This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.
100,000 children in Tigray at risk of death from malnutrition: UNICEF
More than 100,000 children in Ethiopia’s Tigray region face life-threatening severe acute malnutrition in the next year, a tenfold jump over average annual levels.
The warning on Friday, from UN Children's Fund UNICEF, comes after the agency managed to reach previously inaccessible areas in the northern region, where conflict nears its ninth month.
Spokesperson Marixie Mercado told a UN briefing in Geneva that aid workers’ worst fears about the health and wellbeing of children have been confirmed:
“We need unfettered actress into Tigray and across the region in order to provide the support children and women urgently need. Right now, we have just 6,900 cartons of lifesaving, ready to eat, therapeutic foods in our warehouses in Tigray. That is enough to treat severe malnutrition in just 6,900 children.”
Ms. Mercado said that 47 per cent of pregnant and breastfeeding women were acutely malnourished.
This increases their risk of encountering more pregnancy-related complications, and of maternal death during childbirth, she said, along with the delivery of low-birth weight babies.
Mercenaries must leave Libya to pave way for peace, elections
To Libya, where rights experts have appealed to the authorities to rid the country of mercenaries, for the sake of successful national elections in December.
The appeal comes nine months since a UN-led ceasefire agreement which specifically called for the withdrawal of foreign forces from the oil-rich state.
According to the UN Working Group on Mercenaries, “well-trained and well-armed private contractors” have come from Russia, Syria, Sudan and Chad and continue to operate in Libya.
They should all leave, and there must be an immediate end to the transfer of military weapons and materiel into Libya, the experts insisted, while also warning that the presence of mercenaries could also affect regional security and stability.
The development follows a warning last year by the same UN panel that Libya’s reliance on mercenaries and related actors since 2019 had contributed to the escalation of conflict and undermined the peace process.
Support for mercenary activity in Libya was a breach of the existing arms embargo imposed by the UN Security Council, the UN Working Group said.
“There must be real accountability for abuses committed by mercenaries, mercenary-related actors, and private contractors,” said the experts.
Stop hate speech and crimes targeting Roma, urges rights expert
A rise in hate crimes and attacks against Roma people on social media must be reversed immediately, a UN-appointed independent rights expert said on Friday.
In a warning that the global Romani community is facing the same “divisive rhetoric” as that faced by Jews in Nazi Germany, UN Special Rapporteur Fernand de Varennes, urged countries to act against the practice.
“It’s tragic that almost 80 years after the Romani genocide during World War Two, minorities - particularly Roma in Europe…are increasingly experiencing hate speech and are being targeted by politicians and others,” he said.
Among his recommendations, the rights expert urged greater public education about the Romani holocaust, along with measures to address the exclusion and discrimination faced by Roma today.
Roma Holocaust Memorial Day on 2 August, marks the night in 1944 when some 3,000 Roma of all ages from Auschwitz-Birkenau camp were murdered in the gas chambers.
The date also commemorates the victims of the Romani genocide by Nazi Germany and its allies.
It is believed that between 25 and 50 per cent of Europe’s one to 1.5 million Roma, were likely exterminated.
Daniel Johnson, UN News.
