Interviews

Devastating flooding – the worst in a decade – has affected millions of people in west and central Africa, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, warned on Friday.

It’s appealed to all donors to step up their support for the most vulnerable, from Burkina Faso to Nigeria, where fields, farms and roads have been flooded.

With the latest, here’s UNHCR’s Olga Sarrado, speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

Despite the global prohibition against torture, it still “permeates many aspects of our lives”, impacting police conduct, conflict and even climate response, the newly appointed UN expert monitoring violations worldwide has said. 

Dr. Alice Jill Edwards, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, has presented her first interim report to the General Assembly in New York. 

Propaganda and disinformation are nothing new in war, but digital technology and social media are fuelling it like never before, creating an ‘extremely dangerous’ situation in Ukraine and other warzones, for vulnerable civilians exercising their rights.

The Chair of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has found reasonable grounds to believe war crimes have been committed there, since Russia’s invasion of 24 February.

On Tuesday, the Commission presented its first detailed written findings to the UN General Assembly.

Chair Erik Møse says there’s an undeniable need for accountability for the crimes which have been committed - the vast majority by Russian forces, although there are several instances involving Ukrainian troops.

In this episode of the UN Conference on Trade and Development’s Weekly Tradecast, Sarah Toms talks to Richard Kozul-Wright, Director of UNCTAD’s Globalization and Development Strategies team, about their major report out this week. He argues that despite the looming recession due to the Ukraine war, COVID and other crises, the world can change course, if countries put the right policies in place.

Amid catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, UN humanitarians have raced to offer support to the Government, in the crucial early days of the relief effort. 

Beyond the immediate challenge of reaching all those stranded by the high waters, fears remain about next season’s harvest, if the waters do not recede in time for planting. 

With more, here’s the UN World Food Programme’s (WFP) Country Director for Pakistan, Chris Kaye, who’s been talking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson. 

It has been five years since the bloody crackdown in Myanmar that forced nearly one million members of the minority Rohingya community to seek shelter in neighbouring Bangladesh, joining scores of others who had fled previous waves of violence.

Nicholas Koumjian heads the International Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), established by the UN Human Rights Council to document crimes committed in the country, including in the wake of the February 2021 military coup.

When a massive earthquake hit remote communities in Afghanistan’s Khost and Paktika provinces on 21 June, UN Children’s Fund staffer Veronica Houser knew it was going to be a tough assignment. So many families had been buried in rubble and mud while they slept.

While the economic crisis has impacted numerous sectors across Sri Lanka, nutrition security has been particularly affected.

According to recent UN data, 6.3 million people have been rendered food insecure, meaning that they cannot access a nutritious diet on a daily basis.

The World Food Programme (WFP) in the country is working towards solutions to the current food crisis.