This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.
COVID crisis to push global unemployment over 200 million mark in 2022
The economic crisis caused by the COVID pandemic is expected to contribute to global unemployment of more than 200 million people next year, with women and youth workers worst-hit, UN labour experts said on Wednesday.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) also maintained in a new report that although the world’s nations “will emerge” from the ongoing health crisis, “five years of progress towards the eradication of working poverty have been undone”, nonetheless.
Here’s head of the ILO, Guy Ryder, speaking to UN News:
“We’ve gone backwards, we’ve gone backwards big time. Working poverty is back to 2015 levels; that means that when the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda was set, we’re back to the starting line.”
ILO’s forecast that global unemployment will reach 205 million people in 2022 compares with the 187 million jobless figure in 2019.
Staggering health needs emerge in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
To the Gaza Strip now, where senior UN health agency officials on Wednesday called for unhindered humanitarian access to the enclave, citing growing concerns about urgent health needs there.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that it has provided essential medicines for trauma care and supported ambulance services for more than 2,000 injured people in Gaza, while a ceasefire holds between Hamas and Israel, after 11 days of rocket fire and airstrikes by both sides.
Ten WHO triage and treatment tents have also been set up outside six emergency departments in Gaza, but the situation remains “volatile”, said Dr Rik Peeperkorn WHO Head of Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
With COVID-19 still a threat, the agency reported that it had supported the delivery of more than 260,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the territory through the UN-led equitable vaccine distribution initiative COVAX.
Last month’s hostilities resulted in the death of 278 Palestinians, with a reported 12 Israeli lives lost. Over 77,000 people were internally displaced and around 30 health facilities were also damaged, WHO said.
Mali coup leaders urged to release former President and Prime Minister
Mali’s military leaders should release the country’s former President and Prime Minister, who remain under house arrest since being removed in another coup last week, a UN-appointed independent rights expert said on Wednesday.
Alioune Tine, independent expert on the human rights situation in Mali, said that contrary to news reports, President Bah N'Daw and former Prime Minister Moctar Ouane were not freed by the military on 27 May, but instead moved to house arrest.
The development follows Mali’s second coup in less than a year.
The ousted President and Prime Minister were initially held on Monday 24 May at Kati military camp near the capital, Bamako, with five other top civilian and military officials.
Only two of the five officials have been released to date, Mr. Tine said, before endorsing the call of West African bloc ECOWAS for new presidential elections in February 2022.
Daniel Johnson, UN News.
