News

A Tongan family’s trip to visit relatives on Mango island earlier this month turned into a nightmare, when the country was devastated by the eruption of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai underwater volcano, and subsequent tsunami.

Two separate tropical weather systems in Madagascar have left at least 34 dead and triggered flooding and landslides, particularly in the capital, Antananarivo, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Tuesday.

The global economy is entering 2022 in a weaker position than previously expected, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced on Tuesday, in an update to their World Economic Outlook (WEO). 

Well below zero temperatures hitting Syria this week have turned camps for internally displaced people into disaster zones, the UN Deputy Regional Humanitarian Coordinator warned on Monday. 

Millions of hectares of farmland are lost to the desert each year in Africa’s Sahel region, but the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is showing that traditional knowledge, combined with the latest technology, can turn arid ground back into fertile soil.

A new way to recycle large amounts of coffee grounds; a platform connecting young African activists; technology to produce electricity from ocean waves or recycle plastic. A new energy-efficient construction method - an innovative carpooling app. 

Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths, has ended a four-day visit to Nigeria, pledging support and promising the United Nations will do everything it can to help rebuild the lives of vulnerable families who have been impacted by violence and extremism there. 

As news coverage of the eruption and tsunami that hit Tonga starts to fade away, the United Nations Coordination Specialist in the country has a message to the outside world: Tonga’s people are going to need sustained support responding to a disaster of this scale. 

At least 1.5 million children are not receiving life-saving treatment for severe wasting in Eastern and Southern Africa, warned the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Friday. 

When a tsunami swept over much of Tonga last weekend, Joseph Sikulu, a Tongan national, was in Sydney, Australia, exiled from home by strict COVID-19 travel restrictions. For three days, with most communications lines severed, his family and friends were cut off from the outside world, and Mr. Sikulu feared the worst.

For the first time in weeks, aid teams have reached refugee camps in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, only to find that some Eritrean nationals living there have likely died of preventable diseases, while others are “scared and struggling to get enough to eat”, the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said on Friday.

Extreme poverty in West Africa rose by nearly three per cent in 2020, another fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, a UN-backed report launched on Thursday that looks at the socio-impact of the crisis has revealed. 

Some 12,000 households have been affected by the volcanic eruption and tsunami that hit the islands of Tonga over the weekend, according to estimates by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). 

One of the largest coral reefs in the world has been discovered by a UN-supported scientific mission off the coast of Tahiti. Announcing the stunning find on Thursday, UNESCO said that divers had explored large rose-shaped corals spanning some three kilometres, at depths of between 30 and 65 metres.

More than half a million people have lost or been pushed out of their jobs in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Wednesday.

Last year joined the list of the seven warmest years on record, the UN weather agency said on Wednesday, and was also the seventh consecutive year when the global temperature has been more than 1°C above pre-industrial levels; edging closer to the limit laid out under the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

With COVID-19, the situation for women human rights defenders and the prospects for women's full participation in building peace, has become “vastly worse”, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

At least three people have died in Tonga following the massive volcanic eruption and subsequent tsunami wave that hit over the weekend. Homes and other buildings across the archipelago have suffered major damage.

Addressing the virtual World Economic Forum, on Monday, the United Nations’ Secretary-General, António Guterres, told world and business leaders that “global solidarity is missing in action”.

More than $138 million is needed to assist rural communities affected by extended drought in the Horn of Africa, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Monday, launching a comprehensive response plan for the region. 

Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, is covered in ash and dust following the underwater volcanic eruption at the weekend, but the situation is calm there and first clean-up efforts are underway, UN humanitarians said on Monday.

As the COVID-19 pandemic grinds on and global labour markets continue to struggle, the latest International Labour Organization (ILO) report, published on Monday, warns that recovery will remain slow.

Secretary-General António Guterres expressed his deep concern after reports of a tsunami and ash affecting Tonga following the eruption of an undersea volcano near the Pacific nation.

Aid and food distribution operations in northern Ethiopia are about “to grind to a halt” amid ongoing fighting, bloodshed and a lack of funding that is making humanitarian access impossible, the UN World Food Programme, WFP, said on Friday.

About $150 million from the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), the largest allocation ever, was released on Thursday to boost underfunded humanitarian operations across 13 countries.

Describing a “nightmare unfolding in Afghanistan”, the United Nations’ Secretary-General, António Guterres, warned on Thursday that the world is “in a race against time to help the Afghan people.”

The UN’s key report on the global economy, released on Thursday, shows that the rapid spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant has put the brakes on a rapid recovery, counteracting signs of solid growth at the end of last year. 

Seven years into the war in Yemen, UN Special Envoy Hans Grundberg reaffirmed to the Security Council on Wednesday that no long-term solution can be found on the battlefield, urging the warring parties to “talk, even if they are not ready to put down their arms”.

On 12 January 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, leaving its capital Port-au-Prince devastated. About 220,000 people were reportedly killed, among them, 102 United Nations staff who lost their lives when the building housing the mission there, known as MINUSTAH, collapsed.

Global growth will slow down over the next two years in the face of “fresh threats” from COVID-19 variants and rising inflation, debt and income inequality, the World Bank said on Tuesday in its latest report.