
- UN food agency chief warns against trade barriers ahead of talks on Ukraine Black Sea cereals crisis
- Sri Lanka: appeal for calm from UN rights office
- Russia: Top rights experts condemn civil society shutdown
- Multi-country hepatitis outbreak in children widens: WHO
- Haiti gang violence threatens over a million food insecure: WFP
- Security Council approves new cross-border aid deal for 6 months
- Big pharma needs to boost efforts to beat drug-resistant bugs: WHO
- World population to reach 8 billion
- Children caught in conflict
- UN chief calls for dialogue in Sri Lanka
- Ukraine: ‘Please, let us in,’ WHO issues plea to reach sick and injured
- UN rights office appeals to Sri Lanka for calm during planned protest
- Afghanistan: UN Human Rights Council urges Taliban to reverse restrictions on girls and women
This week’s top stories include action at the Human Rights Council on Eritrea, Myanmar and a push for all countries to take early action to stop violence against women and girls. In Ukraine, UN Refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi has been offering support to communities devastated by the Russian invasion, and we’ll also hear the latest hard-hitting findings of the UN Fact-Finding Mission in Libya.
- Ukraine is struggling now but winter will be even worse, Grandi warns
- 84 million children to miss out on schooling by 2030: UNESCO
- Human Rights Council enters resolutions finale
In the first episode of UNCTAD’s Weekly Tradecast, the organization’s Secretary-General, Rebeca Grynspan, talks about the global cost-of-living crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine.
What can be done to support vulnerable countries and people who will suffer the most from rising food, energy and fertilizer prices?
More than four months since the start of the war, people globally are facing a cost-of-living crisis not seen in more than a generation – in a world already grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.
The United Nations Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance warned in a recent report that an estimated 1.6 billion people in 94 countries are exposed to at least one dimension of the crisis, which threatens to unleash an unprecedented wave of global hunger and destitution.
- UN condemnation over latest MINUSMA deaths following attack in Mali
- WHO chief urges Pfizer to make COVID oral antiviral ‘available quickly’
- Brazil killings, evidence that police reforms are needed: UN experts
- Ukraine reconstruction must start now, says UN chief
- $68.4 million appeal launched to help Central African Republic: WFP
- EU States urged to end child detention
- New Libya mass graves under human rights spotlight
- Environment laws crucial to combat irresponsible business activity
- Carribean at 'ground zero' for climate change: UN chief
Children and women worldwide, are the most likely to die in road crashes. But Nneka Henry says that doesn’t make road safety only an issue for youth or gender - it’s a development challenge for all of society.
Ms. Henry is the Head of the United Nations Road Safety Fund. UN HOPE Fellow, Diedra Sealey, spoke with her just ahead of the first ever High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on Improving Global Road Safety, taking place in New York this week.
- Women suicide alert in Afghanistan
- Lebanon’s deepening crisis is affecting ‘everyone, everywhere', warns top UN official
- After Roe v Wade, rights experts urge US to sign women's Convention
Closing the UN Ocean Conference on Friday, Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, Miguel de Serpa Soares, spelled out the challenges that still need to be addressed to ensure lasting protection and the restoration of our Ocean.
Looking back on the week, Mr. Soares sat down with UN News’s Eleuterio Guevane. He started by laying out what the conference had achieved.
It’s been an intense week of face-to-face meetings in Geneva - just like the good old days, before COVID…Among the top stories we’ve been covering, there’s been grim but important news from Ethiopia and Syria in the Human Rights Council, a moving update from UN humanitarians in Ukraine, and significant progress towards holding elections in Libya - although they’re still proving elusive. In Afghanistan, communities are still struggling to recover, a week after last week’s deadly earthquake – and we’ll be hearing from a UN Children’s Fund worker who’s been to see the human impact for herself.
- Ethiopia human rights record under spotlight
- Ukraine needs still massive, aid access still blocke
- Monkeypox diagnostics boost in Africa
- Libya talks: progress, but elections deal yet to be clinched
Each of us can do three things to help save our oceans: vote, promote solutions to existing problems such as pollution, and try to buy more sustainably.
Those are the key takeaways from Emanuel Gonçalves, marine ecologist, conservationist and chief scientist of the Oceano Azul Foundation, who’s come to take part in the UN Ocean Conference, in Lisbon.
UN News’s Ana Carmo started by asking him about the importance of including the high seas in marine protection.