UN News Centre - Africa

Efforts to address the multiple challenges facing Africa’s Sahel region should be driven by local, regional and national leadership, with the support of international partners as required, the United Nations Special Adviser for the region said on Thursday.

The United Nations human rights chief has warned that an official campaign in and around the capital of Tanzania to identify and detain anyone suspected of being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) “could turn into a witch-hunt.”

Thousands of elated citizens gathered in South Sudan’s capital of Juba on Wednesday to celebrate an agreement signed in September between the President and his former deputy, which it is hoped will finally end years of brutal conflict across the world’s youngest country.

Ongoing tensions between the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) and the country’s state authorities were centre stage, as the United Nations top envoy for the country visited the country’s South West State on Wednesday.

A team of Guinean peacekeepers deployed to the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, (MINUSMA) is playing a key role in removing explosives from areas in which the mission is operating.

The United Nations Security Council, on Wednesday, extended the mandate of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), until 30 April next year.

The United Nations in Zimbabwe is reaffirming that people living with HIV and AIDS need to continue with antiretroviral (ARV) therapy to manage their infections, after a local preacher reportedly claimed that he had received divine revelation of an herbal cure.

A radio series was launched on Tuesday in Nigeria by the UN migration agency (IOM) to sensitize vulnerable people seeking to pursue economic opportunities abroad on the perils of irregular migration – migration done outside the regulated frameworks – and provide information on pathways to migrate legally and safely.

The United Nations Security Council has voiced “serious concern” over the impact of deteriorating security situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on the response to the deadly Ebola outbreak and fears that the virus could spread further into the country and the wider region.

Tens of thousands of children who have been forcibly returned from Angola to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) need help urgently, UN Children’s Fund UNICEF said on Tuesday.

The UN Stabilization Mission in Mali, MINUSMA, reported on Saturday that two peacekeepers had been killed and several others wounded, following on from a coordinated attack at dawn, on a base in the north of the country.

The role of two photographers who raised global awareness of civilian suffering during Liberia’s brutal civil war, is being celebrated in a new photographic exhibition which opens on Friday night in New York, supported by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

The United Nations human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, on Friday warned that the forcible mass expulsion of Congolese migrants from Angola has resulted in “serious human rights violations by security forces on both sides of the border” and left at least 330,000 returnees in an “extremely precarious situation”.

The top United Nations human rights official has called on Burundi to “immediately retract” its threat to try and prosecute members of a UN Commission of Inquiry into rights abuses in the central African nation.

The top United Nations official in the Central African Republic (CAR), said on Tuesday he is “hopeful that the necessary foundations to build sustainable peace” have been established and that long-lasting stability will depend on the will of its people, and support from the international community.

While security has improved in Darfur, inter-communal tensions in the conflict-plagued region of Sudan are still high, with clashes over land and livestock, the head of the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission said on Monday.

The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres said on Monday he is “outraged by the continued killing and abduction of civilians by armed groups” near Beni, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)’s North Kivu region, which has been grappling with an Ebola outbreak since August.

After commending the “overall peaceful” climate in which the Malian elections were held in July, the United Nations peacekeeping chief said on Friday that he is “extremely concerned” over the increasing number of attacks by armed insurgents, against a backdrop of continued delays in implementing the 2015 peace agreement.

Amid increasingly violent clashes between rival armed groups in Libya’s capital,Tripoli, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has successfully airlifted 135 migrants and refugees to safety in Niger.

Hundreds of civilians who were taken by opposition forces in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria region during an uptick in fighting are still missing, the UN’s top rights official said on Thursday, in a call for their immediate release.