General News

The protection of civilians is “imperative” in every military action to liberate the Iraqi city of Mosul from the ISIL terrorist group, also known as Daesh, the UN Special Envoy for Iraq, Ján Kubiš, has urged. 

Tens of thousands of people living in and around Mosul are reportedly being used as human shields by the terrorist organisation.

The military operation, which has taken place for the past four weeks, is led by the Iraqi government forces and allies and aims to retake the last major stronghold of ISIL.

An estimated 1.7 per cent of new-born babies across the world can be classified as intersex, which means their gender cannot simply be defined as male or female.

That’s according to the UN Free & Equal Campaign, initiated by the UN Office for Human Rights.

The campaign is working with intersex people to raise awareness of their existence and help protect their rights.

Hida Viloria is an intersex advocate and author of the book entitled “Born Both.”

Humanitarians were barred from delivering much-needed medicines to the town of Yei in South Sudan on Friday, a senior official with the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, has reported.

OCHA Operations Director John Ging said even though political leaders had granted permission to the convoy, it was barred from entering the town.

Yei had previously been spared from the conflict that has plagued South Sudan since December 2013.

Fresh fears of terrible crimes by ISIL militants surfaced on Friday in which children, so-called “sons of the caliphate”, have been deployed as suicide bombers to defend Mosul against Iraqi forces.

Other reports from the besieged Iraqi city released by the UN indicate that teenagers have been forced to carry out executions and that women have been given to ISIL fighters.

In addition to the ongoing mass displacement of civilians, there are also fears that toxic chemicals are being burned deliberately and stockpiled in built-up areas.

Daniel Johnson has more.

The goal to provide more than a billion of the world’s poorest people with clean energy could be achieved in our lifetime.

That’s the belief expressed by the head of the UN Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative, Rachel Kyte.

Ensuring that all people have access to affordable, reliable and sustainable modern energy is one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Indigenous people in Canada have been marginalized when it comes to city life “for many decades” with women and girls suffering a “disproportionate level of violence.”

That’s according to Christine O’Fallon, a member of Canada’s Women Transforming Cities group, speaking at the UN’s recent Habitat III conference on the future of urbanization, in Ecuador.

Challenges facing the Haitian government and UN teams, working to vaccinate 800,000 people from cholera, can be overcome to reach the most vulnerable.

That’s according to Jean-Luc Poncelet, who heads the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and World Health Organization (WHO) teams in the Caribbean country.

A mood of optimism has taken hold in Lebanon since the recent election of a new president despite the challenges posed by a protracted crisis there, the UN Special Coordinator for the country has said.

Sigrid Kaag said that the risk of young people being radicalized, as well as the “toxic narrative” around the hosting of refugees, were issues that Lebanon needs to address.

Ms Kaag spoke to Daniel Dickinson as she prepared to update the UN Security Council in New York on the situation in the country.

Buildings can play a “transformative” role in fighting climate change in cities, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Experts from around the world are currently meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, at the COP22 conference, which is looking at how to turn the goal of keeping global temperature rises to below 2 degrees Celsius into a reality.

Although mass measles vaccination campaigns have saved more than 20 million child lives over the past 15 years, the illness still kills nearly 400 children each day.

For this reason, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its partners have launched a report calling for stronger political commitment towards reaching every child.

Measles is a highly contagious viral disease but it can be prevented with two doses of what the agency has described as “a safe and effective vaccine.”