This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.
Death Valley reading, likely record highest temperature since 1931
“All indications” suggest that the 130 degrees Fahrenheit reading in California’s Death Valley, is “legitimate”, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday.
The development comes after the weather station at Furnace Creek in the Valley, reported a temperature of 54.4C, which is 130F, on Sunday.
“If validated, it would be the highest temperature on Earth since 1931, and the third-hottest temperature ever recorded on the planet”, WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis told journalists in Geneva.
Ms. Nullis said that WMO had tasked a panel of experts to verify the reading by examining the equipment used, how it was calibrated and how it compared to data gathered nearby.
Although the verification process will likely take many months, she said that the UN agency’s weather and climate extremes expert, Randall Cerveny, had already said “all the indications …are that this is a legitimate observation”.
According to WMO, the hottest temperature ever recorded, was also in Death Valley, reaching 56.7C (134.06F) in July 1913.
The current scorching conditions have coincided with a heatwave on America’s west coast. The National Weather Service has issued numerous heat warnings indicating that the intense and extreme heat will continue this week.
Sahel protection crisis sees one million displaced in Burkina Faso
Escalating violence in Burkina Faso has driven more than a million people from their homes, including 453,000 since the start of the year.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said that five per cent of the country’s population – one in 20 people – has been displaced in the world's fastest-growing humanitarian and protection crisis.
Attacks by armed groups in the north and east of the country had forced people to move multiple times, spokesperson Babar Baloch said.
“They desperately need shelter, food, water, protection, health. Education also remains a priority, as over 2,500 schools have been forced to close after being targeted, thus affecting almost 350,000 students.”
According to UNHCR, host populations are struggling as they shared what little resources they had while also facing growing poverty themselves, strained health services and rapid loss of income.
To help people in the central Sahel region, which includes Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the UN agency is appealing for $186 million.
Halt all evictions until COVID-19 pandemic ends
Finally, no-one should be turned out of their home during the COVID-19 crisis, a senior UN-appointed rights expert said on Tuesday, as temporary eviction bans in many countries come to an end.
Warning of an “impending tsunami of evictions”, the UN’s expert on housing rights, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, expressed alarm at the global increase in home demolitions and in the number of people being forced to look for shelter.
A moratorium on clearing encampments, or so-called tent cities of homeless people, is also essential, he said in a statement.
Some Governments have put in place temporary bans on forced evictions, the Special Rapporteur explained, but many people still continue to lose their homes.
These include more than 11,000 people in Brazil and Kenya, he said, with forced relocation a threat in countries including Haiti.
Daniel Johnson, UN News.
