An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council was held on Friday to address the continuing violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians.
Tensions rose in September, over Palestinian concerns that Israel was planning to change visiting rules for the Al Aqsa compound in Jerusalem, a site revered by both Muslims and Jews.
The Israeli government has denied any such plan.
Two new cases of Ebola have been identified in Guinea, bringing to an end a two-week period without any fresh infections in west Africa, the UN health agency announced Friday.
World Health Organization (WHO) said the development was expected, and that there are still up to 150 so-called “high risk” contacts requiring monitoring in the country.
The latest Ebola infections turned up in the town of Forecariah and the capital, Conakry, as WHO’s Dr Margaret Harris told Daniel Johnson.
Duration: 3’06”
Investments need to be made in agriculture if the world’s poorest people are to get enough to eat according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The UN estimates that around 800 million people are currently undernourished.
On World Food Day, marked on 16 October each year, the UN is urging governments to spend more on agricultural development but also on programmes to reduce poverty and vulnerability in rural areas.
Efforts to help the people of Somalia rebuild their country need to be stepped up with the international community’s help, the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said Friday.
Of more than one million Somali refugees, nearly 5,000 have returned to the country since December 2014, despite ongoing insecurity and a lack of prospects, UNHCR says.
Now the UN agency is hoping that some USD $500 million can be found to help the country at a pledging conference in the Belgian capital Brussels next week.
The international community is being urged to find the political will to help break the cycle of poverty by promoting the new global development goal on hunger.
The UN says, 800 million people around the still do not get enough to eat.
In September, 17 new targets were agreed to eradicate hunger by 2030.
On World Food Day, marked annually on 16 October, Daniel Dickinson has been speaking to the UN World Food Programme’s Gerald Bourke.
Twenty-fifteen is a critical year for the UN which needs to find “new ways of working” if it’s to meet ambitious development goals, according to the head of the United Nations in Geneva.
Michael Moller, Director-General of the UN in the Swiss city, made his comments as the organisation prepares to mark its 70th anniversary with a grand open day at the historic Palais des Nations.
A key feature of the event is the unveiling of a sculpture featuring great blocks of stone from all 193 member nations on Saturday 24 October.
Daniel Johnson reports.
Five new non-permanent members have been elected to serve on the UN Security Council from next year, with Japan and Ukraine the countries to watch, says the co-editor of a new book on its role.
The other nations with seats from January for a period of two years, are Egypt, Senegal and Uruguay.
The international community is being urged to put commitments to gender equality into action by ensuring that development assistance to post-conflict countries also reaches women on the ground.
The appeal was made by Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, the Special Envoy on Gender at the African Development Bank (ADB).
Ms Fraser-Moleketi, who is from South Africa, was a panellist at a UN meeting looking at what impact a UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, has had on the continent.
Talks to decide the future of Yemen could take place before the end of October despite the “deep mistrust” between those involved, the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Jan Eliasson, said Thursday.
Insisting that there’s a “strong logic” for the talks to start now, Mr Eliasson highlighted how recent advances by terrorist groups threatened to destabilize the region further unless the fighting stops.
Information technology should focus less on business and more on civil society, according to one media guru, speaking at the UN’s major telecoms conference this week.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is the UN’s specialist agency for information and communications technologies, and delegates are gathering in Hungary from all over the world, to discuss core issues affecting the IT industry.
