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The UN chief has welcomed a decision on Friday by the Security Council to extend the UN cross-border aid operation in northwest Syria for another 12 months, providing a lifeline for more than 3.4 million people in need, including some one million children.

Nearly a third of all children in Haiti – numbering around 1.5 million - are in urgent need of emergency relief due to rising violence, insufficient access to clean water, health and nutrition, said the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF on Friday.

The world’s running out of time to limit global temperature rise to below two degrees Celsius, a matter of life or death for climate vulnerable countries on the front line of the crisis, the UN Secretary General reiterated on Thursday.

Half of the world’s children experience violence on and offline in some form every year, with “devastating and life-long consequences” for their mental health, the UN chief warned a symposium on the issue on Thursday.

Job losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic combined with high food prices are making it hard for millions of families to get enough to eat, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Thursday. 

Humanitarian operations have been gradually resuming in the war-ravaged Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, but resupply of aid and fuel for civilians caught up in the fighting is urgently needed, the United Nations said on Tuesday, citing information from its emergency relief agency, OCHA.  

The world was not on track to meet the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) before COVID-19 struck, and now the challenge has been magnified many times over, according to a new flagship UN report that indicates countries must take ‘critical’ steps on the road out of the pandemic, during the next 18 months.

Ten years after South Sudan achieved independence, more children there are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance than ever before, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said on Tuesday. 

The UN chief on Monday extended his condolences to the families of those who died in a landslide, which struck the Japanese coastal city of Atami in Shizuoka Prefecture, over the weekend.

As a witness to the impacts of Syria’s internal conflict over the last decade, Bassel Al-Madani, a young engineer and former volunteer with the UN, was inspired to set up Entrepioneers 2030, a group that rallies youth to get involved in shaping the future of their country. 

Some 4.4 million people in Nigeria are facing what the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, is describing as “catastrophic food conditions”.

Senior UN officials appealed on Friday for immediate and unrestricted humanitarian access to Tigray – and a stop to deadly attacks on aid workers - as the Security Council held its first open meeting on the conflict in the restive northern Ethiopian region.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has resumed operations in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, after fighting halted the emergency response last week, although the agency warned on Friday that “serious challenges” continue to threaten the entire humanitarian response.  

Leading figures from government, business and civil society are preparing to take part in this year’s High Level Political Forum on sustainable development (HLPF), where they will discuss ways to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and turn the deadly crisis into an opportunity for a major shift towards a more sustainable global economy.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism could result in a more than $4 trillion loss to the global economy, UN trade and development body UNCTAD said on Wednesday in a report issued jointly with the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). 

As the world grapples unevenly with the effects of COVID-19, “a parallel and equally horrific pandemic” has threatened half the world’s population, the UN chief said on Tuesday, in the lead up to the Generation Equality Forum in France.

A "pressure-cooker" heatwave that's broken temperature records twice in 48 hours in the US northwest and western Canada is being mirrored across large parts of the northern hemisphere, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday.

UN humanitarians expressed concern on Tuesday at the uncertain situation in Ethiopia's conflict-ravaged Tigray region despite a ceasefire call from the Government, highlighting the ongoing famine-like conditions there and the potential for disease outbreaks.

It’s overwhelmingly accepted that climate change is a very significant threat to humanity and while there are countless solutions to tackling what has been described by the UN as the “existential threat” of our times, it is still not fully clear how these solutions will be paid for. 

Three employees of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) agency have been killed by unknown attackers in the restive Tigray region of Ethiopia, drawing swift condemnation from UN Secretary-General António Guterres who said on Saturday he was “deeply shocked” by the murders.

The IKEA Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation have announced plans to launch a $1 billion fund to boost access to renewable energy in developing countries – one of the key commitments made during a series of virtual UN ministerial forums this week.

Indigenous people living on the frontline of climate change could offer potentially ground-breaking insight into biodiversity protection and sustainability, but they urgently need help to withstand a growing number of threats to their way of life, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said on Friday. 

The global climate crisis is “exacerbating and intensifying” water-related disasters, jeopardizing lives and livelihoods, the UN chief said on Friday at a major sustainable development symposium.

The imminent closure of the last cross-border aid lifeline to northwest Syria must be postponed beyond the 10 July deadline, UN humanitarians said on Friday, noting that no cross-line supplies had reached Idlib from Damascus, in 11 months.

The cessation of hostilities negotiated last month between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, remains “very fragile”, the UN envoy there told the Security Council on Thursday.   

The European Union (EU) must use its leverage to ensure people everywhere have access to COVID-19 vaccines, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday.   

Humanitarian convoys from Turkey that bring lifesaving aid into northwest Syria must continue, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on Wednesday. 

Thousands of families in southern Madagascar are on the edge of starvation, and “holding on for dear life”, the UN food agency chief said on Wednesday - after bearing witness to the suffering firsthand - urging the world to step-up and take action.   

  Small businesses which make up more than half of the global workforce were 2.5 times more likely to go under than larger firms in the first months of COVID-19, the International Trade Centre (ITC) said on Wednesday, warning that the impact of climate change could cause pandemic-scale disruption “every decade”.

A United Nations body is recommending that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef be included on a list of world heritage in danger, according to a draft report issued on Monday, a move which has been heavily criticized by the Australian Government.