Since the 1950s, 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced, seven billion tonnes of which have become potentially toxic waste. If no action is taken, plastic pollution could triple by 2060.
More than two years since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in Ukraine, the harrowing human cost of the conflict couldn’t be clearer, with thousands killed and many of the injured requiring triple or quadruple amputations, mine action experts said on Wednesday.
The wider economic cost of the ongoing fighting in one of the world’s main cereal and commodity-producing regions is enormous too, currently valued at many billions of dollars, amid rising food and fuel prices.
Digital technologies and algorithm-driven software, especially social media, present high risks of privacy invasion, cyberbullying and distraction from learning to young girls – that’s according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) 2024 Global Education Monitor (GEM) report released on Thursday.
Some heads of top “Ivy League” universities across the United States have been pushed out due to political pressure as educators crack down on students protesting Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, shining a spotlight on the right to free speech around the world.
That’s what Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, has told UN News’s Khaled Mohammed, stressing that the Gaza crisis is also becoming a crisis of free speech on campuses worldwide.
The UN and partners are duty bound to work towards an early recovery on behalf of Gazans, even though that is “intrinsically tied to progress on the political front and the two-State solution”.
That’s according to Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza Sigrid Kaag who told UN News in an exclusive interview following the announcement of a new aid mechanism for the enclave that “we cannot ask civilians to wait”.
Sabreen al-Sakani: one name among the more than 34,000 people killed in Gaza since 7 October. Sabreen was 30 weeks pregnant when she died after sustaining terrible head injuries in an Israeli airstrike in the south of the enclave.
Sudan’s food security crisis is a matter of deep concern with a very real risk there could be famine there, the Director of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Office of Emergencies and Resilience has told UN News.
Rein Paulsen has been in the war-ravaged country with an interagency team planning how best to scale up the aid response to the food security crisis.
FAO is supporting vulnerable farms to boost crop production and is implementing famine prevention strategies, including vaccinating animals.
Millions of women and girls saw no progress in their reproductive rights simply because of who they are or where they were born, according to the new 2024 State of World Population report, released on Wednesday by UNFPA, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency.
Agency chief Dr. Natalia Kanem spoke in depth to UN News about her main priorities, noting that women and girls are often the most vulnerable in conflict zones such as Gaza and Ukraine.
The gangs which now control up to 90 per cent of Haiti’s capital must be persuaded to end their campaign of violence which has left the children of the Port-au-Prince region without safety, schooling and sufficient food to eat, the UN’s top envoy for Children and Armed Conflict has told UN News.
