UN News Centre

In the wake of a horrific mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has announced his intention to launch a UN action plan for the safeguarding of religious sites, declaring that “mosques and all places of prayer and contemplation should be safe havens, not sites of terror.”

The Second High-Level UN Conference on South-South Cooperation, known as BAPA+40, concluded on Friday in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a political declaration agreed by more than 160 Member States renewing the global commitment in the promotion and investment in this type of collaboration between countries.

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With Chad at a crossroads of life-threatening challenges ranging from violence to drought, the United Nations and its humanitarian partners appealed on Thursday for $476 million to support the most vulnerable of 4.3 million people relying on aid in the African country.

The world needs to step up support for the survivors of Tropical Cyclone Idai, the UN Secretary-General said on Friday, in a strong personal appeal as relief workers rush to provide aid to people stranded across the storm countries in southern Africa.

As many Iraqis across the country celebrated Norwuz, the first day of spring, a passenger ferry in the Tigris River capsized on Thursday, prompting Secretary-General António Guterres to offer the United Nations’ support “as needed”. 

A lack of safe water, is far deadlier for children than war in more than a dozen conflict-affected countries, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday, in a report launched to coincide with World Water Day, marked on 22 March.

The UN drew attention to the vital role that forests play in addressing some of the world’s greatest environmental challenges on Thursday, and the importance of tackling the issues that threaten them, such as deforestation, and land degradation.

Peacekeepers from Malaysia serving under the United Nations flag in Lebanon face a “a totally new experience” according to the commander of the Malaysian contingent in the country.

“Urgent and sustained funding” for a Government-led response to what is now a “massive and protracted” humanitarian crisis across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is required, said the head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN relief chief on Thursday.

States must take urgent action, to “stem the tide of hate and discrimination” and ramping up of “ethno-nationalist populism”, which helped fuel the deadly shootings in two New Zealand mosques last Friday by a self-declared white supremacist, several top UN officials and human rights experts have stressed, marking the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Dire conditions persist in vast areas of southern Africa affected by Cyclone Idai as heavy rain continues to cause “massive destruction”, the UN said on Thursday, while aid teams scale up efforts to reach those most in need.

The Fall Armyworm pest is continuing to sweep across the globe, having moved eastwards from their native Americas, onto Africa, before arriving in Asia only last summer, where they now threaten to cost farmers from India to Thailand, billions of dollars in lost production. 

Expressing deep concern at the “magnitude and gravity of the human rights impact” of Venezuela’s current crisis, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said on Wednesday that the country had become “a worrying destabilizing factor in the region.”

A United Nations appeals court on Wednesday increased the 40-year sentence initially imposed on Radovan Karadžić, former leader of the Republika Srpksa region of Bosnia and head of the Bosnian-Serb Army, to life imprisonment.

Predicting that the “days ahead will prove foundational to the years ahead for Libyans and the region”, the top United Nations official in the country told the Security Council on Wednesday, that it was no exaggeration to describe the oil-rich nation as having reached “a crucial juncture”.

South-South cooperation is key to the world’s sustainable development and the fight against global warming said the United Nations Secretary-General on Wednesday, as the opening session of the Second UN Conference on South-South Cooperation got underway in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. 

As the full scale of the devastation caused by Cyclone Idai in southern Africa continues to be assessed, the UN and humanitarian partners are ramping up the provision of emergency food, shelter, water and health care supplies to hundreds-of-thousands who have been affected across Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

When countries of the Global South forged an historic technical cooperation deal among themselves 40 years ago, digital technology was a thing of the future, but developing nations have come a long way since then.

Safe water and access to proper sanitation are essential to eradicate poverty, build peaceful societies and ensure that no one is left behind on the path towards sustainable development, according to the 2019 UN World Water Development Report, launched on Tuesday in Geneva.