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The UN Secretary-General said on Monday it was “essential to quickly restore the rule of law” in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray, where Government forces and those loyal to the ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) have been engaged in fighting for more than a month.

The United Nations is commemorating the International Civil Aviation Day on Monday, highlighting the importance of the sector in lifting the world to recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. 

The UN’s humanitarian coordination office, said on Friday that it was doing its utmost to secure aid access to Ethiopia’s Tigray region, after a deal was struck to reach displaced civilians, following weeks of fighting between federal and regional forces.

The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has graduated from the status of least developed countries (LDC), becoming the sixth ever country to achieve the milestone, since the category was created in 1971. 

UN experts called on the Security Council on Thursday, along with the international community at large, to put an end to the “surreal and absurd dimension” of human rights violations engulfing war-torn Yemen, where abuses continue unchecked.    

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Thursday, launched a $6.4 billion emergency funding appeal to reach more than 190 million children affected by humanitarian crises amidst the coronavirus pandemic. 

More than 32 million of the world’s poorest people face being pulled back into extreme poverty because of COVID-19, leading UN economists said on Thursday, highlighting data showing that the pandemic is likely to cause the worst economic crisis in decades among least developed countries (LDCs). 

An additional 207 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty by severe long term impact of the coronavirus pandemic – bringing the total number to more than 1 billion – by 2030, a new study from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has found. 

The UN on Friday announced that agreement has been reached with the Ethiopian Government to allow “unimpeded, sustained and secure access” for humanitarian supplies to reach those in need across areas now under its control in Tigray.

The Handmaid’s Tale, an award-winning television series, may be about a fictional “alternative reality”, but the show’s creators have gone to great lengths to ensure that references to themes such as climate change, human rights abuses, and refugees, are as real and accurate as possible, by collaborating closely with UN experts.

Against the “grim background” of tragic explosions that destroyed much of central Beirut in early August, the UN chief on Wednesday offered a new multi-agency plan to help the Lebanese people move forward, following months of political gridlock.  

Global pressure on wages from COVID-19 will not stop with the arrival of a vaccine, the head of the International Labour Organization (ILO) warned on Wednesday, coinciding with a major report showing how the pandemic had slowed or reversed a trend of rising wages across the world, hitting women workers and the low-paid hardest.  

The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has described the fight against the climate crisis as the top priority for the 21st Century, in a passionate, uncompromising speech delivered on Wednesday at Columbia University in New York.

Global pressure on wages from COVID-19 will not stop with the arrival of a vaccine, the head of the International Labour Organization (ILO) warned on Wednesday, coinciding with a major report showing how the pandemic had slowed or reversed a trend of rising wages across the world, hitting women workers and the low-paid hardest.

Countries must decrease production of fossil fuels by 6 per cent per year, between 2020 and 2030, if the world is to avert "catastrophic” global temperature rise, a new UN-backed report has found. 

Almost a quarter of a million people have died in Yemen’s war, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on its website on Tuesday, confirming the huge toll from a conflict that has ravaged Yemen’s economy and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The Global Compact for Migration, adopted by countries in 2018 as a comprehensive framework for cooperation on international migration, is “taking root in promising ways”, the UN Secretary General said on Tuesday. 

While COVID-19 has wiped out important development gains in mere months, with extreme poverty rising for the first time in decades, the pandemic could spark the transformations needed to achieve stronger social protection systems, the UN Secretary-General said on Tuesday.  

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, appealed to Ethiopia on Tuesday for urgent access to 96,000 Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, saying the month-long conflict in Tigray had left them without vital supplies.

A record 235 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection next year, a near- 40 per cent increase on 2020 which is “almost entirely from COVID-19”, the UN’s emergency relief chief said on Tuesday. 

A Rwandan entrepreneur is pioneering the use of innovative farming technology that, he believes, is set to play a major role in feeding the growing population in his country, amid increasing pressure on arable land.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has launched an appeal for $147 million to support as many as 100,000 people fleeing Ethiopia’s Tigray region into neighbouring Sudan, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Monday.

Denouncing attack, on Saturday, targeting civilians in Nigeria’s restive Borno state, a senior UN humanitarian official called on the authorities to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. 

Worldwide, persons with disabilities experience higher levels of unemployment and economic inactivity than non-disabled persons. Ahead of International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Mike Hess, US-based entrepreneur and founder of the Blind Institute of Technology, spoke to UN News as part of the International Labour Organization (ILO) photography project "Dignity at Work: The American Experience".

Hunger is on the rise in southern Madagascar due to consecutive years of drought,  affecting half the region’s population, or 1.5 million people, and forcing most families to eat insects, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported on Friday. 

More than three billion people live in agricultural areas with high levels of water shortages and scarcity, the UN agriculture agency said in a new report launched on Wednesday. 

More than three million people across Syria require assistance through what is likely to be an “incredibly hard” winter, the acting deputy UN Emergency Relief Coordinator told the Security Council on Wednesday, highlighting that those displaced remain “particularly vulnerable”.  

Israel’s military operations and prolonged closure of Gaza, has caused economic damage of $16.7 billion between 2007 and 2018, driving the poverty rate up almost fourfold compared to what it might have otherwise been, the UN trade and development agency UNCTAD said in a report published on Wednesday.

International donors pledged financial and political support for Afghanistan’s peace process at the 2020 Afghanistan Conference in Geneva on Tuesday, anticipating a sustainable ceasefire that will help the country rebuild and heal after decades of conflict. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic precipitating one of the world’s worst health, socioeconomic and humanitarian crises in over a century, the UN chief told a high-level discussion on Tuesday to seize the opportunity “to make real, foundational, and necessary change”.