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In mid-May, just as the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Yemen, funding for UNFPA’s life-saving reproductive health services dried up. The agency has been forced to suspend the provision of reproductive healthcare in 140 out of the 180 health facilities, it supports, meaning only 40 now remain.  

A plane chartered by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) landed at Sana’a airport on Saturday with lifesaving supplies to help curb the spread of COVID-19 in conflict-torn Yemen.  

Some 14 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean could experience severe food insecurity this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to projections released on Thursday by the World Food Programme (WFP).

UN agencies and their global partners are seeking $2.41 billion to fight COVID-19 spread in Yemen while continuing to support millions affected by the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Innocent civilians trapped in violence now face “a new and deadly threat” from COVID-19, the UN chief told the Security Council on Wednesday, warning that the pandemic is “amplifying and exploiting the fragilities of our world”.

Further evidence of the unprecedented impact of COVID-19 on the global job market has emerged in a new study by the UN labour agency, which on Wednesday said that more than one in six young people have stopped working since the onset of the pandemic.

Millions of people around the world have been working remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic and now experts are asking whether this “business unusual” could be the future of work, at least for those people whose job doesn’t require them to be tied to a particular location.

Humanitarian aid projects to war-torn Yemen are reaching breaking point, and some $870 million is needed to continue giving life-saving assistance to millions of vulnerable people for the next six months, the World Food Programme (WFP), warned on Tuesday.

  The UN chief António Guterres commended the governments and people of India and Bangladesh on Saturday, for their life-saving efforts ahead of devastating Cyclone Amphan, wishing those survivors injured and affected by the disaster, a speedy recovery.

Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic must also lead to countries uniting to preserve the natural world, in line with global commitments to achieve a better future for all people and the planet, top officials with the United Nations said on Friday, the International Day for Biological Diversity.

War-torn Yemen’s health system has ‘in effect, collapsed” under the strain of a widening COVID-19 outbreak, with epidemiologists estimating that the virus could spread faster and more widely than in many other countries, the UN warned on Friday.

UN humanitarians and partners are working hard to assist the people of Bangladesh and India suffering from the impact of Cyclone Amphan, which made landfall on Wednesday, wreaking havoc, causing high tidal surges, flooding and embankments to collapse. 

Gathering together at the top UN intergovernmental body in Asia and the Pacific on Thursday, countries of the vast region of more than four billion people, urged greater measures that reinforce global solidarity in ending the COVID-19 pandemic.

Art, culture, heritage, and a source of livelihood for millions. Because tea is so much more than just a drink, on Thursday, at a virtual event commemorating the first-ever International Tea Day, the president of the UN General Assembly lauded the plant for its role in pursuing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Nature is humankind’s ‘strongest ally’ to help build a sustainable planet, according to a Malaysian biodiversity expert, whose organization is supported by the UN Development Programme, (UNDP).

School closures, to stem the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, have left some 60 per cent of the world’s children without an education, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said in its new report, launched on Wednesday.

The coronavirus pandemic threatens the hard-earned gains Africans have made throughout the continent, the UN chief said on Wednesday, urging the world to stand in solidarity with the people, “now, and for recovering better”.

The UN’s top aid official has urged the Security Council to renew a mechanism that provides lifesaving assistance to millions of desperate people in northwest Syria, through cross-border deliveries from Turkey.

UN chief António Guterres is encouraging Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to persevere with efforts to overcome their differences and reach agreement on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

The World Health Organization (WHO) concluded the annual World Health Assembly on Tuesday, adopting a resolution that calls for an independent review of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the agency’s own performance.

The civil war in Libya is in danger of intensifying as foreign intervention grows and the spectre of the COVID-19 pandemic adds to a deepening sense of insecurity, the head of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) told the Security Council on Tuesday.

As the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis continues to wreak havoc across the world – with the most vulnerable suffering the most – the UN chief said on Tuesday that the task of eradicating poverty and achieving the development goals “has never been more challenging, more urgent and more necessary”.

Transforming the transport sector to be more environmentally-friendly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, could create up to 15 million new jobs worldwide and help countries move to greener, healthier economies, according to a UN-backed report published on Tuesday.

A “massive” and combined effort by all countries is needed to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday, as UN health agency head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, insisted that “the majority of the world’s population remains susceptible to this virus”.

As Typhoon Vongfong slammed the Philippines on Thursday, tens of thousands of people fled to cramped shelters, raising fears that without proper safety precautions in place, evacuation centres could become a hotbed of coronavirus infection, the UN emergency humanitarian relief agency (OCHA) said on Friday.

After confirmation that the first cases of COVID-19 infection have been identified in a vast and overcrowded refugee camp in Bangladesh, UN humanitarians on Friday announced additional measures and appealed for funds to prevent the disease from spreading.

The spread of COVID-19 in developing countries has exposed gaps in social protection coverage which could compromise recovery plans, expose millions of people to poverty and affect global readiness to cope with similar crises, according to two policy briefs issued Thursday by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Last week’s deadly toxic gas leak at a Korean-owned polymer plant in south-eastern India, is a grim wake up call for the chemical industry to acknowledge and fulfil its responsibility to respect human rights, the UN independent expert who monitors the issue, said on Thursday.

Decades of neglect and underinvestment in addressing people’s mental health needs have been exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN said on Thursday, in a call for ambitious commitments from countries in the way they treat psychological illness, amid a potential global spike in suicides and drug abuse.

Against the backdrop of the raging COVID-19 pandemic, the world economy in 2020 is projected to shrink by 3.2 per cent, racking up some $8.5 trillion in overall losses – wiping out nearly four years of output gains, according to a mid-year economic analysis by the United Nations.