News

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has warned that poverty is surging and the middle class in Myanmar is “disappearing” amidst worsening insecurity and conflict. 

People in Gaza are struggling to survive, said the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, who was part of a team carrying out an assessment mission on Wednesday in the southern city of Khan Younis following the Israeli military withdrawal last week.

Russian attacks on cities and towns across Ukraine, including intense and systematic targeting of the energy infrastructure, “have become a daily destructive pattern” in recent weeks, a senior UN official told the Security Council on Thursday. 

UN-coordinated food convoys are three times more likely to be denied access to north Gaza than other aid convoys, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, reported on Tuesday. 

At least 38 migrants - including women and children – died when their overcrowded boat capsized off the coast of Djibouti, the UN migration agency (IOM) reported on Tuesday.

Financing for sustainable development is at a crossroads and without urgent investment, global efforts to achieve a more just and equitable world by 2030 will fail, the UN deputy chief warned on Tuesday. 

UN humanitarians on Monday made clear the emergency response in Haiti’s capital continues despite ongoing insecurity caused by months of gang-led violence there. 

The UN’s overriding mission in Gaza to ‘flood the place with food’ and avert famine, has moved forward this week thanks to Israel’s public pledge to increase the flow of aid, despite signs on Sunday that the feared invasion of Rafah is imminent.

Aid officials called on the Security Council on Friday to step in to stop the carnage in Gaza as the war enters its sixth month amid a man-made famine, Israel’s constant bombardment, targeted killings of aid workers and Palestinians civilians and “zero accountability” for the perpetrators.

Two aid convoys carrying lifesaving supplies have reached Sudan’s Darfurs for the first time in months, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday, as humanitarians try to avert a “hunger catastrophe”, after nearly a year of heavy fighting.

Israel must make meaningful changes in the way it is fighting in Gaza to avoid civilian casualties while also undergoing “a true paradigm shift” in lifesaving aid delivery, the UN chief said on Friday. 

The UN’s top human rights body adopted a resolution on Friday condemning the alleged “use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in Gaza”, while also calling for an arms embargo on Israel. 

The ongoing escalation of the conflict in Myanmar, more than three years after the military takeover, is severely affecting people across the country, with spillover effects in the region, two senior UN officials told the Security Council on Thursday. 

A $12 million contribution from a UN emergency humanitarian fund will support people impacted by the violence that broke out in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, in March. 

UN officials launched assessment visits to Gaza and its agencies will resume night-time aid deliveries on Thursday after a 48-hour pause following Israeli forces killing seven World Central Kitchen relief workers in a convoy delivering food in the enclave, where intense Israeli bombardment and ground operations continue.

As hostilities continue in Gaza, the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, urged donors not to forget about Palestinians affected by the ongoing war in Syria. 

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday expressed dismay over the decision by Uganda’s Constitutional Court to uphold the country’s discriminatory Anti-Homosexuality Act, which has already led to hundreds of rights violations.

UN humanitarians in Gaza have suspended operations at night for at least 48 hours in response to the killing of seven aid workers from the NGO World Central Kitchen on Tuesay. 

The killing of seven humanitarians by an Israeli strike in Gaza on Tuesday – 196 overall since hostilities began last October – is “an inevitable result” of the way the war is being fought, said the UN chief.

The destruction of Gaza’s largest hospital following a two-week siege by the Israeli military has “ripped the heart out of healthcare” in the enclave, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday, amid renewed concerns about the dangers of delivering aid after seven workers from NGO World Central Kitchen were reportedly killed in an airstrike.

Israeli forces are blocking aid deliveries into famine-stricken northern Gaza as the five-month-long war grinds on despite recent strong demands from the top UN court and the Security Council for unfettered access for lifesaving food shipments into the enclave and for a temporary ceasefire and the return of all hostages taken in October.

Humanitarians continue to support Haitians affected by rampant gang violence in the capital, Port-au-Prince, while an appeal for the country remains underfunded, the UN said on Monday.  

When the landfill in Osaki, in the southwest of Japan, reached capacity, an incinerator was the logical next step. Instead, the town decided to get serious about recycling. Ahead of International Zero Waste day, marked on 30 March, Kasumi Fujita, a town councillor committed to Osaki’s low waste policies, tells UN News what inspired her.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and partners on Thursday appealed for $1.4 billion this year to support more than two million South Sudanese refugees in five African countries and local communities hosting them. 

Gaza’s health system is ‘barely surviving’ after more than five months of Israeli bombardment, the head of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

Immediate and bold action is required to tackle the “cataclysmic” situation in Haiti, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said in a report issued on Thursday. 

A United States resolution to extend the mandate of an expert panel which monitors sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was vetoed by Russia in the Security Council on Thursday.

The intense Israeli bombardment of Gaza in response to Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel has included “direct hits” on 212 schools in the enclave, UN-partnered analysis indicated on Wednesday.

While a third of humanity faces food insecurity, an equivalent of one billion meals go to waste every day, a new report by the UN environment agency (UNEP) revealed on Wednesday. One fifth of food is thrown away.

“What you do makes me cry at night,” 13-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki told the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil in a message that resonates today as the world grapples with climate change.