News

Humanitarians are scaling up assistance in the Philippines to assist hundreds of thousands still impacted by Typhoon Rai which struck the islands seven weeks ago, the UN said on Wednesday, launching a $169 million revised appeal to meet the urgent and growing needs.  

The massive volcanic eruption and tsunami in Tonga followed by another earthquake and aftershocks just days afterwards, has highlighted once again the vulnerability of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), a meeting this week convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has heard.

A new UN partnership announced on Wednesday aims to raise awareness about the environmental and health impacts of microplastics in cigarette butts, the most discarded waste item worldwide. 

For the first time, the United Nations on Wednesday celebrates World Wetlands Day, recognizing that these fragile ecosystems make a crucial contribution to biodiversity, climate mitigation, freshwater availability, and economic resilience.

Following a verdict in the case of the brutal murder of two its experts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) nearly five years ago, the UN on Tuesday urged authorities to uphold their moratorium on the death penalty. 

Marking the first anniversary of the military coup in Myanmar, the independent UN expert monitoring the country implored States on Tuesday to take more robust action, reiterating his call for an arms embargo to stop the killing of innocent people.

Tens of thousands of tonnes of extra medical waste from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has put tremendous strain on health care waste management systems around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.   

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has established two new world records for so-called megaflashes of lightning, in notorious hotspots in North and South America.

The Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is taking advantage of a new initiative, to become the first UN peacekeeping mission to provide gender-sensitive housing and invest in better working conditions for women peacekeepers serving there.

Earth’s permafrost is thawing, and indigenous communities in the Arctic and scientists around the world say it’s high time this alarming loss of ground ice receives the global attention – and dedicated research – it deserves. As this phenomenon reshapes landscapes, displaces whole villages, and disrupts fragile animal habitats; it also threatens to release dangerous microorganisms and potential carbon emissions that have been locked in ice for thousands of years. 

To mark World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Sunday called for an international push to confront the inequalities that characterize NTDs, and ensure the poorest and most marginalized communities who are the most impacted, receive the health services they need.

Airstrikes last week by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen that hit a detention facility in the northern city of Sa’ada, killed some 91 people and injured dozens more, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Friday, citing preliminary figures.   

After 15 months of conflict in Ethiopia, almost 40 per cent of Tigrayans are suffering an extreme lack of food, according to data released by the World Food Programme (WFP) on Friday.

The UN and its partners need to reach more Syrians with immediate life-saving aid, the UN relief chief warned the Security Council on Thursday, calling for expanded access and more funds to sustain humanitarian operations, as the country struggles with an uptick in violence, deepening economic crisis, and a winter storm that has left a ‘trail of destruction’ in its wake. 

“Needs are growing faster than generosity” in the central Sahel, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs told a group of senior officials on Thursday, meeting to discuss the worsening humanitarian situation across the vast African region. 

Boys and girls caught up in intense fighting which raged for six days around a besieged prison in northeast Syria, need protection and assistance, the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, said on Thursday.

Food insecurity is soaring across 20 countries and regions - “hunger hotspots”, where conflict, economic shocks, natural hazards, political instability, and limited humanitarian access, are putting millions of lives at risk, UN agencies highlighted on Thursday. 

UN teams are on the ground in Mozambique assisting thousands of people affected by Tropical Storm Ana, which made landfall in central and northern regions of the country earlier this week. 

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.