News

January marked the beginning of what many within the UN and beyond view as “the most critical decade of our lives”, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said on Wednesday, launching a major initiative to protect the world’s oceans through the next ten years.  

The United Nations Secretary-General, on Tuesday, voiced grave concerns over the crisis in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and underscored the need for urgent efforts to protect populations at risk. 

COVID-19 has caused “widespread upheaval” for the whole fishing and aquaculture industry around the world, the UN deputy agriculture chief said on Tuesday, launching a new report that assesses the toll the pandemic has taken on the sector. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a “profound” impact on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer around the world, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday, before highlighting that breast cancer has become the most common type of the disease. 

Sustainability is not new: communities have been living in harmony with their surroundings for hundreds, if not thousands of years. As the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration begins, the UN is celebrating some of the most remarkable agricultural systems found around the world.

Although Tonga, an archipelago in the South Pacific, has so far avoided COVID-19 cases, the pandemic has hit the economy hard along with the entire region, and helped Tongans become more resilient and less reliant on expensive food imports.

The European Union’s failure to lift 20 million people out of poverty by 2020, is “a defeat for social rights”, an independent UN human rights expert said on Friday, urging the bloc to boldly rethink its whole socio-economic approach.

Funders responsible for more than $100 million of annual global research investments joined the deputy UN chief Amina Mohammed on Friday to discuss how to unify research efforts, and use science to recover effectively from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Humanitarian staff have been working “round the clock” to reopen access roads and provide emergency relief from the disastrous impact that recent floods have unleased on displaced people living in camps in northwest Syria, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator there said on Friday. 

Civilians in Yemen’s Hudaydah Governorate, face a growing threat from escalating clashes, with shelling of residential areas ongoing, endangering thousands.

Three months since fighting began in Ethiopia’s northern state of Tigray, there’s grave concern for the plight of youngsters there, the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF has warned.

Heavy rains and floods in north-west Syria has worsened the plight of tens of thousands of internally displaced persons, destroying their tents, food and belongings in the midst of winter, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday. 

Almost two-thirds of over 1.2 million people surveyed worldwide say that climate change is a global emergency, urging greater action to address the crisis, results from a new UN climate survey revealed on Wednesday. 

 A rise in climate litigation cases has made courtrooms increasingly important as a venue for addressing climate change around the world, according to a report released on Tuesday by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). 

Against the backdrop of a COVID-19 crisis that has exacerbated pre-pandemic challenges and a global ceasefire appeal to combat it, the UN chief launched called for new peacebuilding funds on Tuesday, promising a “renewed approach to multilateralism and international cooperation”. 

UN agencies are ramping up efforts to help communities in Mozambique hit hard by Tropical Cyclone Eloise, which barrelled through the country three weeks after the devastating Tropical Storm Chalane. 

The private sector has a key role to play in lifting countries out of both the COVID-19 and climate crises, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told international business leaders on Monday. 

Since September, the devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened, infecting close to 100 million people, costing more than $3 trillion in lost wages and intensifying obstacles for peace and security around the world, the UN political chief told the Security Council on Monday.   

Job losses or reduced working hours due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic cost the world the equivalent of 255 million jobs in 2020, the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Monday, noting that the “massive impact” was nearly four times the number lost during the 2009 global financial crisis. 

The UN Secretary-General on Monday called for urgent scaling up of funds for climate change adaptation and resilience building programmes, so they can offer real and lasting protection against the impact of major events such as droughts, floods and rising sea-levels. 

The brutal fighting in Syria continues to exact a terrible toll on children, with at least 18, including a one-year-old killed in incidents involving explosive weapons and unexploded ordnance, since 1 January, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Sunday. At least 15 others were wounded. 

Marking its 75th anniversary amid the most serious economic and health crisis the UN& has ever faced, the Organization’s Economic and Social Council “has the mandate and the responsibility to respond to these challenges,” the body’s President, Munir Akram, said on Saturday.

Following the inauguration of United States President Joe Biden on Wednesday, the UN Secretary-General said he looks forward to an era of new leadership towards accelerating climate action, with the US back inside the landmark Paris Agreement.  

After a decade of conflict, economic collapse compounded by COVID-19, corruption and mismanagement, the UN Syrian envoy told the Security Council on Wednesday that “a slow tsunami” is now “crashing across Syria”. 

UN agencies voiced deep concern on Wednesday over the worsening humanitarian crisis in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, where attacks by armed groups have forced more than 565,000 to flee their homes. 

Action to control unprecedented desert locust infestations in the Horn of Africa last year has protected crops and livelihoods, but funding is needed to sustain operations against new incursions, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday.

Two months after conflict forced humanitarian workers to withdraw from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), on Tuesday, stressed the need for “swift action” to restore safe access to “save thousands of lives at risk”. 

A new report from the UN’s air transportation agency confirms there was a “dramatic” fall in international air travel due to COVID-19, of around 60 per cent over the course of last year, to levels last seen in 2003.

At least 35 people have been killed and hundreds of others injured after a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck the West Sulawesi Province of Indonesia on Friday morning, according to the UN humanitarian coordination office (OCHA). 

The head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) on Wednesday expressed his deep concern over the humanitarian situation in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, including its impact on Eritrean refugees hosted there.