Two years of the Ukraine conflict: ‘This war should never have started’
Peace in Ukraine still seems to be a distant prospect, but thousands of UN staff continue to support the population, even in frontline towns coming under daily attack.
Peace in Ukraine still seems to be a distant prospect, but thousands of UN staff continue to support the population, even in frontline towns coming under daily attack.
Ahead of Julian Assange’s upcoming court hearing in the UK, where extradition to the US is a possibility, a UN independent human rights expert has expressed concern about the potential for severe rights violations against the WikiLeaks founder. Alice Jill Edwards cautions that the repercussions of this case could significantly influence global journalism and freedom of speech.
Sharing borders with Gaza, Israel, Libya and Sudan, Egypt has taken a lead role in providing lifesaving aid in the region. Since the outbreak of conflict in Sudan last April and the ongoing war in Gaza, both the Government and the Egyptian Red Crescent Society have been key actors in helping to assist millions of civilians caught in the crossfire.
The El Niño climate pattern, a naturally occurring phenomenon, can significantly disrupt weather systems around the world, but the human-made climate emergency is exacerbating the destructive effects on people and the planet.
Organized crime gangs in Southeast Asia are migrating operations to remote areas of the region where the rule of law is absent and are using technology to lead what a senior official at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is calling the “supercharging of illicit economies”, including expanding the trafficking of drugs and people as well as money laundering and fraudulent ‘scam’ activities.
The UN is helping to ensure that developing countries benefit from clean energy. In Madagascar, a promising initiative is showing the potential of clean electrification to change lives.
The fierce fighting between the Sudanese army and rebel RSF forces risks reaching the UN bases in the east of the country, warns the head of IOM, the UN migration agency in the country, sharing his frustration at being unable to reach the millions of civilians in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
As the war in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian militants reaches the 100 day mark, the UN is working flat out to meet the dire needs of hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians “through one door” at the Rafah crossing, a restriction imposed by Israel that has to change, said the UN newly-appointed Resident Coordinator on Saturday.
The release of GPT-4 in 2023, along with other powerful easy-to-use Artificial Intelligence tools such as deepfakes and voice cloning, led to heightened calls for regulation of the technology. UN News speaks to Carme Artigas, Co-Chair of the UN’s AI Advisory Body, about the group’s recommendations for advancing the international governance of AI.
The suffering of people in Ukraine is likely to deepen and they will fall into more poverty through the winter as they continue to endure an almost two-year-old Russian invasion, according to the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in the country, Denise Brown.