This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

UN’s rights chief says horrified by Sudan escalation as famine draws nearer

In Sudan, the UN’s top human rights official has personally intervened to try to stop spiralling violence that’s having a terrifying impact on millions of civilians, who humanitarians say are “staring famine in the face”.

According to the UN human rights office, OHCHR, on Tuesday the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, held separate phone calls with Lt-General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, Commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the rival Rapid Support Forces.

Mr. Türk urged them both to act immediately – and publicly – to de-escalate the situation, said OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani:

“He warned both commanders that fighting in El-Fasher, where more than 1.8 million residents and internally displaced people are currently encircled and at imminent risk of famine, would have a catastrophic impact on civilians, and it  would deepen intercommunal conflict with disastrous humanitarian consequences.”

Thirteen months of war in Sudan have left half of the population of Sudan in need of humanitarian assistance – a staggering 25 million people, including 14 million children. Aid teams have issued repeated warnings that famine is closing in, particularly with the approach of the rainy season.

According to the UN rights office, escalating violence in and around El-Fasher in Darfur has killed at least 58 civilians since last week.

The UN-partnered response plan aims to reach and support 15 million of the worst-affected people in Sudan but this year, $2.7 billion is needed urgently.

Today, however, humanitarians have received only 12 per cen t of the total. Without an immediate injection of funds, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, warned that aid teams “won’t be able to scale up in time to stave off famine and prevent further deprivation”.

Ukraine crisis reaches new terrifying level as civilians face daily drone and ‘glide bomb’ attacks

Daily attacks by the Russian military in Ukraine have damaged dozens of towns and villages in the south and east of the country, but also in central areas - including the city of Dnipro, which was shelled again early this Friday, UN humanitarians said.

According to the UN migration agency, IOM, an array of military hardware has been deployed against heavily populated areas, such as drones and a new, frightening threat: glide bombs that can fly up to 80 kilometres and cause heavy damage.

The effect has been to reduce the ability of humanitarians to reach vulnerable communities who are unable or unwilling to leave their homes – including around 200 people in the northeastern city of Vovchansk, said IOM Eastern Area Coordinator Leila Saleiravesh:

“These are mostly people who are not able to move, elderly people with disabilities, people who don’t have anywhere to go. A lot of people in Ukraine are very connected to their land.”

According to the UN agency, 80 per cent of energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, has now been damaged and that 14,000 people have been forced to evacuate from frontline areas and border communities in the east in just the last week.

Antimicrobial resistance an increasingly worrying threat, warns WHO 

Medical news now, and an alert from the UN World Health Organization (WHO) over the rise of diseases that can’t be treated with so-called “last resort” antibiotics.

The problem is known as antimicrobial resistance and WHO insists that a whole range of new treatments are needed to stop potentially deadly bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites that no longer respond to medicines.

To help drug manufacturers, the UN health agency on Friday released an updated list of “priority pathogens” that require research and investment.

The most worrying of these priority pathogens include “gram-negative bacteria” which are resistant to the strongest antibiotics. 

Here’s Dr Hatim Sati, from WHO’s antimicrobial resistance division:

“Gram negative bacteria resistant to the last-resort antibiotics remain a critical  concern. They cause severe infections like pneumonia, complicated intra-abdominal infections, complicated urinary tract infections and bloodstream infections, especially in hospitalized patients.”

Dr Sati explained that these bacteria were able to “acquire resistance” to avoid being killed by antibiotics, and that they were also able “to share these tricks among one another to evade antibiotics”.

Among the critical pathogens on WHO’s list is the tuberculosis bacterium; it is resistant to the antibiotic “rifampicin”, which has made it a major global threat because of its high prevalence and ability to resist treatment which other bacteria learn how to exploit.

Shanae Harte, UN News