Following a U-turn over re-opening girls’ secondary schools in Afghanistan on Wednesday, the UN human rights chief shared her “profound frustration and disappointment” that six months after the Taliban seized power, high school girls have yet to return to the classroom.
The UN set an ambitious five year deadline on Wednesday for countries to ensure that citizens worldwide are protected by early warning systems against extreme weather and climate change, the UN chief announced, marking World Meteorological Day.
Jarno Habicht has worked with WHO for the last 19 years and served as WHO Representative in Ukraine since 2018. He explains how WHO prepared for armed conflict in the country, and how it has responded to health-related issues since the Russian invasion.
Violence against women and girls may be the world’s “longest, deadliest pandemic,” the UN chief said on Tuesday, during an event focused on the role boys and men need to play, to help eliminate gender-based violence.
Speakers in the Security Council on Tuesday denounced evictions and demolitions by Israeli authorities of Palestinian-owned properties, as the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, expressed regret that “little progress” has made by the sides in upholding obligations under the Council’s landmark resolution 2334.
While humanitarian assistance has been successful in averting a catastrophe, Haiti is experiencing a persistent rise in hunger levels, with many citizens suffering acutely, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.
One year after brutal attacks by suspected Al Shabab militants began in northern Mozambique, thousands continue to flee ongoing violence in Cabo Delgado province, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Tuesday.
It’s time for a diplomatic solution to be found to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, amidst signs of hope that progress can be made to end an “unwinnable” and “indefensible” war, said the UN chief on Tuesday.
The UN has helped tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees to cross into Poland and other neighbouring countries. Chris Melzer, spokesperson for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Germany, told UN News that he has witnessed many traumatic scenes, of families ripped apart by the crisis.
The UN’s top rights official said on Monday that amidst a “profound crisis” facing access to basic human rights in Myanmar following the coup in February last year, hundreds of localized armed resistance groups have now formed across the country, triggering “widespread violence in areas that were previously stable”.
While groundwater accounts for 99 per cent of all running freshwater on Earth, it is often undervalued, mismanaged, and overexploited, according to a report published on Monday by the UN scientific organization, UNESCO.
As the total forced to flee their homes in Ukraine rises above 10 million, attacks on healthcare facilities there due to Russia’s continuing bombardment are averaging more than two per day, the UN warned on Monday.
The goal to limit future warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, highlighted in the Paris Agreement on climate change, and driven home in last November’s COP26, gathering in Glasgow, is now on “life support” and “in intensive care,” the UN chief told the Economist Sustainability Summit on Monday.
Widespread sexual violence against women and girls in conflict is being fueled by systemic impunity, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said on Monday.
In the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), more commonly known as North Korea, human rights violations remain systematic, and the authorities’ grip on the population has “tightened”, the Human Rights Council heard on Monday.
The head of UN refugee agency UNHCR, spoke out on Monday against the “ugly reality” that some refugees fleeing across the Ukraine border, and Third Country Nationals, have been subjected to racism and discrimination.
Healthy forests are “essential” for people and the planet, the UN chief said in his message marking the International Day of Forests.
Loay Elbasyouni is a Palestinian electrical engineer on the NASA team that designed Ingenuity, an innovative robotic helicopter that landed on Mars in 2021. He talks to UN News about his journey, from a UN-run school in the Gaza strip, to the US space agency.
Foreign combatants with armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) can find it hard to return home once they decide to stop fighting. The UN Mission in the country (MONUSCO) is helping them to demobilize, and adjust to a new life.
The UN is not aware of any biological weapons programme being conducted in Ukraine, the Organization’s disarmament chief told the Security Council once more on Friday, responding to fresh allegations by the Russian Federation, that it had evidence to the contrary.
