News

Alleged serious abuses and rights violations in Ethiopia’s Tigray region are to be investigated by the UN, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said on Thursday.

The United Nations’ top relief official on Wednesday released $14 million in emergency funding to provide life-saving assistance to thousands of Rohingya refugee families, after a massive fire ripped through the Kutupalong camp in southern Bangladesh, earlier this week. 

As the living tissue of the earth, biodiversity is “intimately linked to human health” the head of the UN’s scientific agency told a global forum on Wednesday, noting that “we are part of that living tissue”. 

The United Nations Secretary-General on Tuesday urged all countries, companies and financial institutions to commit to net zero or carbon neutrality, with “clear and credible” plans to achieve the target, starting immediately. 

Famine is already on the doorstep of millions of families in 20 countries, two UN agencies warned on Tuesday in a report that calls for urgent action to avert rising hunger due to factors such as conflict, climate extremes and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Confronting major setbacks due to the coronavirus pandemic, countries in Asia and the Pacific “must now seize the moment” to rebuild and recover better together, the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General said on Tuesday. 

Rapid growth in innovations that are designed to help people overcome their disabilities could soon offer a fix to all manner of mobility, sight and other difficulties, UN patent experts WIPO said on Tuesday.

Senior leaders with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, warned on Monday of the urgent need  to address the growing humanitarian crisis in the Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique, where an ongoing deadly insurgency has uprooted  hundreds of thousands of people.  

Climate change has hit the world’s oceans hard, UN weather experts said on Monday, in a call for lifesaving monitoring and early warning services that were interrupted by COVID-19 to be ramped up again, to protect shipping and coastal communities at risk. 

The UN is marking World Water Day on Monday with a global conversation on how people value the lifegiving resource in different parts of the world, according to local needs.

Local communities in Costa Rica are working together to fight the challenging combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, thanks to support from the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

Millions of people around the world are affected by Down syndrome, a chromosome disorder. Each year, approximately 3,000 to 5,000 children are born with the condition which commonly affects, to varying degrees, an individual’s learning styles, physical characteristics and health. 

What can African countries learn from China’s success in lifting millions out of poverty? Senior UN official Siddharth Chatterjee, formerly the Resident Coordinator in Kenya, now in the same post in China, thinks many aspects of the country’s economic success can provide useful lessons for developing countries looking to provide improved livelihoods for their citizens.

Coral reefs are in grave peril, and the consequences of their extinction could be catastrophic. They support more than a quarter of all marine life, but 90 per cent could disappear by 2050, largely as a result of climate change.  

The situation for children in Tigray is becoming increasingly serious as the conflict in the northern Ethiopian region continues to escalate, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic should lead to stronger action to safeguard the world’s forests, a senior UN official said on Friday, highlighting how these natural resources have helped to protect health and well-being during the global crisis. 

Access to water is not just about “liquid in a bottle” but instead touches on universal issues such as dignity, opportunity and equality, the UN General Assembly President said on Thursday, in opening a high-level meeting on ensuring water and sanitation are available to all. 

The COVID-19 pandemic seriously impacted all economies around the world last year, with trillions of dollars of lost earnings, UN trade and development experts UNCTAD said on Thursday, before highlighting how several countries also showed unexpected resilience, too.

New and unprecedented forms of natural disasters are most heavily felt in the agricultural industry, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Thursday.

The UN and its humanitarian partners are seeking $3.85 billion to reach 16 million people in Yemen this year, or nearly 80 per cent of the population, as the country descends deeper into crisis. 

As hunger levels continue to deepen in South Sudan due to a combination of violence, climate change and COVID-19, the 2021 South Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan was launched on Tuesday aiming to reach 6.6 million people – including 350,000 refugees - with life-saving assistance and protection.

Rising food and fuel prices present a looming threat to the poorest and most vulnerable communities in Myanmar, as supply chains and markets are starting to feel the impact of the ongoing political crisis, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday. 

In eastern Sudan, renewable energy is being trialled as a power source in UN-run refugee camps, where an influx of thousands of people fleeing conflict in Ethiopia is putting a strain on local resources, and host communities.

The pain and deprivation of individual Syrians and the widespread destruction, a decade of conflict has wrought on Syria, has been documented in a series of images taken by 17 photographers working in the country.

Two years after Tropical Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth swept through Mozambique in March 2019, killing hundreds and leaving more than two million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, UN chief António Guterres has recalled the devastation he witnessed first-hand, in the aftermath of one of the worst weather-related disasters ever to hit the southern hemisphere.

Although the world’s indigenous peoples live in areas that contain around 80 per cent of the planet’s biodiversity, many still struggle to maintain their legal rights to lands, territories and resources, according to a new UN report published on Friday. 

Ten numbers for each year of Syria’s seemingly interminable conflict: the UN’s Humanitarian agency (OCHA) has marked this tragic milestone by highlighting in figures the country’s miserable decade of suffering and loss.

The world’s largest crime prevention and criminal justice gathering wrapped up on Friday, rejecting “the divisions and inequalities” exposed by COVID-19, according to the top UN crime-fighting official.   

The grim ten-year anniversary of the war in Syria has left 90 percent of the country’s children in need of help, as a triple crisis of violence, economic misery and the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed families to the brink of despair, UNICEF reported on Friday.  

Poor rain forecast for the next few months threatens to exacerbate the plight of tens of thousands of Somalis displaced from their homes and villages due to “extreme” water shortages since last November, the UN humanitarian office said on Friday.