UN News Centre

Climate change is making pests which ravage important agricultural crops even more destructive, heightening threats to global food security and the environment, a UN-backed study published on Wednesday has found. 

Senior UN health agency officials on Wednesday called for unhindered humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, citing growing concerns about urgent health needs there. 

The effects of corruption are “detrimental to all of society”, the President of the UN General Assembly said on Wednesday during the first day of a special session convened to galvanize political will to fight the scourge.  

A UN independent human rights expert said on Wednesday that Mali’s new military authorities should “scrupulously respect human rights” and release all leaders detained in last week’s coup. 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to investigate recent deadly attacks by insurgents in the east and bring the perpetrators to account. 

The economic crisis caused by the COVID pandemic is expected to contribute to global unemployment of more than 200 million people next year, with women and youth workers worst-hit, UN labour experts said on Wednesday.

With the coronavirus still raging in many parts of the world, the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, warned on Tuesday of vaccine shortages, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, and urged “immediate and stronger support” for the global COVAX initiative for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, “including for refugees and asylum-seekers”. 

More than one million people in two areas of the war-ravaged Tigray region in Ethiopia have received emergency food assistance since distributions began in March, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported on Tuesday. 

The world must harness “clear, transformative and actionable solutions” to address the ocean crisis, the President of the UN General Assembly said on Tuesday, opening a meeting to generate momentum towards the 2022 UN Ocean Conference, when public health safety measures allow. 

Governments are being urged to finance a new $50 billion roadmap to end the COVID-19 pandemic and drive a fast recovery, announced on Tuesday by the heads of the world’s predominant global financing, health and trade agencies. 

“Quitters are the real winners in the case of tobacco”, says the World Health Organization as part of a campaign to help smokers that have decided to quit during the COVID-19 pandemic, but lack the support to do so. A new chatbot and even an AI assistant are ready to aid them in their quitting journey.  

In Haiti, the number of severely malnourished under-fives could more than double this year, UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said on Monday. Some could die if they do not receive timely treatment.

UN health agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged all countries on Monday to support a pandemic preparedness treaty, warning that it would be a “monumental error” to think the danger of COVID-19 has passed.

When Nigerian Blessing Ojukwu became pregnant after she was raped, her family disowned her. She was forced to live with her abuser, who continued to attack her. Now, a UN-backed initiative is giving her, and others in similar situations, a chance to become financially independent, and start new lives. 

“Ghost fishing” occurs when abandoned fishing gear dumped in the ocean traps and kills fish or other underwater life, and it is causing devastation to marine environments, warns the UN food agency, FAO.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet voiced her “deep concern” at recent events in the Colombian city of Cali that include reports of several deaths and violence.

Drones are providing life-saving care to women in remote parts of the southern African country, Botswana, who otherwise may die in childbirth, thanks to support from the United Nations.   

Expectations are high for the first Palestinian elections in 15 years, UN Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland told a virtual meeting of the Security Council on Thursday, urging international support for the process. 

Weather-related crises have triggered more than twice as much displacement as conflict and violence in the last decade, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Thursday.

More than 250,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Syria on Thursday from the UN-backed COVAX initiative, to inoculate the country’s frontline health workers.