UN News Centre

Half of the world’s children experience violence on and offline in some form every year, with “devastating and life-long consequences” for their mental health, the UN chief warned a symposium on the issue on Thursday.

Job losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic combined with high food prices are making it hard for millions of families to get enough to eat, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Thursday. 

A new study released on Thursday by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) illustrates the devastating impact of COVID-19 on victims and survivors of human trafficking and highlights the increased targeting and exploitation of children during the course of the pandemic.

The global death toll due to COVID-19 officially passed four million late on Wednesday, marking yet another “grim milestone” and underlining the urgent need for the world to put a Global Vaccine Plan in place to get the pandemic under control, said the UN chief in a statement.

A new government action plan in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has the potential to reverse the urgent and tragic deterioration in the east of the country, where thousands of human rights abuses are being committed against civilians by armed militants, the senior UN official in the country told the Security Council on Wednesday. 

Variants like Delta are “currently winning the race against vaccines” said the World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday, pinning the blame squarely on a lack of equitable vaccine production and distribution.

Perpetrators behind the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse must be brought to justice, the United Nations said on Wednesday. 

Action must be taken now to halt alarming attacks against children and abductions - including of students - in parts of West and Central Africa, the head of the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said in a statement on Wednesday. 

What began as a coup by the Myanmar military has ‘rapidly morphed’ into an all-out attack against the civilian population that has become increasingly widespread and systematic, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned on Tuesday.

Humanitarian operations have been gradually resuming in the war-ravaged Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, but resupply of aid and fuel for civilians caught up in the fighting is urgently needed, the United Nations said on Tuesday, citing information from its emergency relief agency, OCHA.  

The world was not on track to meet the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) before COVID-19 struck, and now the challenge has been magnified many times over, according to a new flagship UN report that indicates countries must take ‘critical’ steps on the road out of the pandemic, during the next 18 months.

Equitable distribution of equipment and medicines to fight COVID-19 is the only way out of the global crisis, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday, in remarks to a meeting of the advisory group making the case for investing in these tools. 

The eruption of violence in the Kingdom of Eswatini in recent days is “deeply concerning”, amid reports that dozens of people have been killed or injured during protests calling for democratic reforms, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday. In a statement later in the day, the UN chief called for "inclusive and meaningful dialogue", to end the violence. 

Ten years after South Sudan achieved independence, more children there are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance than ever before, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said on Tuesday. 

The UN chief on Monday extended his condolences to the families of those who died in a landslide, which struck the Japanese coastal city of Atami in Shizuoka Prefecture, over the weekend.

Belarus has witnessed an unprecedented human rights crisis over the past year, the independent expert appointed to monitor the country said on Monday, calling on authorities to immediately end their policy of repression and fully respect the legitimate aspirations of their people.

After spending years living in UN-supported camps in Kenya, some 220 former refugees from Somalia now work as farmers in the US state of Maine, growing crops ranging from beets to broccolini.

As a witness to the impacts of Syria’s internal conflict over the last decade, Bassel Al-Madani, a young engineer and former volunteer with the UN, was inspired to set up Entrepioneers 2030, a group that rallies youth to get involved in shaping the future of their country. 

Some 4.4 million people in Nigeria are facing what the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, is describing as “catastrophic food conditions”.

Senior UN officials appealed on Friday for immediate and unrestricted humanitarian access to Tigray – and for an end to deadly attacks on aid workers - as the Security Council held its first open meeting on the conflict in the restive northern Ethiopian region.