The climate crisis is also a health crisis. This is the message the UN health agency will deliver to world leaders and negotiators gathering at this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP28, in Dubai. The WHO says, the same pollution that impacts the climate also affects our lungs, and extreme weather events lead to a large range of diseases.
UN News’ Nathalie Minard spoke with Dr. Maria Neira, Director of the Department of Public Health and Environment at the World Health Organization (WHO), ahead of COP28.
The UN General Assembly last month passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas – the first collective call to action to come out of the UN since the start of the conflict on 7 October.
The General Assembly comprises all 193 UN Member States and although its resolutions are non-binding, they represent “the conscience of humanity”.
That’s the message from General Assembly President Dennis Francis, who also encourages people who believe the UN is ineffective to instead engage with the global body.
Negotiations continued on Thursday towards the implementation of the Israel-Hamas truce in Gaza, where staff from the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, remain “on the ground doing an impossible mission”.
That’s according to Maha Hijazi, UNRWA Warehousing and Distribution Officer, who was responsible for securing food for hundreds of thousands of people in the enclave, which continues to face dire shortages of food, water fuel and medicines.
In northern Gaza, nearly 200 people were killed and injured following attacks this weekend on the UN-run Al-Fakoura school, according to Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).
As the Israel-Palestine crisis continues, he told UN News’s Reem Abaza that “things are getting worse.”
Speaking to us from Gaza, Mr. Hasna gave an update on the developing situation and what’s to come as the intensifying humanitarian crisis continues amidst fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants.
The world needs a “strong, ambitious and just” treaty to cut down on the mass-produced plastics which are helping fuel the climate crisis, said the head of the UN-backed secretariat steering international negotiations towards a binding agreement to end the scourge, in an interview this week with UN News.
Food systems in Gaza are collapsing and the food aid entering the enclave is barely 10 per cent of the amount needed for the 2.2 million people there.
The warning comes from the World Food Programme (WFP) which says Gazans are not getting enough to eat, making them more susceptible to diseases that can be easily spread.
UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki asked Alia Zaki, WFP Palestine Head of Communications, how the agency is responding now to the immense needs.
Five weeks into the Gaza-Israel crisis, the UN’s top emergency relief official on Wednesday reiterated growing international calls for the warring parties to de-escalate, while expressing solidarity with hundreds of thousands of Gazans displaced by bombardment and an order from the Israeli military to leave the north of the enclave.
The UN-appointed independent human rights expert on racism and xenophobia said on Tuesday that the United States is suffering a form of “selective amnesia” when it comes to “enduring systemic racism”.
Special Rapporteur Ashwini K.P. has just finished a 14-day fact finding mission across the US where she had conversations with marginalized groups from Black, Brown, and Latino communities and lawmakers, among others.
The heavy fighting that erupted in Sudan on 15 April has forced more than six million people from their homes and created a humanitarian catastrophe that the world must not continue to ignore.
That’s the urgent message from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR’s) Dominique Hyde, who’s just back from White Nile state, where she witnessed the deadly impact of months of conflict on the country’s most vulnerable people, who are now sheltering in hundreds of displacement camps.
Here she is now, speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
