News

Three UN agencies on Thursday welcomed $127 million in new funding from the World Bank to provide lifesaving support to some of the country’s most hard hit rural families, struggling under the impact of multiple crises.  

A sustainable and prosperous planet can only be achieved through working together and in solidarity, the UN Deputy Secretary-General said on Wednesday at the end of a major global food security meeting.

Three days of strong winds and heavy monsoon rain on sprawling refugee sites in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar have taken Rohingya refugee lives and wreaked havoc and destruction, the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday.

Although the international community is providing urgent assistance to Gaza in the wake of the most recent round of hostilities, a political solution is still needed to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, a senior UN official in the region said on Wednesday. 

At least half a million children under five in drought-afflicted southern Madagascar are on the verge of acute malnourishment, two UN agencies warned on Monday. 

An ancient temple in India and a “cultural landscape” in Spain have become two of the latest sites to be registered on the UN’s prestigious World Heritage List. 

Negotiations began on Monday to approve a UN science report which will anchor high level summits later this year, charged with boosting climate action worldwide.

The world is waking up to the importance of mangroves, a senior UN official said on Monday, underscoring the need for everyone to support restoration and protection of these crucial habitats. 

Inefficient global food production is at the root of a huge rise in hunger as well as one-third of all emissions and 80 per cent of biodiversity loss, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned, in a call to all countries to transform food systems to speed up sustainable development. 

“The world urgently needs a clear and unambiguous commitment to the 1.5 degree goal of the Paris Agreement from all G20 nations”, António Guterres said on Sunday after the Group failed to agree on the wording of key climate change commitments during their last’s week Ministerial Meeting on Environment, Climate and Energy.

Farmers, especially women and indigenous people, work tirelessly to put food on our tables. UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed met on Saturday women producers at a farmers’ market in Circo Massimo, Rome, ahead of the Food Systems Pre-Summit taking place next week.

The role of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in promoting development has become “even more critical” as a way of guiding and informing the COVID-19 pandemic response worldwide, Collen Vixen Kelapile said on Friday, speaking for the first time as the UN body’s president. 

The public water system in Lebanon is “on life support” and could collapse at any moment, putting 71 per cent of the population, or more than four million people, at immediate risk of losing access to safe supply, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, warned on Friday. 

Against the backdrop of a rapidly changing global climate, water-related hazards top the list of natural disasters with the highest human losses in the past 50 years, according to a new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Lifesaving assistance arrived for the beleaguered Tigray region of Ethiopia on Thursday as the first UN World Food Programme (WFP) plane carrying humanitarian workers touched down in the capital Mekelle. 

The head of the UN food relief agency called on the world’s richest nations on Thursday to invest more in sustainable living, to feed the world’s growing population.  

Historic docklands and buildings in the UK city of Liverpool have been removed from the UN cultural body UNESCO’s list of World Heritage sites, it announced on Wednesday.

Marking World Chess Day on Tuesday, the UN is celebrating the fact that while COVID-19 has forced most sports to scale down, this ancient game of intellect, not brute strength, has demonstrated remarkable resilience and adaptability throughout months of lockdown worldwide.

Fewer women will regain jobs lost to the COVID-19 pandemic during the recovery period, than men, according to a new study released on Monday by the UN’s labour agency.  

Cameroonians who have been displaced by conflict and climate change in the north of the West African country are turning to aquaculture as an alternative source of income, thanks to support from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) will received an additional $135.8 million after signing an agreement with the United States on Saturday establishing shared goals in support of humanitarian assistance, development, and refugee protection. 

Ensuring COVID-19 vaccines for all will be critical if the world is to defeat the pandemic, the President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Munir Akram, said on Friday in his address to the closing its high-level segment.

There is a “bloody surge” impacting humanitarian crises around the world, with civilians in conflict zones paying the highest price, the UN deputy chief told the Security Council on Friday. 

Heavy rainfall that has triggered deadly and catastrophic flooding in several western European countries, is just the latest indicator that all nations need to do more to hold back climate change-induced disasters, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Friday.

Closing a key international development forum on Thursday, the deputy UN chief observed that a year of “immense challenges” has reversed progress on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Although a new European Union (EU) climate plan unveiled on Wednesday could change global trade patterns to favour countries where production is relatively carbon efficient, its value in mitigating climate change will likely be limited, the UN trade and development agency, UNCTAD, has warned. 

The COVID pandemic has taken four million lives, devastated the global economy, pushed a further 124 million people into extreme poverty and continues to inflict profound suffering – dramatically impacting progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN chief said on Tuesday at a key international forum. 

Equitably “redirecting, repurposing or eliminating incentives” that harm biodiversity by at least $500 billion per year is just one of the 21 ambitious targets of a new draft agreement released by a UN body in the lead up to the landmark November climate conference, COP26, in the United Kingdom.  

UN humanitarians appealed on Tuesday for far quicker access to Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region, after the first aid trucks in days to reach the local capital, Mekelle, encountered multiple checks delaying their arrival.

Between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020 – some 161 million more than for 2019  – the UN Secretary-General said on Monday; “new, tragic data”, which indicates the world is “tremendously off track” to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.